A week of mixed emotions ended with a winning treble for Danny O’Brien at Flemington on Saturday.

O’Brien opened the meeting with Excitable Boy (LR Festival Of Racing Stakes) and followed up with Keep Cool (Jeune Hcp) and Kutchinsky (LR Roy Higgins Quality).

“We lost Master O’Reilly this week,” O’Brien revealed at headquarters.  “He was a great warrior and provided me with one of my biggest thrills in the 2007 Caulfield Cup.”

Excitable Boy (2c More Than Ready – Sequential by Lion Hunter) is the 109th stakes winner for Vinery champion More Than Ready.  “He’s a tough two-year-old and let down like a nice horse,” O’Brien said.  “That will be a confidence booster and we will chase more stakes races with him here.”

A $75,000 buy at the 2012 Gold Coast Magic Millions, Excitable Boy had been on the wrong end of interference at his previous start in the LR Talindert Stakes down the straight.  “Nothing went right that day,” O’Brien recalled.  “He got into real trouble – it was a train-wreck.”

Excitable Boy’s dam Sequential is a half-sister to LR SAJC Cinderella Stakes winner Get To Work (Snippets).  Second dam Sequin (Lure) is a half-sister to Hong Kong G1 winner Scintillation and Australian stakes winners Shania Dane and Risk Aversion.

More Than Ready has been solid as a rock for Vinery since his arrival in 2001 and he stepped up to the plate again on Saturday.  The Vinery team were pumped up for an even bigger day at Flemington before All To Hard caught a cold on the eve of the G1 Australian Guineas.

There will be other days for All To Hard and there are more ahead for More Than Ready flag-bearer More Joyous who is primed for her return to racing.  The champion mare is a rising a seven year-old but cruised home in two trials last month.

More Joyous will start first-up in the newly-upgraded G1 Canterbury Stakes (1300m) at Rosehill on March 23.  She beat Monton a length in the G2 Canterbury Stakes last year and thrashed Love Conquers All by three lengths in the 2011 edition.

Vinery has 11 yearlings entered for the Inglis Melbourne Premier Sale and the first to parade will be the Sebring – Catechuchu colt (Lot 285) on Monday afternoon.  The dam was a stakes winner in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

– Karl Patterson