Racing: Yearn's a girl with attitude

Yearn sprints clear to take the Dunstan Feeds Breeders Stakes at Pukekohe on Saturday. Photo / Trish Dunell

Top mare can be a horse’s backside in work, trainer admits.

If you like your race mares to have a touch of attitude then Yearn is the girl for you. Because trainer Karen Fursdon admits Saturday's $100,000 Dunstan Feeds Breeders Stakes winner at Pukekohe is hardly the easiest mare to train.

And the same toughness that makes her a pain in the butt at track work may just win her a major mile race this summer.

Yearn wore down last season's 1000 Guineas winner Media Sensation over 1400m on Saturday, no small feat considering the last 600m off the front took just 34.2 seconds and Yearn had been three wide the trip from her wide gate. The toughness didn't surprise Fursdon.

"She is very tough but sometimes she can be a handful," she explains. "She just wants to get on with it all the time and she can pull very, very hard in track work. She doesn't have any dirt in her, she is a really nice mare, but she just loves running. So she isn't easy."

Plenty of trainers subscribe to the theory a bit of attitude can go a long way in mares and it will prove useful as Yearn heads into the rugged school of mile racing against the boys over the summer.

While Saturday's placegetters Media Sensation and Princess Kereru will drop back in distance to 1200m for the Railway as their next main target, Yearn is more likely to look at races such as the Rich Hill Mile or even Thorndon Mile.

"I think that is the next logical step for her because she was good over a mile last year. We even extended her out to 2000m but that was at the end of a campaign."

Fursdon is no newcomer to the big time, it has just been a while since she had this level of success on the grandest stage.

Her career zenith so far has been winning the 2004 Auckland Cup with Upsetthym, who went on to finish third in a Brisbane Cup and 15th in Makybe Diva's Melbourne Cup of that year.

"Obviously she was a great mare for us but we don't get these type of wins very often so Saturday was a big deal for us," says Fursdon.

Yearn was the first leg of a feature race double for jockey Sam Spratt and the other leg also suggested she has a role to play in the Ellerslie group ones over summer.

Its Destinys Child overpowered leader Speedy Meady in the $50,000 Counties Bowl, with the pair scooting the last 600m in 33.2 seconds to give those back in the field no chance.

Its Destinys Child shortened from $41 to $18 for the $200,000 Sistema Railway on January 1.

Equal-second favourite Julius ($8) did enough when fourth fresh up behind Its Destinys on Saturday to suggest a Railway is within his scope but Bostonian, who shares that second line of betting, is not guaranteed to go to the Railway, with the weight-for-age conditions of the Telegraph probably more suitable.

The Telegraph could also be the target for Avantage, who opened as the Railway favourite on Wednesday but trainer Jamie Richards admits is also not a certainty to make it to Ellerslie.

So like many of the Ellerslie glamour races in the next six weeks there are too many moving parts at the moment for punters to be getting too involved.

That could also be the case with Saturday's Counties Cup winner In A Twinkling, who is now favourite for the City Of Auckland Cup on New Year's Day.

He could undoubtedly win that race but it also wouldn't surprise to see him take the weight-for-age path and end up in the Zabeel Classic on Boxing Day instead.