Mornington trainer Jason Petch will try to land his first Saturday Melbourne victory with speedy filly Hooness this week at Caulfield.Petch bought Hooness, a David Hayes cast-off, for $42,500 at a dispersal sale with the filly having at that stage raced just twice for fourths at Moonee Valley and Seymour.A daughter of Exceed And Excel, Hooness is out of the Spectrum mare Spectrum's Image, the winner of four races including a Sandown victory.The filly's third dam is Tidal Light, champion Australa
Mornington trainer Jason Petch will try to land his first Saturday Melbourne victory with speedy filly Hooness this week at Caulfield.
Petch bought Hooness, a David Hayes cast-off, for $42,500 at a dispersal sale with the filly having at that stage raced just twice for fourths at Moonee Valley and Seymour.
A daughter of Exceed And Excel, Hooness is out of the Spectrum mare Spectrum's Image, the winner of four races including a Sandown victory.
The filly's third dam is Tidal Light, champion Australasian three-year-old filly and champion New Zealand three-year-old in 1986-87.
Tidal Light won 10 of her 19 starts, three at Group One level - the New Zealand Derby, Air New Zealand Stakes and Canterbury Guineas.
Petch explained that he was only at the sale to look at a couple of horses for a friend and Hooness happened to be in the box next door to one of them.
"I went in and had a good look at her. She was beautiful and athletic, a real stylish type of filly and I thought there must be something wrong with her," Petch said.
"I didn't have a catalogue with me but I couldn't find anything wrong at all with her.
"I went and got a catalogue and saw she was by Exceed And Excel out of a Spectrum mare so she's got a pedigree and I thought I'd go and buy her. I was pretty lucky.
"I just spec bought her and a client of mine rang me up not knowing I was at the sale and I said to him `I've just bought you a horse'.
"I was only joking but he bought into her and put a group of corporate friends into the horse and it all happened from there."
Hooness has won three of her six starts for Petch and gave him his first black-type victory when she took out the Listed Redelva Stakes (1000m) at Morphettville when she best Luce Del Mare and Happy Hippy on February 20.
Last start Hooness finished eighth on unsuitably shifty ground to Majestic Music in the Yallambee Classic (1200m) at Morphettville on March 8.
Petch landed his first Melbourne win with Angry Cat at a Moonee Valley night meeting in February 2009 while Hooness was his second, also at a Valley night meeting on January 2 this year following an eight-length win at Yarra Glen in December at her second outing for the trainer.
Aaron Spiteri has been aboard Hooness at her past six starts, but Petch has opted for claiming apprentice Ben Knobel who will take three kilograms off the topweight in the Mnemosyne Hcp (1200m), bringing her in with 56kg.
"She's a little bit vulnerable over 1200 metres and I thought the 59kg would slow her right up being the style of horse she is, jump-run, so I figured taking 3kg off will help her," Petch said.
"She has a very soft mouth and Ben has a nice set of hands on him and should be able to control her quite well.
"She's a pretty exciting filly but I do think she's a genuine dry tracker and a bit of a rail junkie as well, so if she can find the lead near the fence on a dry track she's always going to be hard to run down."