The postponement of the races that made up this year’s Doomben Cup meeting threw campaigns of many into disarray at the time, but Kelly Schweida is hoping it can provide some end-of-carnival joy for connections of Miss Hipstar.
The daughter of Star Turn will contest the $125,000 Darby McCarthy (1110m) this Saturday at Doomben.
The set-weights-and-penalties event for three-year-olds was initially a support race on the May 21 Doomben Cup card, which was lost due to weather, but rescheduled for this weekend along with the Group 3 Pam O’Neill Stakes and the Listed Chief De Beers Stakes.
It gives Miss Hipstar one more shot at a healthy payday before the end of a three-year-old season that has not produced a win in nine starts but has generated a Group 3 placing in the Vo Rogue Plate and a couple of Listed placings.
Saturday will mark two days short of exactly one year since the last of her four wins, in a two-year-old handicap at the Sunshine Coast.
Miss Hipstar heads into Saturday’s race off a second placing at Ipswich, when she was slowly away from barrier two and held up rounding the home turn before flashing home to be narrowly beaten by Princess Bojack, who carried 4.5kg less.
“She ran good the other day, she was just a bit slow away and just got held up,” Schweida said.
“The winner had 52 kilos, that makes a fair bit of difference on those sort of (wet) tracks, but I thought she ran well. She’s done well since.”
Miss Hipstar was one of 15 nominations for the Darby McCarthy with last year’s Danehill Stakes winner Kallos, former top Queensland two-year-old Alpine Edge and rising star Uncommon James among her potential rivals.
