Saga Miss has confirmed her rating as one of the most improved mares in Queensland with an authoritative win in open company at the Gold Coast.
Before Wednesday, Saga Miss had won a maiden and a restricted race over 1800 metres.
The training team of Peter and Will Hulbert looked for another 1800m race and when the next option was an open company event they decided to test the mare.
Saga Miss ($4.60) repaid them by beating the experienced open company performer Double Impact ($6) by 3 1/4 lengths.
Will Hulbert said Saga Miss had been a handful as a younger horse and took a lot of hard work.
“She has been a real work in progress but she really has come ahead in leaps and bounds in recent months,” Hulbert said.
“She’s got home in 33.84 seconds which is very good and we will probably go to town now and look for a 2000 metre race.”
Winning jockey Nathan Day also has a high opinion of Saga Miss who he described as being hard to handle earlier in her career.
“She needs the barrier blanket but when she jumped with them today I knew she would be hard to beat,” Day said.
Caloundra mare Invincible Express ($1.26) is also headed for Saturday city racing after continuing her sire I Am Invincible’s great run of winners in the Class 3 (900m).
Trainer David Vandyke was in Melbourne with Cox Plate hopeful Yankee Rose, but his racing manager Alan Thomas said Invincible Express would now tackle a 1000m race at Eagle Farm on Saturday week.
“She wasn’t the best away today but she rounded them up on the turn and went within 2/10th of a second of a 20 years old class record,” Thomas said.
Yarraman Park stallion I Am Invincible has had more than a dozen winners in the past week and Thomas is confident Invincible Express will give him another city winner.
