Racing: Melody Belle comes up just short in record quest

Melody Belle. Photo / Getty

Melody Belle will have to wait to equal Sunline as New Zealand's most successful Group 1 galloper after a brave third in the Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington yesterday.

The Matamata mare worked early before being swamped in the A$2 million weight-for-age 2000m event, the last major race of Melbourne Cup week.

She was no match for the winner, outstanding Perth mare Arcadia Queen who swept home from last for first-time rider Luke Currie, with Fifty Stars second and Melody Belle clawing her way into third without looking a winning chance in the final 300m.

Melody Belle was looking to join champion Kiwi mare Sunline as the only thoroughbred trained in this country to win at racing's highest level 13 times, a mark she may get to in the autumn.

But there was plenty of consolation in finishing third, with that netting her connections A$180,000, the equivalent of winning almost any race she is eligible for or ever likely to contest again in New Zealand.

The question for those connections is whether they want her to return to Australia in the autumn and chase the money or stay in New Zealand where she could have an array of late summer Group 1s which would gift her opportunities to equal or even surpass Sunline's Group 1 tally.

She capped a winless Melbourne Cup week for New Zealand-trained horses, although The Chosen One picked up A$350,000 with his fourth in Tuesday's Melbourne Cup and there were only a handful of Kiwi horses at the carnival.