A troubled spring which ended when she bled when unplaced in the Group I VRC Champions Mile looked to have brought to a close the spectacular racing career of Pride of Jenni, but the seven year-old mare put all of that behind her when resuming from a spell to win the $500,000 Group II MRC Peter Young Stakes (1800m) at Caulfield on Saturday.
Pride of Jenni and Craig Newitt salute - image Grant Courtney
The connections of Pride of Jenni announced her retirement last spring, but have since had a rethink and she was returned to work with Ciaron Maher earlier this year.
The daughter of Pride of Dubai made good progress through her preparation and the decision was taken to go back to the races with Craig Newitt given the task of steering the reigning Australian Horse of the Year.
It was the Pride of Jenni of old as she quickly took charge of the race and kept up a good gallop all the way to win by nearly three lengths over the race favourite Zardozi.
"Very thankful for Tony and Lynn for giving us that opportunity. Big effort for the team too, Sammy does all the riding, and we have a very good group of staff down there at Cranbourne and with the facility there, we're able to get her ready off one jump out,” said stable representative Jack Turnbull.
"We've got a lot of information on her, a lot of workouts and the like to compare and we'd just done certain workouts that were pretty tough in our standards and she just bounced through them and Ciaron was there a few times and scratched his head and thought, hang on, we're a bit more forward than we think we are."
"We just kept putting the pressure on and she just kept stepping up; even throughout this week, she had a good bit of work on the Saturday, and again on the Tuesday. She is just a freak of nature, she's a credit to herself."
Pride of Jenni is back in business - image Grant Courtney
Pride of Jenni has the overall record of nine wins and 12 placings from 36 starts with prizemoney of $10.3million and the Group I VRC Australian Cup looks a possible target race.
"Given the way she's run there and won, the Australian Cup would have to be looked at for sure, but then up in Sydney you've got races like Queen Of The Turf if you come back in trip slightly and then the Queen Elizabeth would be her ultimate grand final but for the moment we'll just savour this win, it's a great effort and thankfully we have her back," Turnbull added.
Craig Newitt gave Pride of Jenni the perfect ride.
"I think the biggest thing today was the small field. It wasn't really going to generate a lot of tempo, so from barrier three, just held my line the first couple of furlongs until I got up the hill because I knew if I got the first sort of eight or nine hundred metres right, her ability to take care of the rest, whether she fatigued or not late, she was always still going to take a power of beating,” he said.
A $100,000 Inglis Classic purchase from the Segenhoe Stud draft for Tony and Lynn Ottobre’s Cape Schanck Stud, Pride of Jenni was bred by Trelawney Stud and is the first foal of winning O’Reilly mare Sancerre, a daughter of Group I Queensland Oaks winner Vouvray.
Trelawney Stud sadly lost a foal from Sancerre by Hello Youmzain (Fr) last spring and she was then covered again by the Cambridge Stud shuttler.
After a few years in the commercial wilderness, Pride of Jenni’s sire Pride of Dubai has found himself back in favour and covered 162 mares at Coolmore last spring at a fee of $22,000.
