Alabama Lass Outstanding in NZB Filly of the Year Series Opener

Exciting filly Alabama Lass (Alabama Express) has soared straight to the top of the table in the NZB Filly of the Year Series with a scintillating victory in Saturday’s $120,000 Group Three HBPB Thoroughbred Breeders Gold Trail Stakes (1200m) at Hastings.

The Gold Trail Stakes was the first of 11 races on the NZB Filly of the Year Series itinerary and was worth 6 points to the winner, with 3 for second and 1.5 for third. With her Hastings heroics on Saturday, Alabama Lass stamped herself as one of the biggest players in the 2024-25 edition of the prestigious series.

The Gold Trail Stakes was just the fourth career start for Alabama Lass, who won by nine lengths on debut in February and then ran second in the Group Two Matamata Breeders’ Stakes (1200m) in her only other two-year-old start.

Alabama Lass kicked off her three-year-old campaign with a runaway win in a three-year-old fillies race at Taupo last month. That same race had been won by three of the last four Gold Trail Stakes winners – Miss Aotearoa (NZ) (Per Incanto), Best Seller (NZ) (Wrote) and Quintessa (NZ) (Shamus Award). Alabama Lass added her name to that list in brilliant style on Saturday.

After settling in second behind the pace-making Pleasing (NZ) (Russian Revolution), Alabama Lass and jockey Sam Spratt pounced at the home turn and took command.

An explosive turn of foot carried Alabama Lass into a clear lead down the straight, and she had the race in safe keeping a long way from home despite strong finishes from the placegetters Captured By Love (Written Tycoon) and Damask Rose (NZ) (Savabeel).

“She’s really quick,” Spratt said. “She pinged out of the gates and they kicked up a little bit, but she’s nippy at both ends of the race.

“We cruised around the corner and kicked, and at the top of the straight I thought it was going to be a track gallop, but then I could hear them coming for me. I think she was almost waiting for them a little bit. She’s done it pretty easily. I think if they came up to us, she would have kicked again.

“The girl who looks after her said she gallops like that, goes past the stablemate and then waits for them. Hopefully she can get out of that habit, but it was good that she got there.”

Alabama Lass became the second Gold Trail Stakes winner for Matamata trainers Ken and Bev Kelso, who had previously won it with Bounding (Lonhro) in 2013.

“She was brilliant,” Ken Kelso said. “She got across easily from that outside gate and settled off the leader, and then she’s kicked away.

“She was shin sore going into the Matamata Breeders’ Stakes, so that may have been a factor there, but she’s got an abundance of speed and she’s a very exciting filly.

“She’s a very good eater and her temperament has really improved this year from last year, so she’s a little dream to train.”

The second leg of the NZB Filly of the Year Series is the $175,000 Group Two Jamieson Park Soliloquy Stakes (1400m), which will be run at Ellerslie on October 26.