Scarlett Lady On Gr 1 Trail

Brisbane-bound filly Scarlett Lady added another string to her bow when she mastered a rain-affected track to post a clear-cut victory at Tauranga. The exciting daughter of Savabeel emphasised her ample class by distancing her three-year-old rivals over 1600 metres.

“She’s got a great turn of foot and has the makings of a very, very good staying filly and most definitely up to the best,” said Debbie Rogerson who trains the filly with her husband Graeme. “She’ll most probably go for the Queensland Oaks.”

An impressive winner at her previous start at Ellerslie, Scarlett Lady has yet to finish out of the money in six appearances and was also placed behind NZ Filly of the Year King’s Rose in the Gr 2 Royal Stakes on New Year’s Day. “She got galloped on in that race and had a few issues, but she’s come back very well,” Rogerson said.

Scarlett Lady loped along at the back of the field under James McDonald who plotted a wide course into the straight and they coasted clear to win by a widening two and a-half lengths. “She was always travelling well and was much too good,” he said. “A better track will suit her and she’ll be awesome over more ground.”

Purchased out of WS’s Premier Sale draft at Karaka for $25,000 in 2009, she is out of the stakes-winning mare On Call from the family of the Gr 3 Lowland Stakes winner Gentle Call and her siblings Tough Call and Call Spades who each posted wins in the Listed Cambridge Breeders’ Stakes.

Scarlett Lady is raced by Max Whitby, who enjoyed a share in Savabeel, and he completed a winning double at Tauranga with a son of the Zabeel stallion. The four-year-old Whitby circled the field across the top and quickly put paid to his Rating 70 rivals by a wide margin in the straight.

“I was under a bit of pressure to keep the team firing,” trainer Stephen Autridge said. A half-brother to the talented Victorian stayer Macedonian, Whitby is out of the Carnegie mare Society Walk who is a half-sister to the Gr 1 Railway Handicap winner Coogee Walk.