Another Freestyle Win For Hackett

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Talented filly Freestyle added to her record with a desperate win in Saturday’s feature race at Morphettville, the Listed Dequetteville Stakes (1050m).

Her owners include world and Olympic 1500m freestyle champion Grant Hackett, media personality Alan Jones and thoroughbred breeding heavyweight John Messara.

After jumping well, Freestyle settled behind early leader Dinkum Star but looked under pressure around the turn and began to lay in towards the rail.

But once she found the fence, she lifted strongly over the final stages and missed the carnage behind her, scoring a strong 1-3/4 length win.

Multiple protests were fired in as the fillies found plenty of trouble behind her but she came away with the race and added to her impressive record.

Dinkum Star finished second over Chetwynd South but stewards upheld the protest and reversed the placings, while Serious Impact, whose rider Ryan Maloney protested against Dwayne Dunn on the winner and the third placegetter, had to contend with fourth.

Prepared on the track by Phillip Stokes, Freestyle won her fourth race from just five career starts, and took her stakes tally to three, the Merson Cooper and Breeders’ Stakes the others on her resume.

Stokes said he would monitor how the filly pulled up after Saturday’s event before making a decision on where to go next.

“If I’m not that happy with her, she’ll run in the William Crockett at Moonee Valley in a month, but if she does well she’ll run in the Dermody Stakes in a fortnight,” Stokes said.

In the Group Three Dermody (1000m) at Morphettville on July 30th, she will carry just 52.5kg as a two-year-old under the set weights conditions.

The filly’s dam, Stella Artois, won the William Crockett in 1999.