The Pakenham training partnership of Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman may finally have got a handle on their four-year-old mare Mollynickers after her first win since her two-year-old days at Geelong on Saturday.
A grinding come-from-behind victory in the $100,000 BM84 Handicap (1400m) ended a frustrating run for connections after the daughter of Pierro/Just One Moment showed exciting talent as a juvenile.
At the age of two Mollynickers won two of her three starts before embarking on challenging assignments right throughout her three-year-old days.
She was placed in Group 2 and 3 races, but failed to fire in two visits to elite Group 1 company as a filly.
While those lofty expectations are still being harboured by connections, a step back in grade proved just the tonic on the weekend.
Mollynickers put the writing on the wall with an improved effort in BM100 company at Caulfield on 14 December last year, before breaking her winning drought with a stylish victory at Geelong.
Jockey Linda Meech rode a patient race on the mare, settling back in the field before making her run on the home turn.
Mollynickers gradually picked up the leaders; grinding away late to wear down Le Ferrari and Umgawa to score a breakthrough victory.
Meech said Mollynickers had enjoyed the drop down in class…and distance!
“I think sometimes these horses, they go up in the grades really quickly and they get to their level and they look like superstars, but then they try to get the group ones,” she explained
“The other day at Caulfield, she finished off really well, back up to her right sort of grade, she finished off really sharp.
“I think they tried to turn her into a 2000-metre horse and I don’t know that she is.
“I think she might be just a get back, run on, sort of seven-furlong horse, she might be able to get a mile, but I think she’s pretty sharp.”
Meech said some flexible instructions from Moody gave her the discretion to watch the race unfold.
“I would have liked to be in front of Johnny Allen (on Pascero) but I was going to have to upset her to do it, so I had to just take my medicine and come back,” she said.
“Pete (Moody) didn’t tie me down, he said, ‘just bounce, squeeze, travel’ so when you’re riding for blokes like that, it makes it a bit easier.”
Fellow Pakenham trainer Phillip Stokes may also have a good one on his hands after his three-year-old gelding Sweethearted scored impressively in the last race on the program at Geelong.
The son of Brave Smash/Candy Floss has made a striking start to his career, with his back-to-back wins following on from runner up finishes at his first two starts.
Sweethearted was forced to dig deep in the straight, with jockey Daniel Stackhouse finding a saloon passage at the turn and riding vigorously in a two-horse war to the finish.
Sweethearted narrowly nailed Band Of Brothers on the line, with the Ciaron Maher-trained Berezka back in third place.
Stackhouse said the win, after dropping back from the 1200 to 1100-metre journey, was definitely the horse’s best outing.
“One hundred per cent,” Stackhouse said.
“It was never going to be easy from that sort of map and the way the race shape sort of panned out, they were going to go quick.
“We were dropping back a hundred metres to 1100 and if I let those frontrunners get away I’d be struggling to catch them.
“But he was the best horse in the race I thought, and he got the luck at the right time and managed to get out and he did the rest.”
Stackhouse said not everything went according to plan.
“He jumped a little bit slower than I really wanted to, didn’t want to go back to the inside, just the watering they’ve put on the track,” he said.
“It has deteriorated on the inside of the track, he came off the bridle but then to his credit, he fought hard, picked himself up, managed to come out at the right time and he still had a lot of work to do.
“He just kept giving to me every time I asked so he’s got a bright future this horse.
“Hopefully he can grow a little bit too and get a bit more size about him but he does have that class and his last two runs have shown that now.”
