Another Legacy

A Daughters Legacy - has won the last two runnings of the Gr3 Final Fling Stakes

Very few horses get the chance to win the same Graded race twice in one season, but a slight reshuffling of the Western Cape programme allowed A Daughters Legacy to do exactly that when she captured her second successive .  The mare had won the equivalent race in 2010, when it was run in early August, and for a second year in succession she was sent off as the favourite to land the spoils in this WFA event for fillies and mares,  writes MATTHEW LIPS.

A Daughters Legacy headed the market at 18/10, with Tassie Belle supported from an ante-post call of 33/10 to start as the 5/2 second favourite ahead of 3/1 chance We Three.  There was very little between this trio on merit ratings, with A Daughters Legacy rated one pound above We Three and two pounds superior to Tassie Belle, but  neither of the other two ran up to expectations in a race whose very name implies it offers fillies and mares one last chance to earn some valuable black type before retiring to stud.

The early pace was reasonable but far from hectic, with recent Listed winner Cause To Believe showing the way ahead of Light The Moon, Secret Pleasure, and Scarlet Sky.  Tassie Belle was next in line as We Three raced further back and A Daughters Legacy was held up with only a couple of her nine opponents behind her.  Tassie Belle was taken to the far rail for her effort once straightened up, but found practically nothing and never threatened.  We Three began a move wider out, but that soon came to naught as well and Cause To Believe was still going strong up front coming to the final 200m.  A Daughters Legacy was now making smooth headway, though, navigating a clear passage between beaten rivals and running on well to lead well inside the last furlong under Grand van Niekerk, going on eventually to win by a comfortable length from Cause To Believe.

Mystery Dame ran on strongly late and finished less than half-a-length further behind Cause To Believe in third, with Scarlet Sky another 1.75 lengths adrift in fourth after having every chance.  We Three was beaten almost four lengths into seventh, with Tassie Belle finishing one from last, about 6.5 lengths off the winner.  We Three was having her first start back from KZN and might have been slightly ring rusty, but Tassie Belle had finished only half-a-length behind A Daughters Legacy on identical weight terms in a Listed race won by Ocean Of Time over 1600m in July and showed nothing like the same form here.   Former Gr 1 Cape Fillies Guineas Field Flower finished an ignominious last as a 66/1 outsider and she really has lost her way completely.

The race was run on good going, a phenomenon almost unheard of at Kenilworth in July, but A Daughters Legacy is more than “just” a winter specialist and also won the Gr 3 Victress Stakes on good ground last December.  With We Three and Tassie Belle both below par, A Daughters Legacy didn’t need to run anywhere near her best (at least in theory) to beat a runner-up rated 11 pounds her inferior.  Third placed Mystery Dame met the winner on 9 kgs worse terms than in a handicap and was beaten less than 1.5 lengths, but when all is said and done A Daughters Legacy did what she had to do and won comfortably enough.  Whether she will remain in training as a six-year-old in the new season remains to be seen, but she has been a real credit to her trainer Riaan van Reenen, who is also one of the mare’s co-owners.

A Daughters Legacy is by Windrush, who has now sired the winner of this race three years in succession after the 2009 victory by Sunsational.   She is the sixth foal, sixth winner, and first Stakes winner produced from Elliodor mare Mississippi Masala, who never raced but who is a daughter of Champion 2-y-o filly and Champion 3-y-o filly Breyani.  Bred by Lionel Cohen at Odessa Stud and a R90 000 purchase from the 2007 National Two Year Old Sale, A Daughters Legacy has won eight times from 30 starts and earned R658 960.