Samantha has continued the trend of the day at Royal Randwick by flying home on the outside rail to win the Listed Fireball Stakes (1100m) by slightly less than a length.
Samantha flew home on the outside rail to win the Listed Fireball Stakes at Randwick this afternoon. Photo: Steve Hart
Samantha jumped from the gates well, but was settled off the early pace by jockey Corey Brown as topweight Scarlet Rain, Super Maxi and Conchita blazed the early trail.
Held off the fence rounding onto the final straight and immediately leading the filly to the fence, Brown allowed Samantha ample time to balance before asking for an extra effort and was greeted with a big turn of foot with 200m to run.
Glenall maintained to the line well to finish second, while Super Maxi was also brave on the extremely heavy going to finish third.
Trainer Gerald Ryan has been thrilled with what the Snitzel filly has already achieved through her short racing career to date and revealed that the Group 3 PJ Bell Stakes (1200m) on Day 1 of The Championships is her major campaign target.
“She’s a pretty talented little filly,” Ryan said.
“When she first came to me about twelve months ago she was a late two-year-old and she was only a little thing, and I thought that this could be the best Snitzel filly I’ve had since Snitzerland.
“She almost got to a race and she started to feel the pinch and fall away a bit, so we only gave her one run at Hawkesbury and turned her out. She came back a much stronger filly.
“We’ll just poke along. It was only last weekend that I was sitting there talking about where we were going to run her.
“With the wet track last week we thought, ‘well she plows through the mud,’ so we’ll throw her in and see what it looks like.
“The whole aim has been the PJ Bell. So we’ll just hit that and see where we go from here.
“She’s in the Arrowfield and all of that, but I don’t think she’s up to that class. She’s a little stakes winner now.”
Samantha Miss has posted three wins through only five career starts, since making her debut in the winter of 2016.
2017 Fireball Stakes Results
| Finish | No. | Horse | Trainer | Jockey | Margin | Bar. | Weight | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 9 | SAMANTHA | Gerald Ryan | Corey Brown | – | 7 | 54kg | $6.50 |
| 2 | 6 | GLENALL | Les Bridge | Tim Clark | 0.5L | 2 | 56kg | $4.80 |
| 3 | 4 | SUPER MAXI | Michael, Wayne & John Hawkes | Tommy Berry | 0.6L | 9 | 56kg | $10 |
| 4 | 8 | FAITH’S ENCORE | Peter & Paul Snowden | Kerrin McEvoy | 2.1L | 6 | 54kg | $7 |
| 5 | 7 | CONCHITA | Paul Perry | Glyn Schofield | 4.8L | 1 | 55.5kg | $8 |
| 6 | 11 | MA TANTE | Anthony Cummings | Joao Moreira | 5.5L | 8 | 54kg | $9 |
| 7 | 10 | GLORIETTE | John O’Shea | Brenton Avdulla | 5.6L | 5 | 54kg | $14 |
| 8 | 3 | HONESTY PREVAILS | Rick Worthington | Jason Collett | 7.9L | 4 | 56.5kg | $10 |
| 9 | 1 | SCARLET RAIN | Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott | Adam Hyeronimus | 15.6L | 3 | 57kg | $4.40F |
