Grinzinger Belle (NZ) Breaks $800,000 Barrier in Sunline Stakes

 Bought for only $32,000 from Book 2 of Karaka 2022, quality mare Grinzinger Belle (NZ) (Shamexpress) is now a four-time stakes winner with more than $800,000 to her name.

Saturday’s A$300,000 Group Two Packaging Needs Sunline Stakes (1600m) at Moonee Valley was the fifth win of a 17-race career for Grinzinger Belle, who has banked A$807,655. She was offered by her breeders Windsor Park Stud at Karaka 2022, where she was bought by managing owner John Wheeler.

Previously the winner of the Group Two Let’s Elope Stakes (1400m), Group Three The Vanity (1400m) and Group Three Ladies’ Day Vase (1600m), Grinzinger Belle added Saturday’s Sunline with a typically power-packed front-running performance.

The four-year-old was ridden by Declan Bates and dominated the race from the front, opening up a commanding margin of two and three-quarter lengths over the runner-up Wrote To Arataki (NZ) (Wrote). The third placegetter finished another four lengths away.

“She’s a lovely mare,” Bates said. “She’s a big mare to ride and she has that asset of a high cruising speed, and it’s a matter of letting her use that in the right way. She was just better than them today.

“She probably didn’t begin the best today, but it was a matter of getting her up to that high stride that she has. Once we were there, it was about keeping her comfortable, bringing her back a little bit but not too much. I always felt she was going well enough.

“I had to keep her up to her work in the straight. She was getting a bit lonely more than anything. I don’t think she was tying up tired, she thought her job was done, so I had to remind her there was a couple of hundred metres to go. It was a good, satisfying win.”

Trainer Danny O’Brien will now consider taking Grinzinger Belle to Sydney to contest next month’s Group One Queen of the Turf Stakes (1600m).

“We could potentially give her that chance in Sydney,” he said. “She’s a mare that, when conditions suit, she gets rolling and she can be hard to get on the back of, let alone get past.”