Simply Brilliant is ready for an encore career that starts with trainer Bjorn Baker next week.

Simply Brilliant (6m Starcraft – She’s A Pretender by Danehill) returned to action with a strong victory in a Rosehill trial on Monday.  “She’s a pretty smart horse and has lots of quality,” Baker said.  “She will probably start at Warwick Farm next Wednesday.”

Although the daughter of Starcraft arrived at the Baker’s establishment little more than two months ago, he knows her very well.  This preparation is the second time she’s been under his care, however, the mare has taken a distinctly circuitous route for a curtain-call.

Simply Brilliant was bred in Australia by Starcraft’s owners Paul and Lyndall Makin.  They bought her dam She’s A Pretender, a stakes-placed sister to Nothin’ Leica Dane, at the 2007 Inglis Broodmare Sale with Simply Brilliant in utero and re-sold the mare a year later, again in foal to Starcraft.

The Makins retained Simply Brilliant along with a Starcraft – We Can’t Say filly and sent them to Murray & Bjorn Baker, then training in partnership at Cambridge in New Zealand.

“We had a super group of young horses that year,” Bjorn Baker recalled.  “The other Starcraft filly was We Can Say It Now, we had Lion Tamer at the same time, and Simply Brilliant was right in the mix.”

The two fillies began their careers as late 2YOs at the same Matamata meeting in May 2010, and nearly completed a perfect double, when We Can Say It Now won her race and Simply Brilliant ran a close second.

We Can Say It Now went on to win the G1 Captain Cook Stakes and G1 Levin Classic later that year before transferring to Ireland where she foaled a colt by Montjeu earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Simply Brilliant resumed for a five length victory at Awapuni on the same day Lion Tamer won the 2010 Victoria Derby.

The Makins sent her to the United States to be trained by Christophe Clement, however, she was injured and then sold at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky Sale earlier this year.

And so Simply Brilliant returned to Australia in May, over three years after her first departure, to race in the ownership of Galaxy Breeding’s Bob Guth.

Baker is delighted that fortune’s wheel has delivered her back to him, but his first concern is to keep her free of injury, take her through the grades and give her a chance to fulfil the ability she showed as a three year-old.

Starcraft will stand at Arrowfield Stud at a fee of $22,000 (inc gst) this year.

SIMPLY BRILLIANT