Luvaluva Connections Celebrate Back to Back Stakes Successes
A$150,000 Listed January Cup at Randwick was the fifth stakes win, and the second in a row, for the NZ$55,000 Ready to Run Sale graduate Luvaluva.
Trained by John Sargent, Luvaluva was a star 3yo who won the Gr.2 Wakeful Stakes, Gr.3 Keith F Nolan Classic and Gr.3 Adrian Knox Stakes.
She lost that winning form as a 4yo, but still placed at Group 1 level in the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes (1600m).
On Boxing Day she broke her winning drought with a dominant performance in the Group 3 Summer Cup (2000m), and Saturday’s feature race was more of the same.
After sitting in second-last place behind a very slow pace, rider Koby Jennings got her rolling a long way from the finish. She surged forward out wide to be right in the thick of the action rounding the home turn.
The result was never in doubt from there as Luvaluva cruised to the front and opened up a comfortable winning margin of three-quarters of a length at the finish line.