Winner of the Group III VRC The Vanity last season, Wollombi has been consistent without winning since then and was snapped up by Yulong for $500,000 at the recent Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale and delivered an immediate result for them when scoring a miraculous win in the Listed $160,000 Gai Waterhouse Classic (1200m) at Ipswich on Saturday.
Transferred from Peter and Paul Snowden to Tony Gollan after the sale, the four year-old Extreme Choice mare was given a trial at Deagon on June 11 to prepare for her return having not raced since last December.
Fresh and primed to fire, Wollombi showed her class when charging home from near last for Vald Duric with a well timed run that saw her reel in her rivals and win by a neck running away.
“I thought she mapped really well today. She relished the pressure up front and gave a really good kick to get over the top of them. I'd like to thank Yulong for sending me the horse to train, they purchased her at the recent Magic Millions Broodmare Sale so I'm very fortunate that she made her way into our stable,” said Tony Gollan.
“I'd also like to thank Peter Snowden, who trained her before me, for the advice he gave me on her. We've only had her a few weeks so we're still getting to know her, but I was confident she'd be strong late here today. I'd watched a lot of her replays from down south, so I knew a race like this would really suit her."
"I wasn't sure where I was at with her two weeks ago, because I thought she'd have to make up a bit of ground quickly to be competitive in this race. But the last 10 days she had made it up nicely, so we came here confident and it was great to see her get the job done."
Wollombi was bred and sold by Kingstar Farm originally fetching $200,000 at Magic Millions when bought by Snowden Racing. She has the tidy record of five wins and six placings from 19 starts with prizemoney topping $400,000.
Wollombi is the first foal of Hazlebrook, a winning half-sister by Hinchinbrook to stakes-winner Everage and has an interesting pedigree featuring double crosses of three champion sires – Danehill, Snippets and Rory’s Jester – within her first four removes which is pretty unusual.
Hazlebrook produced a colt last spring by Extreme Choice’s Group winning son Tiger of Malay and is now back in foal to Extreme Choice.
Wollombi is one of 12 stakes-winners for Extreme Choice, who stands at a fee of $275,000 this spring.
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