Champion trainer Peter Moody produced another very talented More Than Ready three year-old when Young Fun blitzed his rivals at Ballarat on Sunday.

Young Fun (3c More Than Ready – Sharp Aunty by Flying Spur) will be heading straight to town after a winning the Pro Ride Maiden Plate (1100m) by four lengths.  He was racing second-up after an unlucky debut at Cranbourne earlier this month.

“Peter has a good opinion of this colt,” stable foreman Tom Brideoake said.  “We added blinkers after that first-up run and that made a big difference.”

Segenhoe Stud owner Kevin Maloney paid $400,000 for Young Fun at the 2011 Inglis Easter yearling sale.  “It was good to get him over the line for Segenhoe,” Brideoake added.  “We are expecting better things from him.”

The Vinery champion sired him from Sharp Aunty who won in Sydney and Melbourne and was also G2 placed in the Champagne Stakes at Moonee Valley.  Second dam True Blonde (Naturalism) was a Flemington stakes winner and she is a half-sister to Snippets and the dam of Not A Single Doubt.

Young Fun comes from the same More Than Ready crop as the Moody trained filly Ephemera.  She won a Seymour maiden on debut for Waratah Thoroughbreds owner Paul Fudge and was last seen finishing third in the LR Quezette Stakes at Caulfield in August.

Moody has also resurrected the career of More Than Ready sprinter Ready To Rip this year.  The former Queensland based galloper won the G3 Bletchingly Stakes at Caulfield and then looked a certainty beaten when going down a short-neck to Buffering in the G2 Moir Stakes at Moonee Valley in September.

Young Fun’s win was part of a big weekend for Vinery shuttler More Than Ready.  His Canadian based mare Magic Broomstick closed out her career with a G3 victory in the Bessarabian Stakes at Woodbine on Saturday.

And his tough-as-teak campaigner Ready’s Rocket led out the field in a race named in his honour at Churchill Downs on Sunday.

Ready’s Rocket won 11 races under the Twin Spires, more than any horse since detailed records were kept by Equibase.  The nine year-old gelding won at his final appearance at Churchill Downs in May and he will be one of the favourites with visitors to the Old Friends retirement farm in Kentucky.

– Karl Patterson