Mazu goes back to back in the 2025 Hall Mark Stakes

Returning to the winner’s circle for the first time in 12 months, Mazu stamped his class with a brilliant performance in Saturday’s Group 3 Hall Mark Stakes at Randwick.

The sprinter, trained by Joe Pride, was reunited with Jamie Melham, who rode him to victory in the same race last year. Sitting just off the pace, Mazu ($4.40) waited for the gap to appear and then dashed through to defeat Coal Crusher ($9.50) by 1.5 lengths, with Givemethebeatboys ($19) close behind in third.

Pride confirmed that another tilt at the Doomben 10,000 in Queensland was now on the agenda for Mazu.

“Jamie seems to have a real affinity with this horse and we’ll see if we can get her on for something maybe up in Queensland,” he said.

“Mazu is a weight-for-age winner, he’s a Doomben 10,000 winner.

“The sprinters probably aren’t at that elite level this year so we’ll probably freshen him up and give him a couple of targets there in Brisbane.”

The structure of the race ended up favouring Mazu, who took advantage of a solid pace and some traffic issues affecting his stablemates.

“It was a funny run race in the end,” Pride said.

“He was coming up underneath them and Ostraka didn’t seem to want to cross and that kept Coal Crusher in an awkward position.

“Coal Crusher ran bravely as well, it was a good run, and Dragonstone probably had things against him coming from back in the field.”

Melham, who also partnered Bois D’Argent to win the JRA Plate earlier in the day, praised Mazu’s mindset and turn of foot.

“I love this horse,” Melham said.

“He’s a horse you can’t tell what to do, you’ve got to ask him.

“It’s up to him. If he brings his best, he brings his best and he’s normally too good for them and today he decided to.

“It probably looked messy the first half of the race but I love when you can finally get a sit on him and only expose him for that 200m, because if you expose him for the whole straight sometimes his brain overthinks things. But it worked out perfectly today.”