McAlpine’s devotion pays again

Owner-breeder Grania McAlpine’s devotion to veteran sire Red Dazzler has produced another winner with Aileach scoring an upset victory at Ipswich.

Aileach ($21) skimmed through a heavy track to beat Sassy Style ($17) by 3-3/4 lengths in Friday’s Two-Year-Old Handicap (800m).

McAlpine bred Aileach by putting her mare Suiligh to Red Dazzler who was for many years the mainstay of her family’s Eureka Stud.

She races the Rex Lipp-trained Aileach with friend Annabelle Raff and they also owned the 2014 Group One Queensland Oaks winner Tinto by Red Dazzler.

McAlpine’s husband Scott McAlpine, who is studmaster at Eureka, said these days Red Dazzler only served a limited book.

“He had only 35 mares this season which is the usual for him now. But Truly Brave who is Tinto’s dam is in foal to him again,” McAlpine said.

“Grania is always loyal to Red Dazzler and with good reason. She has had a lot of success with him.”

Aileach had won some jump-outs in Toowoomba but was friendless in betting after a strong betting move for Kuro Hoshi ($1.85) who ran second last.

All jockeys went wide in the straight except Aileach’s jockey Emma Ljung who stuck to the fence.

“It’s very wet out there but she handled it well,” Ljung said.

The metropolitan standard meeting was moved to Friday from Wednesday because of heat problems and started at 10am.

Racing Queensland officials had hoped to test the meeting by examining betting turnover to see if future early starts were warranted.

But those plans were ruined when 62mm of rain was dumped on the track on Thursday night meaning after scratchings there were only 52 runners for the meeting.