A Jolly Flemington mission

The father-and-daughter training team of Richard and Chantelle Jolly are looking to expand their presence in Melbourne with a small number of boxes at Flemington. 

The pair have had six boxes at 'headquarters' since March and hope to have a bigger operation in place in Melbourne in 12 months' time. 

Already they have produced a winner – Losesomewinmore – on Anzac Day at Flemington. 

With the Adelaide Carnival now finished, Richard Jolly said now was the time to have more horses head to Melbourne. 

The team will have three runners on Saturday with Aviatress heading to the Listed Straight Six (1200m) at Flemington on Saturday where she will be joined by Pudding in the benchmark 84 (1800m) and Star Sirius in the fillies and mares benchmark 78 (1200m). 

Jolly said the six boxes he has access to at Flemington were boxes he stayed in years ago when Russell Cameron was training at Flemington. 

"We've got a girl, Kim Wells, who has worked for us in Adelaide, and she has shifted over and is looking after them over there," Jolly said. 

"We only took on a few boxes on to start with as we didn't want to take on more than we can chew to start. 

"We could have had a bigger barn, but we might not have been able to fill it straight away, so there's no point paying for boxes that are going to be empty. 

"But it's something that we may be looking at in 12 months' time and hopefully in time we can expand and become a bit bigger, but we're just taking small steps at the moment." 

The Jolly stable has made hit-and-run visits on numerous occasions previously and invariably head home empty handed. 

He said by having a stable in Melbourne it would also likely prolong the program of horses. 

"We've always got something in the stable to run over there as the higher benchmark horses run themselves out of Adelaide," Jolly said. 

"So, now that we've got a bit of a base there, we can leave them there rather than being a hit-and-run type of thing and we can also get an extra run or two out of them rather than going backwards and forwards." 

Aviatress won a Stakes race at Caulfield during the spring and won the Listed Matrice Stakes (1200m) at Morphettville first-up in March before two unplaced runs in Black Tye races last month. 

Jolly said there were excuses for Aviatress when beating just one runner home in the Group 1 Robert Sangster Stakes (1200m) at Morphettville on April 26. 

"She pulled-up physically fine but her blood count was a bit off," Jolly said. 

"Her blood count has been lifted back to what it should be, and her work has been good since. 

"We gave her an extra week rather than run her in the (Group 3) Proud Miss last week, and that extra week has done her good. 

"She could definitely bounce back. Her best is certainly good enough."