No Glow but Waller stills finds the right Lady to take Flight

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Heartache turned to joy for Arrowfield Stud, Hermitage Thoroughbreds and Chris Waller when Lady Shenandoah (Snitzel) coasted away with Saturday’s Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) at Randwick.

Only a day earlier, the combination had been shattered by bleak news surrounding their unbeaten star Autumn Glow (The Autumn Sun).

Bred by Newhaven Park, trained by Waller, and bought by Arrowfield and Hermitage as the $1.8 million Inglis Easter sale topper last year, Autumn Glow was scratched as a raging odds-on Flight favourite on Friday, and ruled out for the spring due to a bone chip in her knee.

But on Saturday that disappointment was substantially salved when Lady Shenandoah – co-bred by Arrowfield, bought by Hermitage at the same Easter sale for $525,000, and also trained by Waller – stormed away with the Flight.

In so doing, she became the second top-level winner out of just five foals to race for her Arrowfield-bred dam Star Pupil (Starcraft), following victory for second foal Stronger (Not A Single Doubt) in Hong Kong’s Centenary Sprint Cup (Gr 1, 1200m) in 2022.

The field for the $750,000 Flight Stakes field had already shaped as a compact one after Autumn Glow scared away potential rivals. By post time, the three-year-old fillies’ feature held just six runners.

Lady Shenandoah, who’d won the Ming Dynasty Quality (Gr 3, 1400m) as a maiden in her third start at her previous run, settled fourth under leading apprentice Zac Lloyd, and had no trouble streaking past her rivals to swell her breeding value immensely with an imperious victory.

Sent out a well supported $3.10 second favourite, she scored by 3.2 lengths from Nathan Doyle’s Harlem Queen (Brutal). The John O’Shea and Tom Charlton-trained Snow In May (The Autumn Sun) claimed a second stakes placing in successive starts, but her third of six was little consolation to punters who made her a $2.60 favourite.

By contrast, there was some salving of connections’ wounds effected through Lady Shenandoah’s triumph, which gave Arrowfield’s four-time champion sire Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) his 20th individual elite-level winner, amid 148 global stakes victors.

“That was an exceptional win, and very, very pleasing, because we’ve got the sire and the dam,” said Arrowfield owner John Messara.

“It’s also grand for our partners in Autumn Glow. We and Hermitage have had a bit of a consolation, since we bred Lady Shenandoah and they bought her. For us at Arrowfield, it doesn’t fully make up for the disappointment over Autumn Glow, but it certainly goes a good way towards doing so.

“He’s like a bottle of wine that stallion of ours,” Messara said in reference to four-time champion sire Snitzel. “He continues to do well with age.

“And the mother’s produced another stakes winner in Stronger, so she’s more than proven.”

Bred by Arrowfield in tandem with Planette Thoroughbred, Lady Shenandoah (3 f Snitzel – Star Pupil by Starcraft) is one of two stakes winners – amid four winners from five runners – for Star Pupil, whose career for Messara’s training son Paul was restricted to five starts for a country win and two placings.

“He’s the best trainer of broodmares in the country is Paul,” John Messara said. “He’s got an incredible strike-rate of successful broodmares with horses that he’s trained.”

Stronger (Not A Single Doubt) – a $1.05m buy for James Harron at Inglis Easter 2018 – became Star Pupil’s first black-type winner by taking the 2019 Ken Russell Memorial Classic (Gr 3, 1200m) at the Gold Coast, before being sold to Hong Kong.

Saturday’s was the 11th Group 1 triumph for Hermitage’s renowned green and red chevrons. It followed five Group 1 wins for The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) – another Arrowfield stallion and the sire of Autumn Glow – plus two each for mares Egg Tart (Sebring) and September Run (Exceed And Excel), and one to Rocket Spade (Fastnet Rock).

“It’s been a very up-and-down week,” Hermitage manager Shannon Clarke said. “It was obviously disappointing with Autumn Glow being scratched yesterday morning, but to have this filly step out today and do what she did was very gratifying.

“It was a very dominant win. I was very impressed with how she handled herself. She and Autumn Glow are at different ends of the scale. Glow’s very relaxed and Lady Shenandoah’s a bit highly strung, but she did it with ease today.

“She was a horse Guy Mulcaster had on his list for us. He’s been very good at finding horses for us in the past. She was a filly [Hermitage owner] Eugene Chuang quite liked the look of as well.

“We’ve got a good partnership with Chris and Guy finding us the right horses, and it’s worked out well for us.”

Waller, too, could find consolation after the scratching of his outstanding filly Autumn Glow.

“It was a tough week but I’m not going to get emotional about it because I’m so blessed to have these types of horses in the stable,” he said.

“Autumn Glow, she’s a star. But this little girl here [Lady Shenandoah], she’s pretty good too.

“Guy and I, we got our heads together and said at the sales, ‘This is a Flight Stakes-type filly’.”

Waller said the plans for Lady Shenandoah were yet to be decided but said “she’s still got a little bit up her sleeve”.

“We won’t get too carried away, she’s still filling out and developing, but she’s got a Group 1 next to her name,” he said.

Winning jockey Zac Lloyd said Lady Shenandoah had shown a “scintillating” turn of foot in a race where the small field had posed questions about tactics.

“I really wanted to get cover on her because I thought if I just get her to switch on she would have a good turn of foot. Lucky I was able to get in the one-one,” he said.

“She travelled like the winner the whole way and I just had to count to five before I let her go. But I don’t think it mattered – she’s very good.”

Star Pupil now has a yearling colt by Arrowfield shuttler Maurice (Screen Hero). She slipped to Snitzel last year, but is booked for a return to the stallion this spring aimed at producing a full sibling to Lady Shenandoah, Messara said.

As part of Darley’s sponsorship of Randwick’s four-leg Princess Series which is headed by the Flight, winning breeder Arrowfield won a nomination to Darley’s Newmarket Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m)-winning stallion, Cylinder (Exceed And Excel).