Lightly raced filly Le Gai Soleil has continued to build on a promising start to her racing career with a convincing city victory on the Kensington track at Randwick.
The John O’Shea-trained three-year-old was sent out the odds-on favourite in Wednesday’s Bowermans Office Furniture Handicap (1550m) and notched her third-straight win this campaign having broken her maiden at Canberra first-up in her second career start before winning again at Kembla Grange.
Bringing up a winning treble on the midweek program for Sydney’s premier jockey James McDonald, Le Gai Soleil settled near the tail of the field in the benchmark-70 race before sweeping down the outside on a heavy-rated track to score by three lengths.
By Tavistock out of Night Danza, Le Gai Soleil is a half-sister to Group One winning mare Danzdanzdance.
O’Shea believes the rising four-year-old will get to stakes level next season but is happy to let her continue her progression through the grades this preparation.
“She’s just making a nice progression,” O’Shea told Sky Thoroughbred Central.
“We’ll just let her go through her grades for the rest of this preparation and then we’ll give her a break and then she can come back in the autumn.”
McDonald had won on the Gary Portelli-trained Picaro in the previous race while his first winner on the program came aboard the Chris Waller-trained filly Dancing Gidget, who made an encouraging start to her campaign with a 2-1/4-length success first-up in the Harry Angel @ Darley Handicap (1250m).
By Al Maher out of Little Surfer Girl, Dancing Gidget broke her maiden over 1550m at the same track at the end of her previous campaign in March, beating subsequent Australasian Oaks winner Toffee Tongue and McDonald said she had returned in terrific order.
“She’ll be better when she gets over a mile plus and for her to return like that is a really good sign,” the jockey said.
“She went out with good form and she has returned with it.”