Stradbroke goal for Coeur Volante
Mike Moroney has confirmed his stable star Coeur Volante (Proisir) will have the $3 million Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1, 1400m) in Queensland in June as her major target.
The three-year-old filly won both the Scarborough Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m) and Thousand Guineas Prelude (Gr 2, 1400m) in the spring before running fourth in the Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) when last seen in November.
No three-year-old filly has won the Stradbroke since La Montagna (Monashee Mountain) in 2006 but Moroney said the timing of the race on June 15 makes it an enticing aim for the talented filly.
“She’s due in next week. We’re going to head towards the Stradbroke, all going well. There’s a race called the Fred Best that she will be aimed at which is exempt from the ballot,” Moroney told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“She’ll be a lightweight chance. We’ll give her a pretty light campaign, we’ll head up there and then come back down for the spring. She’s a late foal, pretty immature, so we’ve given her a nice long break.
“We decided to miss the autumn mainly and concentrate on the winter. I think it worked out well for her, but I think she got on tired legs at the finish.
“She was the first one under pressure at the 600 metres, so she did a good job to box on and she couldn’t quite stay up that long, being pretty immature.
“It was a lot to take on with the trip from New Zealand to Australia. She didn’t handle it that well and she wasn’t that straightforward. To do what she did was just on natural talent. We weighed her on the way through and there wasn’t much of her, no matter what we did.
“We gave her a quick break, we sent her to a farm where they come back like broodmares in foal and she still didn’t put on weight. She does better in the stable actually. She put on more weight there.
“We gave her a nice break because she had a fair bit of growing to do and I think in the long run it’ll help her.”