The progeny of Widden Stud’s formidable sprinting sire Star Witness are showing quite an affinity for Caulfield as was further evidenced on Saturday. At the same track that Star Witness himself blazed around to win the Gr.1 Blue Diamond Stakes in 2010, three of his progeny landed victories on the ten race card on “the Heath”.
Firstly the Gai Waterhouse/Adrian Bott trained Our Crown Mistress helped set strong early sectionals which ran her rivals off their legs when taking out the opener for three year old fillies before Global Glamour and Fuhryk closed out the programme winning the Gr.2 Tristarc Stakes and Listed Alinghi Stakes respectively. Of course, Global Glamour was returning to the scene of her greatest triumph having won last year’s Thousand Guineas and this was also a second Stakes win at Caulfield for Fuhryk who took the Gr.3 Kevin Hayes Stakes in February.
Aside from Saturday’s trio other notable performances around the Caulfield circuit include Crown Witness’ success in the Gr.3 Quezette Stakes in August and, bucking the sprinting trend, Lycurgus’ win in the Listed Galilee Series Final over 2400 metres.
But for sheer sprinting power one can’t look past the dominant victory of the now Vinery Stud based Star Turn in last year’s renewal of the Schillaci Stakes when he put a handy field of weight-for-age sprinters to the sword winning by over two lengths when sitting on the pace.
