Law breaks stakes-race duck in rapid Australian start for Lucky Vega

What a couple of weeks for Yulong Stud. Via Sistina claimed the Cox Plate and Champions Stakes, giving her four at the top tier for the campaign.

Alabama Express sired his first top-level winner when Treasurethe Moment won last Thursday’s VRC Oaks and two days later their lesser known Irish shuttle stallion Lucky Vega scored a stakes-winner with his first Australian runner when Within The Law took out Flemington’s Inglis Banner.

Lucky Vega, who stands on the fifth rung among Yulong’s eight stallions at a fee of A$16,500, won his sole Group 1 – among two victories from eight starts – as a two-year-old in the Curragh’s Phoenix Stakes.

And his progeny may have inherited his precocity judging from not only Within The Law but his first runner in New Zealand, who was also a winner on her debut.

Bred by Yulong and bought by Darby Racing for just A$30,000 from Inglis Classic, the Bjorn Baker-trained filly’s success franked the form from two smart Sydney barrier trials, the latest a half-length second to North England, who won Saturday’s Golden Gift at Rosehill.

Ridden by Ben Melham and sent out a A$7 third-favourite, Within The Law settled behind the pace on the grandstand side of the track from gate ten of 11 and emerged to haul in favourite Chisholm and score by a length and a quarter.

“It’s great to win it with a progressive two-year-old for Darby,” Baker told Racing.com.

“It’s very important to win these two-year-old races. Darby puts a lot of emphasis on it, so we need horses up and running, and Ben Melham’s won the ultimate race, the Golden Slipper for Darby [with She Will Reign], so it’s good to get that combo back together.

“She’s been just amazing. No nonsense, no fuss, straightforward. Josh Parr actually rode her on track work on Tuesday and he said, ‘Look, she went well enough to have a crack’.”

Melham said Within The Law had coped with the occasion of her debut before a large Stakes Day crowd with aplomb.

“A lot comes down to how they do handle the big days and she looked well educated,” he said. “She made significant improvement from her first trial to her second trial and she got beaten by a smart one in her second trial.

“She did everything right and that takes them a long way in these early two-year-old races.”

Within The Law hails from the rich family of Denise’s Joy, as the first foal of the placed seven-year-old mare Contract Signed.

Third dam So Gorgeous won five stakes races including the VRC Ascot Vale Stakes, which has since become the Coolmore Stud Stakes.

Contract Signed now has a yearling colt by Yulong’s Tagaloa and was covered last spring by the stud’s flagbearer Written Tycoon.

Lucky Vega, who will have his first European runners next year, had already had a winner with his first runner in New Zealand in Vega For Luck, who took a Tauranga maiden on October 5. 

The six-year-old covered 119 mares in his first crop off a A$22,000 (£11,200/€13,500) fee, 168 in his second, and 91 last year. He is standing at the Irish National Stud in the northern hemisphere for €12,500 this season.

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