Breeders Crown: Juanita readies for a Golden night

For a trainer into her 28^th season good times suddenly seem to have come very fast for Avenel’s Juanita Breen, who makes the drive to Tabcorp Park Melton tonight with two live TAB Breeders Crown chances.

To start from gate three, Louisiana Jo is well drawn for a front-running performance in the three-year-old fillies’ pacing division, but it’s her three-year-old trotter, Golden Sunset, who’s truly come from the clouds.

“To have qualified two fillies for finals (tonight), if someone had said that to me earlier in the year I would have said they were dreaming,” Breen said. “It is really exciting.”

This year has already proven the most fruitful of Breen’s career, delivering 11 wins and a personal best in stakes, but tonight’s $200,000 pacing and $80,000 trotting finals are rare air.

Not since Cool And Casual ran 11^th in his $100,000 Breeders Crown four-year-old final has Breen had a starter in a six-figure race, and the only other previous was Yellow Rose in her $100,000 Australian Pacing Gold final in 2008.

Add to that her only metropolitan level win was with Parramatta Raider, who broke his metropolitan maiden in 2003.

Tonight is a big stage and in Golden Sunset Breen has a potentially leading player, despite being unraced before running second on debut on October 25.

“I’ve always liked her from the minute we broke her in, but probably didn’t expect she’d get this far this fast,” Breen said.

Despite breaking gait at the start she ran second on debut and then again in her second start, when exposed to horses of open age. And, then, suddenly at start three, came the Breeders Crown heat.

“We thought, well, we’ve got to have a go at the heats, not expecting to win a heat but perhaps even just be eligible for the silver,” Breen said. “Turns out she’s made the final.”

And she did it in extraordinary style, sitting exposed for the final lap and going head-to-head with $1.50 favourite Queen Of Crime, drawing clear in the breeze to win by four metres and set a new age-distance Maryborough track record.

“I wasn’t quite sure how she measured up to Queen Of Crime, but I thought I probably had the measure of the rest of them and I thought it would be a good test for her. I was fairly surprised at the time we ran though.”

Which brings us to tonight’s final at 7.03pm, when Breen will be in the sulky to guide her from gate seven and Matt Craven’s pair Queen Of Crime (gate one) and Aldebaran Tess (gate 12) loom large.

“It is exciting, but you do need to keep a lid on it,” Breen said. “They are juvenile trotters, she is very inexperienced. First criteria is to trot from A to B and after that we will worry about what happens.”

MORE BREEDERS CROWN:
>> Big Bets: Punters like Moths to the flame
>> Friday Form Panel previews Saturday night
>> Tribute on Finals night to Gavin Lang
>> Butt and Mexicana head south for success
>> Juanita readies for a Golden night

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