Mehnah

Mehnah put up a nice performance on her return to action in the Listed Garnet Stakes at Naas on Sunday. We hadn’t seen Kevin Prendergast’s filly since she had won the Listed Cairn Rouge Stakes at Killarney in July last year, when she came from well back and wide, yet still had the resolve to get up and win by three parts of a length. She was solid in the market on Sunday, despite the fact that she hadn’t raced for 459 days, and, again, she was well back in the field early on. It was a race in which it was difficult to make ground from the rear, four of the first five home occupied four of the first five places at the top of the home straight, so Mehnah did well to finish off her race as well as she did to take sixth place. She missed the break, she was almost last after they had gone 100 yards, and she was keen enough early on, so Chris Hayes had no option but to drop her in and take his time. Just worse than mid-division as they raced around the home turn, she travelled well into the home straight and, taken towards the outside as they raced to the two-furlong marker, it took her a little while to pick up, but she stayed on really nicely through the final furlong, getting up to take sixth place, beaten less than three lengths in total and closest at the finish. As well as that, she had to make her ground wide, probably on the worst of the ground on a day on which it looked like the inside rail was the place to be.

It was a more than satisfactory return by the Shadwell filly on her first run back after such a long break and on just the fourth run of her life. She beat subsequent listed race winner Fantasy Lady on her racecourse debut at two, and she just failed to get up and win the Leopardstown Guineas Trial on her first run as a three-year-old. A half-sister to Kevin Prendergast’s Irish 2000 Guineas winner Awtaad, she will be of interest if she runs again before the end of the season, she obviously handles this soft ground well, and next year if she remains in training as a five-year-old.
Naas, 16^th October 2022