Fresh of her dominant debut win at Ballarat, Skybird made it two from two at Bendigo on Sunday October 8 in similar fashion, showing a blistering turn of foot to win by 2.5lenghts.
Skybird captured the attention of the racing media, running slick time on debut off a slow speed but her Bendigo performance, stepping up in grade and against the older horses arguably was more impressive.
Dealt a poor barrier once again, jockey Beau Mertens let the daughter of Exosphere find her rhythm at the back of the field and allowed her to travelled sweetly. Approaching the turn, still spotting the leaders approx. 8 lengths, the in-form hoop was able to navigate a path through the field and fly clear to victory. Mertens said post-race “Once I straightened her up and got balanced, she was still a good way off them and she had to do a good bit of chasing and to her credit she picked up through her gears really well.” It was going to take an enormous effort from the lightly raced filly to catch the leaders and not only did she catch them, she put them away with class.
Mitch Freedman was very pleased with the efforts of Skybird and proclaimed with a smile “We have a very nice filly on our hands.” The Freedman stable has had a great start to the season, striking at 20% with a lot of nice young horses that are now progressing through the grades. “It’s a great time of year for the stable to be going well and we are really pleased with how our younger, lightly raced horses, like Skybird are progressing.”
Congratulations to the ownership group of Skybird and with the Spring on our doorstep, we will likely see her again on Cox Plate Day.
