As a Golden Slipper winner, Fireburn has already achieved more than most horses.
As an eight-time Group 1-winning trainer, Gary Portelli is even more accomplished.
But there would be few more satisfying achievements for the Warwick Farm horseman than winning Saturday’s Queensland Oaks (2200m) with his 2022 Golden Slipper winner.
Not only have few Slipper-winning fillies gone on to triumph in a classic race, Miss Finland and Bounding Away being the modern-day exceptions, but many have struggled at stakes level as older horses, some never winning another race.
Indeed, Fireburn didn’t place in three spring runs and while competitive during the Sydney autumn, she couldn’t break her duck.
But a luckless fourth in the ATC Australian Oaks convinced Portelli that he had daughter of Rebel Dane and So You Think mare Mull Over on track, and her last-start victory in The Roses (2000m) – her first since the Golden Slipper – was vindication he was right to persist.
“To win the Golden Slipper is a great achievement, but then there’s that pressure that comes with it after they win,” Portelli said.
“So many horses fail and there is a stigma that goes with it of trainers’ ruining horses.
“It was a situation where you’re stepping a horse out to 2000-metres and some people would have thought, ‘what the hell are you doing? You’ve got a Golden Slipper winner stepping out to 2000?’.
“But she has shown now that that is going to be her forte.
“It wasn’t me training her to do that, it was her telling me I needed to do that. We just read the play.”
Fireburn is a clear cut $3 favourite for Saturday’s Queensland Oaks despite drawing barrier 16, with Renaissance Woman ($4.20) and Affaire A Suivre ($7) the only other runners regarded as genuine threats.
Portelli brought Fireburn home to Sydney between runs where she continued to thrive, and given The Roses was her first start in six weeks, he expected her to strip significantly fitter.
With even luck in the run, Portelli can’t see Fireburn being beaten.
“She has trained on beautifully for the race,” he said.
“Now that I’ve got her home and seen her at home, I’m not concerned about her at all. She is one hundred per cent ready to back up and have a crack.
“Unless something comes out of the pack that has improved from that run itself, how can they beat her?
“I don’t think they can.”
