The daughter of Home Affairs began her racing career in perfect fashion, thoroughly outclassing her rivals in the $240,000 Group 3 Maribyrnong Plate (1000m).
Archibald found it a significant relief to see the filly perform so exceptionally well on her debut, particularly after recently concluding the sale of her remaining shares. The horse was a $700,000 acquisition at the Magic Millions sale on the Gold Coast.
“I’m just so happy, it’s such a great ownership group (including) Peter Walsh, Damian Degenhardt.
“I rang him a few weeks ago and said, ‘I’ve got this filly I need to finish selling and I think she’s pretty good’, so I could have had egg on my face but it’s just a great fun group and she’s just very, very talented.”
Amelia’s Affair proudly represents the colours of Peter Walsh’s Amelia Park, the location where she was bred.
She demonstrated a stunning turn of foot when jockey Damian Lane called upon her at the 300-metre mark of the Maribyrnong Plate, swiftly extending her advantage to make the result a formality.
At the finish, the $8 chance held a commanding 2-3/4 length lead over Royal Press ($4.20), with La La Lilly ($7) finishing a further 1-3/4 lengths adrift in third.
“When I let her down, I knew that she would put the race to bed because she just quickened really nicely,” Lane remarked.
Archibald’s next step is to formulate a program for Amelia’s Affair, with a return to the Gold Coast for the $3 million Magic Millions 2YO Classic (1200m) and the $5 million Group 1 Golden Slipper being key objectives.
“It’s either Magic Millions or you put her away for the autumn,” she commented.
“There’s obviously a lot of big two-year-old races, one big two-year-old race in March that we’d love to win as well, but we’ll just see how she comes through this.
“She only travelled down two days ago, so she’ll go straight back home and we’ll assess her from there.”
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