GERALD Ryan has every reason to look forward with confidence to the new racing season with his Fastnet Rock colt Rothesay, but the Rosehill trainer's lucrative run in major races for the season may not be finished, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.It says: Ryan is keen to run his amazing filly Melito in her ninth group 1 race for the season in the $500,000 Winter Stakes over 1400 metres in Brisbane on June 26 following her brave short half-head second in last Saturday's Stradbroke Handicap.''Sh

GERALD Ryan has every reason to look forward with confidence to the new racing season with his Fastnet Rock colt Rothesay, but the Rosehill trainer's lucrative run in major races for the season may not be finished, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

It says: Ryan is keen to run his amazing filly Melito in her ninth group 1 race for the season in the $500,000 Winter Stakes over 1400 metres in Brisbane on June 26 following her brave short half-head second in last Saturday's Stradbroke Handicap.

''She really is a filly you dream about getting as she keeps coming up and she keeps giving everything,'' the trainer said yesterday. ''If she continues on ... the Winter Stakes is on her agenda. It'd be great to get another group 1 win for her and if there's ever a horse who's deserved another one, she's it.''

Of the eight group 1 races Melito has contested this season, she has saluted once in the T. J. Smith Stakes in Sydney, and been runner-up four times as well as third in the Doomben 10,000 last month. Overall this season, the filly has run in 13 races and failed to earn a cheque just once when stretched out to the 2500 metres of the VRC Oaks.

Ryan is planning a light spring for the rising four-year-old with one lead-up sprint race in Melbourne before she tackles the group 1 Patinack Farm Stakes on the final day of the Flemington carnival.