Maternal glow a winning factor for Madena

Impending motherhood might just have been the key to resetting the winning ways of handy trotter Madena Sky – and it’s not the first time that father and son training combination Joe and Tyrone Abela have successfully played the breeding barn card with their racing mares.

Madena Sky (Angus Hall – Dreamscape Aurora (Safely Kept) had not won for almost two years before her she recently raced at Ballarat and scored a comfortable victory for Chris Alford in the Flying Horse Entertainment Trotters Handicap.

The Abela family made the call recently to get the mare in foal to Father Patrick – and co-trainer Tyrone Abela believes that may just have been the difference.

“I don’t think it changes their speed or their stamina – but perhaps it just changes something in them that just lets them settle and to fulfil their potential,” Abela said.

“We first did it with Madena Sky’s grand-dam, Olympic Idol, back in the 1994, and it was by complete accident,” he said.

“As a two- and three-year-old she really wasn’t living up to her promise and wasn’t performing on track at all, so we decided to retire her and get her in foal.

“She lost the foal, but it completely changed her. She returned to racing and went from a horse not in the top five, and sacked, to winning 10 races! It really was incredible. It was like flicking a switch and she finally raced to her potential.

“She went on to win a metro race and to beat the pacers, one of the first mares in her era to do that.”
He said another of the Abela family’s mares, Misschanel also raced in foal earlier this year.

“We got her in foal to Rock N Roll Heaven late last year and she grew a leg. She won three races in six starts – won her last two and her last race was probably her best-ever performance, when she sat in the death-seat at Maryborough and ran away from them.

“She had her little filly in October – so I suppose you could technically say that little one is a winner of three races already!

“Being in foal doesn’t make the mare any tougher or any faster, I don’t think. It perhaps just that mares, as they get a bit older, can get a bit hormonal. I think being in foal does just seem to settle them.

“We’d done it many years ago with Olympic Idol and then Miss Chanel this year was a reminder that it was possible – so we decided to give it a try with Madena Sky, and now she’s won as well.”

Abela said Madena Sky, now a winner of seven races, had been an honest horse for the stable.

“She is one of those that was up in a high class before the rating system changed, and some horses it benefitted, and she was one of those that was a little bit hard done by,” he said.

“She is really honest and always tries, but she does need things to go her way and doesn’t seem to find the luck that often. She can also be a bit hit and miss at the standing start, which doesn’t really help.

“She very rarely runs a bad race, though, and we did enjoy getting that score on the board with her at Ballarat. We’ll just cross our fingers and hope that it continues.”

By Terry Gange for Harnesslink