North Star Lass fights hard for Furious Stakes win
Widden Stud’s Zoustar (Northern Meteor) has continued his dominance of the Darley Princess Series early in the new season with North Star Lass showing her class and tenacity to land yesterday’s Furious Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) on testing ground at Randwick.
The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained three-year-old appeared to have relented to the challenge of Willinga Beast (Snitzel) but rallied in the closing stages to score by a long head.
The pair had finished third and fifth respectively in the Silver Shadow Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), which was taken out by another filly by Zoustar in Zougotcha, a fortnight earlier.
The resuming Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) winner She’s Extreme (Extreme Choice) lost few admirers with her closing third, finishing three and a quarter lengths behind North Star Lass.
With typical effervescence, Waterhouse beamed after the race, declaring the three-year-old as a “million-dollar filly” following her Group 2 success, and the trainer intends to chase more, all-important stakes success via the Tea Rose Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) and Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m), the last two legs of the Princess Series.
“She is a typical Waterhouse-Bott horse. She was bought inexpensively ($260,000), works her way through the classes and gets towards Group 1 races. We see it time and time again with our horses,” Waterhouse said.
“This filly is on the Flight Stakes path, that’s where she is headed, she is such a good filly.”
With rain falling throughout the day, which started soon after the 7.30am scratching deadline, the Randwick surface deteriorated significantly to a Heavy 9 by the time the Furious Stakes was run on a track which favoured horses sticking to the inside rail.
Fields across the Randwick meeting were impacted as connections elected to wait for another day rather than running their spring carnival contenders on the wet track. Among the high-profile scratchings was the James Cummings-trained pre-post Furious Stakes favourite In Secret (I Am Invincible) who was withdrawn after it became apparent the surface was deteriorating and it was hard to make ground.
Waterhouse and Bott never contemplated following suit in taking North Star Lass, a juvenile winner at Warwick Farm in March who ran fifth in the Percy Sykes Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) behind Paris Dior (Pierro) and Willinga Beast at her only other start at two, out of the Furious Stakes.
“We were confident with the going today. They have to learn to run in wet going,” Waterhouse said in a missive to her rivals.
“What happens if you have an Oaks or a Group 1 coming up and they can’t run because they scratch their horses all the time?”
Rider Tim Clark said: “We were really pleased with how she performed first up two weeks ago, off probably not the best trials. She is one of those fillies I think that saves her best for race day.
“She’s a really brave filly and once she gets to the (1400 metres) and the mile, the other two races in the Princess Series, she will probably be even better suited.”
A daughter of five-time winner and stakes-placed mare Sheila’s Star (Snitzel), North Star Lass was purchased by her trainers Waterhouse and Bott and Kestrel Thoroughbreds from last year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
The $260,000 filly, who is a granddaughter of Group 3-winning Victorian juvenile Northeast Sheila (Keltrice), was offered for sale at the Gold Coast by Rosemont Stud.
Kestrel Thoroughbreds’ Bruce Slade praised the team effort of the Waterhouse-Bott stable to identify North Star Lass as a yearling.
“She was a filly we all thought highly of across the board and I am sure many others did, too. She’s a beautiful filly with typical great quality and great hindpart to her who possessed lovely movement,” Slade said yesterday.
“We were probably surprised to get her at $260,000. She was sold late on the Friday afternoon and I felt there was a bit of a soft spot in the sale and we’re really pleased to buy her at the time for that.
“Zoustar was a sire we really targeted based on the data we look at with his best mares still to come and she’s a product of that.”
North Star Lass races in the colours of a syndicate led by Trish Bourke, who also raced the Waterhouse and Bott-trained Tilianam (Savabeel), a Lonhro Plate (Listed, 1000m) winner, who sold for $625,000 at this year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
“I want to give a shout out to Claudia Miller, who is on our buying team and she looks after Trish Bourke whose colours this filly runs in,” Slade said.
“Claudia put her in Tilianam with the stable who won a stakes race and who was sold for really good money at the Magic Millions broodmare sale this year.
“She’s reinvested that money in the stable and she has another one in her colours (North Star Lass) so she’s going to do it again.”
Slade, echoing Waterhouse’s comments, wouldn’t rule out North Star Lass achieving more black type this campaign.
“Timmy Clark got off her last start and said, ‘she’s flying, this filly’ and he couldn’t wait to see her at seven furlongs and a mile and it was probably more like a 1400-metre race on that track today,” he said.
Tommy Berry, who rode the Anthony Cummings-trained She’s Extreme, said the filly’s performance was full of merit.
“We were of the opinion we wanted to be closer, but everyone had that same opinion. We rode her for luck along the fence,” the rider said.
“She came out and made a run. For her to make up that ground on that track and down that part of the track, she’s run extremely well.”
Paris Dior, who was also resuming, started the $3.30 favourite after In Secret’s scratching. She ran fourth.
“The ground is probably too deep for her. I know she has run well in the wet ground but she just struggled a bit in a ‘survival of the fittest’ first up,” her rider Brenton Avdulla said.