Flemington debut for Yeronga Songbird

A close relation to one of Hong Kong’s great milers will make her debut at Flemington this Saturday.

Yeronga Songbird, a half-sister to Beauty Generation, will contest the $150,000 Next Generation Sprinters Series Final that kicks off the Finals Day card.

The two-year-old is not only from a mare who has already thrown a champion, but by Australia’s premier sire in I Am Invincible, making her one of the week’s spotlight runners.

The Rosemont Stud-owned filly is in the care of Peter Moody, who is holidaying in England, leaving his assistant and soon-to-be training partner Katherine Coleman to oversee the debut and Coleman is excited to see what she can do.

“She’s a lovely filly, she’s always shown a fair bit of natural ability, but we’ve just had to be a little bit patient until she was physically mature enough (to race),” Coleman said.

“She’s trialled up really nicely and her work this week has been quite sharp. Flemington looks a nice little debut option for her.”

Yeronga Songbird, who shares her name with a star pacing filly of the mid-1990s, was the eighth foal from Stylish Bel, a daughter of Bel Esprit, and will become her fourth to race.

Stylish Bel started her breeding career in New Zealand, where she remained until November 2018 when Rosemont Stud purchased her off Donna Logan and Peter Woods.

Beauty Generation was Stylish Bel’s third foal, but first to race, and the Road To Rock gelding started life in Australia as Montaigne, winning twice and finishing second in a Group 1 Rosehill Guineas (2000m) and fourth in a Group 1 Tancred Stakes (2400m) before being sold to Hong Kong.

There he was rebadged Beauty Generation and had 34 starts for 18 wins, eight of them at Group 1 level, including a 10-race winning streak that featured an unbeaten 2018/19 season.

Stylish Bel’s third foal Steel Cutter, also by Road To Rock, is a five-time winner in Malaysia and Singapore, while the only other to race is Drops Of Jupiter, a son of Echoes Of Heaven, who is a 10-start maiden in New Zealand.

Rosemont offered Yeronga Songbird for sale last year at Inglis Easter, but brought her home after she failed to reach her $400,000 reserve, meaning Billy Egan will this weekend wear the red and white gatecrasher colours.

Yeronga Songbird’s preparations for her debut have included four Pakenham jumpouts, two last November and two in June, the most recent resulting in a strong 1-1/2-length win over 800m on a Heavy 8 surface.

Yeronga Songbird was scratched from a 1000m maiden at Bendigo on Thursday due to a Heavy track with the extra 200m of the Flemington race also of appeal to the Moody camp.

“She might stretch out over a little bit of ground later on but, at this stage, she’s going to be more of a short-course horse early on in her career,” Coleman said.

“She’s probably got some more physical maturity to come, so whether she just has the one run for experience and goes out and has a bit of a break and we bring her back for the spring we’ll see, but we’ll just take it run by run.”

Yeronga Songbird is one of two siblings to a multiple Group 1 winner engaged in the Next Generation Sprinters Series Final with Streets Of Avalon’s brother Eugenius to run.

Like the Futurity Stakes and C F Orr Stakes winner, the son of Magnus and Kamuniak is trained by Shane Nichols at Mornington.