Marie’s Angel, who had no luck when finishing third in the previous week’s Sims Family Memorial Maiden (512 metres), made amends at Tara Raceway last Sunday when successful in the Klaassens Contractors Maiden Stake (512 m).
Always on the pace behind the early leader Moraine Lucy, Marie’s Angel finished the race off strongly to win by 3½ lengths in a time of 30.28 seconds.
At the time, the winner was trained at Yambuk by Tom Sinnott who races the December 2019 daughter of Lightning Frank and Cette Away in partnership with Dan Madden, these days based at Warrnambool.
This was a litter that was probably always going to happen. After all, the trainer and owner had known each other pretty well all their lives and Madden had been a part-owner of the two-time Group 1 winner Lightning Frank who won 22 races and more than $300,000 in stakemoney.
“After we decided to breed a litter, Dan organised for a Lightning Frank straw while for the dam we settled on Cette Away which is owned by my wife Ann,” Sinnott said.
Cette Away was a winner of 17 races and is nicely bred, being by Velocette out of Up And Away who won 19 races and close to $200,000 in stakemoney.
Madden, was over on both occasions to watch Marie’s Angel – named after his wife. But one suspects that racing at Tara Raceway would have fallen well short of those heady days at The Meadows when Lightning Frank was one of the headline acts.
“Look, the razzamatazz surrounding some of those nights was certainly something else. But I have to say, being here today and watching Marie’s Angel win was terrific. Sometimes it’s not always about the money but about the win. That was certainly the case today,” he said.
Incidentally, Lightning Frank sired two winners on the day – Peter Crawley’s King Cujo later winning the Commercial Hotel Stake (512 m) at the big odds of $34.
The only downside to Sinnott and Madden’s day was Marie’s Angel’s lapse in concentration approaching the home turn which resulted in a 28 day suspension at Tara Raceway. Connections have now left the dog in Mount Gambier in the care of leading trainer Tracie Price.