The spirit of “Joanne Murphy” lives on with namesake “Spirit of Jo” winning at Benalla on Sunday in the Stolz Benalla Maiden Plate over 1200m. A filly highly regarded by the Hope Team, began well and was perfectly placed in transit by her jockey, Jarrod Fry. Once wound up in the home straight, the filly finished on powerfully to score by 0.5L on the line over race favourite, Looselipssinksships.
After the race, Co-Trainer, Shannon Hope was enthused by the Impending 3YO fillies performance;
“She’s certainly has come back well this preparation. She didn’t handle the wet track at her debut race at Bendigo and we decided to turn her out, she has come back really good and trialled nicely heading into this race.”
“She has a lot of upside and is going to improve again and should be very effective over 1400m and possibly a mile, she will develop into a nice filly.”
A daughter of “Forjo” named in honour of Joanne Murphy who lost her life in 2013, the filly is a third generation breeding product from foundation mare, Showstoppa, raced partly by Kevin Murphy and his daughters, Joanne and Belinda. When a share was offered at a fundraising auction for the Cancer Foundation in the unnamed filly by Snitzel x Showstoppa, friends of Joanne banded together to buy a share and fittingly named the filly “Forjo”. Spirit of Jo now becomes the second progeny to win from Forjo with her older sister ‘Something Forjo’ winning earlier in the year and tragically was narrowly beaten later on in the meeting.
The ownership group is headed by Breeder/Owner, Kevin Murphy along with fellow co-breeders; Pat and Suzie De Kretser, Jonathon Swan, Daniel and Michael Duke, Anthony Fogarty, Patrick Kelly, David Geary and Christian McCann. John Murphy, Ken Whiteman, Tony Buckley and Carol Shinn share in the remaining ownership.
The filly will now have a short break to prepare for the some nice fillies races next year.
In what was a good day could have been a great day with the Hope team runners finishing second in three other races on the card, Cameron Falls in Race 4, Slipstreaming in Race 5 and Something Forjo in Race 6.