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McKee Eyes Shorter Feature For Moozoon

3 minute read

Stephen McKee won’t be asking any stamina questions of Moozoon during her four-year-old spring campaign.

Moozoon (inside) gets the job done. Picture: Trish Dunell

The daughter of Perfectly Ready’s form warranted a crack at the Gr.1 New Zealand Oaks and while she finished a respectable fifth in the classic, the 2400 metres proved beyond her.

“She didn’t run the Oaks trip out and 2000 metres is probably the furthest she can go, but we’ll be keeping her to 1400 and 1600 metres for the time being,” McKee said.

Moozoon is in the early stages of a new preparation and is likely to resume in about a month.

“She’s had a couple of easy 600 metre gallops and we’ll be looking to run her in a couple of the fillies’ and mares’ races,” McKee said.

“There’s also the Coupland’s and the Captain Cook Stakes.”

Moozoon made excellent progress during her last campaign and broke her maiden at Pukekohe before she dislodged rider Sam Spratt at Ellerslie when looking to be a major threat again.

She made no mistake next time out and then showed her quality with a strong win at Trentham in the Gr.3 Desert Gold Stakes at the expense of the subsequent Gr.1 New Zealand Oaks runner-up Miss Selby and the Gr.1 New Zealand 1000 Guineas winner Costa Viva.

Moozoon went on to win the Oaks Prelude at New Plymouth and finished runner-up behind Costa Viva in the Gr.3 Sunline Vase before she was spelled after the Trentham classic.

She is raced by her breeder Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum, whose New Zealand bloodstock interests are based at Brighthill Farm.

A member of the ruling family of Dubai, he celebrated his first winner in New Zealand last year when Baseer was successful at Trentham.

He is trained by McKee, who also prepared the Sheikh’s former Gr.1 Hong Kong Cup winner Eagle Mountain for a brief New Zealand campaign after fertility issues had cut short his stallion stint at Brighthill.