Snitzel filly Little Black Dress maintains unbeaten record with gritty Star Way success
Saturday afternoon was a fruitful one for the Arrowfield Stud roster, as just over 50 minutes before Shangri La Spring’s triumph, Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) filly Little Black Dress extended her unbeaten record to two with a dramatic win in the Star Way Stakes (Listed, 1200m) at Ellerslie.
The two-year-old filly, who broke her maiden at Pukekohe Park last month, came out on top of a Stephen Marsh-trained quinella after going stride–for–stride with Lady Iris (U S Navy Flag), who briefly hampered her stablemate when veering left under a right-hand drive by George Rooke.
It proved irrelevant to the result however, with Little Black Dress having enough momentum to stretch out and snatch a first stakes victory by 0.2 lengths, with a further 0.4 lengths back to the late closing Too Sweet (Satono Aladdin) in third.
With Marsh en-route to Hong Kong to oversee stable star El Vencedor’s (Shocking) preparation for Sunday week’s QEII Cup (Gr 1, 2000m) at Sha Tin, stable representative Dylan Johnson summed up the result.
“We have been in this position before with stablemates challenging each other late in the piece at Ellerslie, but when you have runners in nice races it is lovely when they are at the sharp end of it,” Johnson said.
“It was nice to quinella the race and the winner is a lovely, well-bred filly by Snitzel that Albert [Bosma] and Matt [Allnutt] did a great job sourcing as they didn’t have to pay overs for her and they now have a very valuable stakes winner, who is two from two, on their hands.
“The second filly has also gained valuable black type and although there is not a lot to her she just fought and fought.
“There is not a lot more for them so they can go out in the paddock before we get them back in to attack the spring.”
Jockey Wiremu Pinn was impressed with how the winning filly fought resolutely to the line.
“She is a very good horse with class written all over her,” he said.
“She is beautifully bred and won her first start in good fashion and has put away a smart field here today.
“Even with the bump she picked herself up, pinned her ears back and had a real go. I think she is a Group 1 horse as what she is doing now is on ability only, whereas in six months she will be even better.”
The 157th stakes winner for her champion sire, Little Black Dress is the fourth winner out of the Group 3-winning Street Cry (Machiavellian) mare Star Fashion, who also placed in the Australasian Oaks (Gr 1, 2000m) in 2014.
Arrowfield offered the filly at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale last year, where she was secured by Albert Bosma’s Go Racing and Blandford Bloodstock for $240,000.
Snitzel will stand the upcoming season for an unchanged fee of $247,500 (inc GST).
Arrowfield were again on the scoresheet later in the afternoon at Randwick with Maurice (Screen Hero), whose son Mazu notched a second consecutive win in the Hall Mark Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m).