Grahame Begg continued his run of strong Summer form as three-year-old filly Reluctantlycharmed beat a handy benchmark 74 field over 1100m at Flemington.
Jumping a $7.50 chance, the Makybe Racing owned filly sliced through the field under Craig Williams to notch up her third win from five starts this campaign, getting the better of Actuality ($12) by a long neck with Manolo Bling ($4.20 favourite) a further ¾ of a length back in third.
"She's put up a good performance this filly today, coming off running at 1200 (metres) a month ago. She was probably ridden a little bit too close to the lead last start and 1200 stretched her out, but she travelled well and Craig did his homework going into the race, I'm very, very happy," Begg said.
While the daughter of Invader broke her maiden at Geelong on heavy ground, Begg believes firmer tracks are actually in her favour and will consider a stakes race at Caulfield in the coming weeks.
"Even though she's got a heavy track win at Geelong when she broke her maiden, the thoughts are that she doesn't really handle that ground. On the fast ground, she's brilliant," Begg said.
The Group 3 Peter Le Grand (formerly the Kevin Hayes Stakes) over 1100m at Caulfield on February 8th for three-year-old fillies could be the next start for Reluctantlycharmed.
"There's a little black-type race in about three weeks' time at Caulfield. Maybe we've got to consider that and have a little roll at that, so we'll work it out and see if she pulls up well," Begg said.
Craig Williams was having his first sit aboard Reluctantlycharmed and said she was a filly on the rise.
"She's a lovely filly. I think she's got a lot of scope and I had a nice product, a nice filly, the right race first time down the straight and she got the right run and she was quite effective for what I asked her to do," Williams said.
Williams is in the middle of a very busy weekend having ridden at the Magic Millions meeting on Friday night before jetting to Hong Kong for Sunday's meeting where he'll ride Magic Control (formerly Archo Nacho) in the Group 1 Centenary Sprint Cup (1200m), something he says is a privilege.
"I feel if you're in that position to be lucky enough to be having a schedule like this, then we should really embrace it and try and make the most of it… we want to go over and do it proud because we believe it's a really tough competitive environment here and that's the reason why we can go over internationally and do really well."
