Plenty of Questions to Answer in JJ Atkins Plate

The June 10 AU$1 million, 1,600-meter JJ Atkins Plate (G1) brings a mouth-watering array of scripts and scenarios befitting Eagle Farm's time-honored group 1 for 2-year-olds.

Can Miracle Of Love (Dundeel ) win at just her third start and provide a second top-level winner for her dam Miss Finland , helping connections of both rebound from the recent loss of the former champion racemare's in-utero foal by Street Boss ?

Will Miracle Of Love, or perhaps favorite Tannhauser, extend their surging Arrowfield sire Dundeel's remarkable record with juveniles?

If Cifrado brings a first group 1 for Eureka Stud's Encryption, will his veteran Queensland-based trainer Rex Lipp really retire on the spot, just like the colt's Cairns-based owner did after the $40 million lotto win that spurred his plunge into ownership?

Can last year's Inglis Premier sale-topper Make A Call—the roguish colt who seemed destined for the scalpel only weeks ago—ensure his entirety by atoning for a controversial sixth at his last run, while bringing Extreme Choice's first 2-year-old stakes winner of the season?

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And can tough filly Azula back up in a week to provide a third Australian group 1 for her Arrowfield sire Maurice ?

Miracle Of Love looks one of the best-bred fillies in the land at present, and not just because of her racetrack superstar dam Miss Finland.

Debuting with a third in Scone's Woodlands Stakes only four weeks ago before taking her maiden last start at Doomben, Miracle Of Love is amongst the stellar 2020 crop of Dundeel, the Australian Derby (G1) winner who's confounded many perceptions by siring 12 2-year-old winners this season, a tally only four sires have bettered.

Moreover, Dundeel has built a stunning strike rate in juvenile group 1s. From just seven runners he's had three winners—Militarize, Castelvecchio, and former New Zealand champion 2-year-old Yourdeel—along with two placegetters. Albeit from small numbers, that win rate compares favorably with all-time greats such as Danehill (nine from 60 runners), Redoute's Choice 10/57) and Snitzel (6/61), with Marscay the only relatively recent sire comparable on similar numbers, with five from 15.

Miracle Of Love could emerge as an elite quality runner, which would be due reward for her trainer Paul Messara and the band of breeding heavyweights behind her and Miss Finland: Alan Jones, John Leaver, and the Arrowfield empire run by his father John Messara.

The filly is the 10th foal out of Miss Finland. She's thrown only one stakes winner, but that was a group 1 victor in Stay With Me (Street Cry). She took the 2015 Thousand Guineas (G1), and has since thrown Peter Moody's dual-listed winner Waltz On By (I Am Invincible ).

Miss Finland has a weanling sister to Miracle Of Love on the ground, but an attempt to replicate Stay With Me through a mating with Street Cry's son Street Boss has recently met with ill fortune.

"Unfortunately the mare lost her pregnancy in the past couple of weeks," Paul Messara told ANZ Bloodstock News of Miss Finland, who'll soon turn 20. "We'll have to decide whether she'll have one more go or whether she's retired."

Messara, who splits his time between Arrowfield work and training 40 horses at a private track beside the farm, said he's thrilled to be finally preparing an offspring of Miss Finland, who he hopes will bring his fifth group 1 as a trainer after the three-in-three-countries of Ortensia in 2011-12, and Alverta 's 2010 Coolmore Classic Stakes (G1).

"I generally only train the horses Arrowfield can't sell, if they're left over or have a problem," he said. "But I loved this filly from day one."

While inexperienced, Miracle Of Love has developed considerably since her first run, said Messara, who had struggled to find appropriate barrier trials for her.

"She's improved a lot over a short period of time, and she's progressed really well from her win the other day," he said. "She was a stand-out type from day one. She's finer than Miss Finland, who was built and raced like a colt, so she throws more to the Dundeel side.

Messara said he hoped Miracle Of Love could this spring strive to emulate her half sister Stay With Me in the Thousand Guineas, with the Kennedy Oaks (G1) and—more likely—the Australian Oaks (G1) next autumn in prospect.

Local hopes in the Atkins—run in various guises since 1893—are headed by Cifrado (AU$10). He's trained by Toowoomba's 75-year-old Rex Lipp and owned by Cairns-based former disability worker Cliff Little, who scooped his AU$40 million lotto windfall four years ago, tendered his resignation, bought houses for his kids and a collection of racehorses.

Not everything he touches turns to gold. One of his other runners is 3-year-old Redzoust (Zoustar ), a AU$510,000 yearling who's still at Benchmark 64 level after nine starts.

"Cliff has spent a lot of money in the racing industry in the last couple of years," Lipp told ANZ Bloodstock News. "He's got a couple of French fillies in work, he's got that half-million dollar yearling. He hasn't really had as much luck as with his lotto win, but at least he's got a good one in Cifrado."

A AU$320,000 yearling, Cifrado became Encryption's first stakes horse—from 20 runners and four winners—in surviving an unusual sixth-versus-first protest from Make A Call's rider Blake Shinn last start in the BRC Sires' Produce Stakes (G2). Shinn alleged Cifrado's late drifting in had cost him victory along the rail.

The colorful Lipp, who's had two top-tier wins with Star Shiraz when the Queensland Sires' Produce Stakes (G1) was still a group 1 in 2004, and with Tinto in the 2014 Queensland Oaks (G1), made headlines this week after joking to a journalist he'd quit on the spot if Cifrado brought his third.

"I wasn't fair dinkum," Lipp told ANZ Bloodstock News. "I've been trying to give it away for years, but I can't. How about this: if Cifrado wins I'll retire, then reinstate myself on Monday. Or maybe after a week. It'll take me that long to get over the celebration."

For more Australia and New Zealand racing, sales, and bloodstock news, visit ANZBloodstockNews.com.