Holly Golightly

Holly Golightly put up a nice performance to win the one-mile fillies’ maiden at Gowran Park on Tuesday. Ger Lyons’ filly was smartly away and she was fast through the first couple of hundred yards, with the result that it appeared that she was able to get to the front quite easily.

Garry Carroll just allowed her settle into a nice racing rhythm in front, and she led out of the back straight and into the home straight. She remained towards the inside when they straightened up for home as her two main challengers, Friendly and New York Angel, came towards the stands side. Holly Golightly gradually made her way over towards the near side too, but she kept going forward, and she stayed on strongly to get home from her two challengers, with a nice gap between the first three home and the rest of the field.

There was a lot to like about this performance from Trevor Stewart’s filly. She got to the front quite easily, she travelled well through her race and she kept on well, out towards the centre of the track, on a day on which a lot of the main players came up the stands side. The form looks solid too, with three nice fillies in Friendly, New York Angel and her better-fancied stable companion Spilt Passion chasing her home, and a nice gap between the first four home and the rest of the field. This was just her third run ever and her second run of the season. She ran well on her seasonal debut to finish third behind Baton Rouge in a one-mile maiden at Dundalk five weeks earlier, and this was a nice step forward from that. She is a really well-bred filly, a home-bred filly by Gleneagles out of King’s Stand Stakes winner Cassandra Go and a half-sister to Halfway To Heaven, winner of the Irish Guineas and the Nassau Stakes and the Sun Chariot Stakes and Magical’s dam, and she will be of interest wherever she goes next.
Gowran Park, 4^th May 2021