GROUP RACE DOUBLE ON CAULFIELD CUP DAY

Coeur Volante and Buffalo River made it a Ballymore group race double on Caulfield Cup day.

Coeur Volante (pictured) enhanced her growing reputation with a dominant win in the Thousand Guineas Prelude to confirm Mike Moroney’s already tall assessment of the daughter of Proisir.

"We have thought she was very good for a while, but you have to put a lid on it until they do it. But she's a pretty special filly,” Mike said.

"She is not overly big, but she is a real athlete and is probably one of the better ones I've had and she had to do it the tough way today which is always good to see.”

The Melbourne Racing Club's timetable shift of the $1.5m Thousand Guineas to November 18 now gives the stable something to ponder ahead of the fillies' classic.

"The decision we've got to make now is if we give her a run 10 days before on Melbourne Cup Day or whether we go straight into it," Moroney said. "She'll tell us.

"She got onto her toes a little bit today. Around the stalls we had to keep her walking and marching. She could hear the overhead stuff and I think she started to lose the plot a bit.

"When we put the saddle on her she quietened right down and I watched her walk around. She was pretty good."

Coeur Volante was purchased by Paul Moroney for $90,000 at the 2022 New Zealand Karaka Sales and lstarted her career for Ballymore Stables in New Zealand.

Later in the day stable favourite Buffalo River added his second Moonga Stakes with another front-running performance under Celine Gaudrey.

"Celine gave him a perfect ride, I could tell before they turned for home that he was travelling easily still so I thought it'd take a good one to run past him because the other day he was off the bridle and she possibly got a couple of sections a little bit wrong but today it was just picture perfect I thought.” Mike said.

"We decided to take the ear muffs off and since we've done that it's certainly livened him up and we've trained him on the treadmill a bit, changing things round a bit.

They say you can't teach old dogs new tricks but you can."