El Vencedor shook free of that rival before the home turn and appeared to have the race at his mercy in the straight, but Mary Shan had other ideas. Grylls moved her through her gears and unleashed her down the outside, suddenly eating into El Vencedor\u2019s margin with giant strides. <\/p>\n
Mary Shan drew up alongside El Vencedor in the final 50m and collared him in the shadows of the post, snatching victory by a head. There was another short neck back to third-placed Nereus. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great for this mare to get a black-type win,\u201d Grylls said. \u201cShe\u2019s been knocking on the door so many times, so it\u2019s thoroughly deserved. Well done to Andrew and all the connections. <\/p>\n
\u201cI rode her quite a bit earlier on in her career, but hadn\u2019t sat on her for a while until today. The race panned out perfectly and we settled exactly where I wanted to be. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was good speed coming down the side of the track and they stretched us out a bit, but she was always travelling well. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty confident from about 200m out and I really felt like we were going to catch El Vencedor. She balanced up and just built up all the momentum and then hit the line very strongly.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mary Shan has now had 22 starts for five wins, six placings and $482,290 in stakes for owners Jackie Rogers and Gerald Shand. The Almanzor mare has won three of her four starts so far in her five-year-old season, with the only defeat coming in the Group 3 Taranaki Breeders\u2019 Stakes (1400m) on a Heavy 9 track. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat very heavy track has been her only blip in this preparation,\u201d Forsman\u2019s racing manager Joe Walker said. \u201cShe\u2019s going super. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a very good one to beat today, catching El Vencedor is a tough task on a track that he loves, but she was brilliant. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought she was going well at home leading into this, her work had been super, and in the end it all worked out beautifully. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s won really well today and we\u2019ll get her home now and assess where we go from here. But the Rich Hill Mile (Group 2, 1600m) on New Year\u2019s Day is the one race we\u2019d pencilled in beyond this.\u201d <\/p>\n
Forsman Racing paid $180,000 to buy Mary Shan from the Prima Park draft in Book 1 of Karaka 2022. Wentwood Grange will offer a full-brother to Mary Shan at Karaka 2026, catalogued as Lot 114 during the Book 1 session.<\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"El Vencedor shook free of that rival before the home turn and appeared to have the race at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[22124,36671,1975,18459,58519,6636,8615,83585,8500,5346,36924,22397,16773,305,50242,14568,51584,78,60629,7052,3302,111,139,7977,69,105580,31906,105579,213,2960,3502,15487,63700,1316,6730,379,80],"class_list":["post-160381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-22124","tag-always","tag-at","tag-beats","tag-blacktype","tag-challenge","tag-come","tag-el","tag-ellerslie","tag-expected","tag-expense","tag-favourite","tag-great","tag-have","tag-highly","tag-horse","tag-hot","tag-in","tag-mare","tag-mary","tag-matter","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northern","tag-nz","tag-reigning","tag-seemed","tag-shan","tag-sports","tag-stakes","tag-success","tag-talented","tag-vencedor","tag-when","tag-would","tag-year","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}