EF DEC 16 - MATERA DOES IT EASY

By Matthew Grimson and Graham Potter | Thursday, December 17, 2009

Eagle Farm, December 16, 2009.
Track - Good 3. Rail - out 3m.
Fillies & Mares Maiden Handicap - 1400m. Time: 1-25.25.
1 Matera; 2 Miss Madi; 3 Golden Dove.

The Brian Smith trained Matera started at restrictive odds here and she duly got the job done with the minimum of fuss.

Settled in fifth place early, racing on the outside of the second favourite Golden Dove, Matera held her position, hard held right up on the heels of the leaders, until the turn.

On straightening, both Matera and Golden Dove looked to switch out and Ric McMahon dictated that move on Matera, getting into daylight first and thus getting first run on her rival.

Not that that mattered much because that particular two-way contest was settled right at the top of the straight where McMahon, who had still not moved on his mount, started to push Matera forward towards the lead. Golden Dove failed to respond at the same time and was momentarily left flat-footed with jockey Scott Seamer having to bring the persuader into play to get his message across.

By the time Golden Dove changed gears, Matera was off and gone, steadily chasing down the leader Miss Madi. Matera’s measured run carried her to the front with 150m left to run and she went to the line untroubled to win by 1.80 lengths from Miss Madi, who just held on to second ahead of the faster finishing Golden Dove, who only found her feet late.

WINNER FEEDBACK:
Jockey Ric McMahon: “She jumped out. She’s a pretty tractable sort of filly. She jumps good and she travels well during the run. It makes it easy. She just travelled up to them coming around the turn. It was only a matter of getting a clear run and I was going pretty well, you know, so it was pretty good. She won well. She ran away from them.

“She was a little bit unlucky last time (when second to the smart Hallmark Star*). She just got held up at a vital stage … probably at about the 300, I got held up for about 50m … and instead of sort of rolling into the race I had to sort of come back and then go around them and she just lost a little bit of momentum. Without that she probably would have gone close to beating the winner.”

*Hallmark Star franked that form by winning for a second, successive time, in sparkling fashion, later on at this meeting.

PRICE FLUCTUATIONS:
Winner (Matera): 1.60 out to 1.70.
The winner was the favourite.

STEWARDS REPORT EXTRACT:
Matalan (N. Evans) and Myperion (M. Speers) were a little slow to begin. When the pace slowed at the 1200m, Miss Madi (L. Rolls) got its head up and raced ungenerously at the heels of Lady Hagan (J. Holder). As a result of the slow pace, Miss Madi shifted away from the rails.

Approaching the 800m, Lady Hagan, which was inclined to pull hard when the pace was slow, shifted out from behind Galimist (A. Butler) and forced Miss Madi three wide.