Ma Chiquita back at Matamata

Press, 12 July 1985, Page 27

Ma Chiquita back at Matamata

PA Auckland Ma Chiquita, the brilliant two-year-old filly which finished an unlucky sixth in the sAust6oo,ooo Golden Slipper Stakes at Rosehill, Sydney, in March, is back in New Zealand. Unbeaten in her three starts in New Zealand before her quest for the richest juvenile prize in the Southern Hemisphere, she has rejoined Dave and Paul O’Sullivan’s stable at Matamata.

Dave O’Sullivan says she is forward enough to be a contender for the Gold Trail Stakes, the first event in the 1985-86 Wrightson “Filly of the Year” series, at Hastings in mid-September. The highlight of Ma Chiquita’s previous campaign was a length-and-a-quarter win in the $60,000 Matamata Breeders’ Stakes (1200 m New Zealand’s richest race for two-year-old fillies.

After that she had three starts in Sydney for one win and was considered the unluckiest runner in the Golden Slipper, having to overcome a wide draw. The amount of

ground she covered was probably four times as great as the margin of her defeat by Rory’s Jester — barely two lengths. Australian owned, Ma Chiquita joined Neville Begg’s team in Sydney after the Golden Slipper on March 30, but she suffered a setback and did no racing from the Begg stable. For several weeks she spelled at a Victorian stud managed by one of her owners, the former New Zealander, Mr Stu Munro. Dave O’Sullivan was delighted with her condition on her return to' his stable. “She had been given a fair amount of light work and came back nice and forward without being too forward,” he said. The top three-year-old filly, Eastern Joy, also has rejoined the O’Sullivan stable. She was rested at Mapperley Stud, Matamata, after her impressive sequence last autumn — first in the Trumps Eulogy Stakes at Awapuni, first in the Castlemaine XXXX

Easter Stakes at Ellerslie, fourth in the Television N.Z. Stakes at Ellerslie and first in the D.B. Draught Championship Stakes at Avondale. “The spell did Eastern Joy a world of good,” O’Sullivan said. “She looks brilliant and could be racing again early in September.”