It has been a heady week for connections of the Ciaron Maher-trained Vivy Air, who has backed up a game second to stablemate Gringotts in the Big Dance with a thrilling win in the $2 million Five Diamonds.
Collecting $600,000 for her second placing at Randwick on Tuesday, Vivy Air thrived on the quick turnaround to dive along the fence and capture Saturday’s 1800m Rosehill showpiece.
The first prizemoney pool of $1.155 million took her earnings for the week to more than $1.7 million in a remarkable training feat.
“It’s a great result, a great prizemoney race and backing up from Tuesday into today, it’s not easy to do. She is very tough,” Maher’s assistant trainer Jo Gerard-Dubord said.
“She has been finding it hard to win every now and then but two starts ago she got her head in front and that gave her some confidence.
“She was very good on Tuesday and stepping up to 1800 we thought would suit her.
“It has been a good week.”
Vivy Air ($5.50) was kept fresh for Saturday with a trip to the beach and a quiet week and was aided by a dashing ride from Reece Jones.
Settling at the back of the field, Jones saved valuable ground along the fence and the mare darted through to snatch victory by a long head over Transatlantic ($3.80 fav), who never shirked his task, with Militarize ($4) close up another half-head away.
Jones praised the training performance by Maher’s team before admitting he thought he was a forlorn chance earlier in the race when she got out of her ground and wasn’t travelling kindly.
“When I was so far back early, she wasn’t travelling all that well for me,” Jones said.
“I was a little bit worried. I was thinking she might not have backed up, then it made me look silly.”
The William Haggas-trained Bullet Point was well in the market at $6 but never raised the hopes of his supporters, beating one runner home, his jockey Cieren Fallon saying his race was over after he missed the start and was pocketed.
“They went very slow. There was nothing we could do,” Fallon said.
“We were in a pocket so we had to take a sit. He got done for a turn of foot.”
