The VRC staged three consecutive Group Two races at Flemington on Saturday and each of them fell to a Darley-sired runner, highlighted by the triumph of Shocking in the G2 Makybe Diva Stakes
The 2009 Melbourne Cup winner demonstrated not only his love of his home track – where he is unbeaten in four runs – but also his versatility. One of eleven Group or Grade One winners for international super sire Street Cry (pictured), Shocking landed Australia’s most famous race over 3200m but reverted to half that distance on Saturday, charging down the straight in determined fashion to win his third Group race, named in honour of the three-time Melbourne Cup-winning mare.
A son of the Danehill mare Maria di Castiglia, Shocking was bred in Australia by Mrs F Fraser.
Two races earlier, four-year-old Shamardal mare No Evidence Needed scored her first win at Group level when sticking her neck out to win the G2 Let’s Elope Stakes. Runner-up to Canny Lad’s daughter Small Minds in the G1 Australasian Oaks last season, No Evidence Needed is out of the Generous mare Generosa and was bred by a partnership which includes legendary trainer Bart Cummings along with Mr B Halcombe, Mr T Kostos, Mr M Alexeeff and Mr L Smith and Dato Tan Chin Nam.
Though Bart Cummings is not the trainer of No Evidence Needed, his stable does contain another high-class daughter of Shamardal, the VRC Oaks winner, Faint Perfume, who has the Melbourne Cup among her Spring Carnival targets.
The following race, the G2 Danehill Stakes, was won appropriately by a grandson of the late great sire for whom the race was named when Commands gelding Soul took the honours. The three-year-old was runner-up to subsequent Group One winner Toorak Toff in the Listed Vain Stakes on 14 August and was bred by Woodlands Stud from Marvilha, by Night Shift.
At Randwick, Divorces (Domesday) and Parables (Lonhro) each finished in the money and earned more black type when running second and third in the G2 Sharp Furious Stakes.
