O’Brien can Getta Good Feeling in G1 Crown Oaks

MELBOURNE Getta Good Feeling will be out to enhance an already-remarkable record of Wakeful Stakes winners who followed up with a double in the Group 1 Crown Oaks (2,500m), but come Nov 6 at Flemington, she does have one thing to contend with that no previous Wakeful Stakes victor has had to deal with in the feature worth A$1 million (S$850,000).

Trained by Danny O’Brien, the three-year-old daughter of So You Think is out to become the 40th filly to complete the Wakeful Stakes-Crown Oaks double, and second in a row following the Matt Laurie-trained Treasurethe Moment, who did it in 2024.

The 39 fillies who have done the double come from 88 who have tried, giving Wakeful Stakes’ winners a 44 per cent hit rate in the Crown Oaks.

Twenty of the past 30 Crown Oaks’ winners backed up out of the Wakeful Stakes, half of whom filled a quinella slot in the 2,000m Group 2 event.

Getta Good Feeling – who will be ridden by Mark Zahra again after the pair won the Wakeful Stakes together – is out to become the fifth favourite in a row to win the Crown Oaks and is the only runner shorter than The Pearls.

Getta Good Feeling is the odds-on favourite after a soft win in the Wakeful Stakes, while The Pearls is the second favourite at 8-1 in the field of 13.

The Proisir filly is trained by Hall of Fame handler Chris Waller – who recently won the Group 1 Cox Plate (2,040m) with Via Sistina on Oct 25 – and will be his first runner in the Crown Oaks.

The Sydney-based Kiwi has won nine Group 1 Oaks – four in Sydney, three in Brisbane and two in Adelaide.

Champion mares Winx and Verry Elleegant are among the fillies Waller has trained to win the Oaks. Winx saluted in the 2015 Group 1 Queensland Oaks (2,200m) while Verry Elleegant took out the 2019 Group 1 Australian Oaks (2,400m).

But he has never pushed one to get to Australia’s only Group 1 Oaks run in the first half of the season.

The Pearls gets there after her third placing behind Attica in the Group 1 Spring Champion Stakes (2,000m) at Randwick on Oct 25. She will be ridden by James McDonald in her upcoming assignment.

That was the formline the Anthony Cummings-trained She’s Extreme took into the 2022 Crown Oaks, which she won as the 13-10 favourite.

The Spring Champion Stakes was a poor race for fillies when run on Epsom Day, but the girls have had more of an impact since it moved away from that meeting in 2013.

Six fillies have run in the top three in the Spring Champion Stakes in that time, with She’s Extreme one of three who progressed to the Crown Oaks.

The others were Yankee Rose and Montefilia, who both won the Spring Champion Stakes and started as odds-on favourite in the Crown Oaks.

Yankee Rose was injured and beat one home in the 2016 edition, while Montefilia managed only third behind Personal in 2020.

Favourites have won 12 of the past 22 Crown Oaks. The Lee Curtis-trained Lasqueti Spirit was the race’s longest-priced winner when she won at huge odds of 100-1 in 2016 and that remained her only career win in 22 starts.
RACING AND SPORTS