THE Coffey club was back in the winners’ circle at the weekend, with jockey Harry and trainer uncle Shane Fliedner combining with first-start winner Cute As, making it two from two to launch a potentially exciting career.
After its first-up success at Seymour on April 27, Fliedner decided to really crank things up for his three-year-old filly by targeting a $150,000 handicap over 1100m at Caulfield on Saturday.
And she is now just a few dollars shy of $100,000 in prizemoney in a career covering just two starts and a few months.
Fliedner said he leased Cute As from a stud run by one of his good clients and while she was probably a little bit small to go to the sales, “she is well related” (a half-sister to Prince Ziggy – the nine-year-old gelding who has 12 career wins and more than $560,000 in prizemoney – via her dam Miss Cutie).
“She’s a tough little filly, there’s not much of her but everything I have done with her is good and she trials well, races well and does everything right,” Fliedner said.
“She did hurt herself about six weeks ago, when I wanted to give her 10 days in the paddock.
“She tried to jump the fence but she wasn’t high enough, but we fixed that and she had a couple of soft trials and we couldn’t hold her slow enough against a horse that has been a listed placegetter.
“So I was pretty keen today. It’s hard to tell owners you are keen when they put up 30/1, but she just keeps on doing what we want.
“Harry has done a lot of work with her over the time she’s been in the stables, although this time he didn’t do the trial as he had other commitments with the bigger stables, but he rode her exactly how we wanted, and I said to him once you give her a little tap with the whip, she will let down beautifully.”
In a flawless run, Cute As was glued to the back of leader Tycoon Jenny, until the 200m when Coffey eased her into the clear and with some encouragement the relatively raw filly simply found another gear.
Although the price wasn’t there to indicate the run, Coffey said the horse had “trialled up pretty well, although it is sometimes hard to get a good guide in country trials when they just jump and run and there’s not a lot of pressure”.
“(Trials) can make them look a lot better than they are, but she has been able to translate that to both her starts now and she won her debut at Seymour,” Coffey said.
“Whether it was a strong maiden or not, it really was a tough effort (on a soft 6) and Liam (Riordan) rode her on that day and did a great job as she can be pretty temperamental.
“And she obviously went to the races and had a really good experience and he wasn’t riding her today (because of weight issues) so I got back on her and we got the job done.
“Shane’s done good things with her because she is a little bit flighty, and a little bit difficult to get on in the yard.
“We all love to win, but a really good barrier and an ideal run has really helped her today – she’s just not ready yet for tough situations, so for her to sit behind the leader, in a low-pressure situation, get a beautiful run and come off their heels as late as possible meant she was able to show a little turn of foot that got her into a winning position and she didn’t have much to fight off.”
