MARVEEN OUTGUNS LA ETOILE IN GOLD COAST BRACELET

By Graham Potter | Saturday, May 2, 2009

Gold Coast Bracelet (3yo Fillies - Listed) - 1800m. Time: 1-49.75. Track: Good 3. Rail: True.
1 Marveen: 2 La Etoile; 3 Miss Darcey.

It is always a stirring sight when two Melbourne Cup winning jockeys go head to head in a finish on relatively evenly matched horse.

That was the case at the business end of the Gold Coast Bracelet (Listed). Michael Rodd made his bid aboard the Roger James trained La Etoile early in the home stretch and the Thorn Park filly powered her way to the lead. Matching that move, but coming from further back, Blake Shinn guiding the Robert Smerdon trained Marveen into contention. These two runners had the race to themselves over the final 150m and, after a spirited battle, it was Marveen who found that vital bit extra to ease away at the line.

WINNER FEEDBACK:
Trainer Robert Smerdon: “That’s her trademark. She just sort of puts herself in a spot and then she hits the line. Today was a bit of a test to see if she could stretch her distance out a bit (to 1800m) – 1600m being the furthest she’d been. She was racing like she’d get the extra. She’s always been strong to the line, but we were going into new territory, of course. Against that, she’s been carrying a lot of weight against three-year-old fillies in Melbourne and back to the level weights here probably served her well because she is not a big filly. She weighs about 412kg. That’s a small racehorse. Now we’ll just sort of push on and go to the 2000m at Doomben in two weeks. The indicators are there and if she holds up we’ll go to the Oaks.

“She’s going to the broodmare sale – and she will go through too. The people that own her, they race horses all the time. They have just said that she has become too valuable for their hobby way of doing things, you know. She warrants a high profile stallion which is expensive. She’s sort of raced her way past what they are in it for. They’ve still got the dam ... but, yeah, she will go through the sale.”

Jockey Blake Shinn: “We had a bad draw, but we were able to overcome that and get into a nice position behind the one that was hardest to beat, which was Michael Rodd (aboard La Etoile). The pace quickened from about the 500m and that enabled me to get out into clear running.

“She swopped onto her Melbourne leg at about the 300m and she really found the line good. I was always confident once I got her out she was going to win. She’s a promising horse heading to the Oaks where I’m sure she will be very competitive.”

With this result, Marveen completed a hat-trick of wins. The daughter of Orientate (USA) has now won six of her seventeen starts and she also has four runner-up finishes to her credit.