It is a small miracle that Bellatrix Star is back racing in the first place. Anything beyond that is going to be a bonus.
The Mark Walker trained mare has not raced for a year to the day … she was last in action on November 29, 2024 … but she is now set to take her place in the Listed Doveton Stakes at Caulfield on Saturday.
It was in January when Bellatrix suffered a potentially career threatening injury when she reared up when walking back to her stable, fell over, and fractured vertebrae in her neck. In that instant it seemed that her career had also come crashing down with her. If nothing else, it had certainly been brought to an abrupt halt.
And what a career it had been up until then.
In a hot run of form prior in her four starts prior to that last run … from September 24 until November 2 … Bellatrix Star claimed a hat-trick of wins, taking out all of the Listed Cap D’Antibes, the Group 3 Champagne Stakes and the Group 2 Schillaci Stakes … before gaining a fine, very notable Group 1 runner-up finish behind Switzerland in the Coolmore Stud Stakes.
She then finished unplaced in that November 29 run in the VCR Classic as she came to the end of her preparation.
Sitting on a career record of five wins from eleven starts and prize-money earnings of just shy of $1 million, in an instant, Bellatrix Star’s future had gone from being very bright to being, at best, very much in doubt.
In time, X-Rays taken have shown that the injury has healed … much to the surprise of the Te Akau team, who were then able to plot and plan a return route to the track for the four-year-old daughter of Star Witness.
But they are not getting ahead of themselves.
“We’ve been pretty level-headed the whole way through about where we are going to get to so, provided she has a smooth week at home, this weekend is exciting, although we’re just trying to keep a lid on it at the moment,” Te Akau Racing’s assistant trainer Ben Gleeson told Racing.com.
“We’ve still got no idea whether she is going to come back the same horse, but she ran through the line last Thursday in her trial and that gave us enough inclination that she’s got plenty of zest for racing.”
Bellatrix Star will jump from the number one barrier with Mark Zahre in the saddle. Both of those are plus factors … the 60kg she has been set to carry, not so much. The mare will be giving away a weight advantage of between 2kg and 6kg to all but one of her rivals.
But the biggest positive of all is that Bellatrix Star is back with her connections maintaining a very down-to-earth, realistic approach in terms of any expectations as indicated by Fortuna principal John Galvin’s words when speaking to Racing.com.
“We’ll have to wait and see what we get, but she’s fit and talented, and it’s a dream come true to see her return to racing.”
