Mitchell plotting late Queensland campaign

Tarissa Mitchell is keen to travel further afield with her Civics double act.

The experienced Cambridge horsewoman is getting the best out of two of the stallion’s sons with Call Me Royal and Irish Call continuing to star for the training newcomer.

Mitchell enjoyed a successful southern venture with the stablemates after Call Me Royal won at Riccarton and backed up a week later to finish a close second in Saturday’s Great Autumn Handicap after Irish Call had claimed the opening event on the card.

“They will be having a week in the paddock and they’ll tell me when they’re ready to go again,” Mitchell said.

“I am looking at Queensland, but I’ll be waiting until the carnival is finished and everybody else has gone home.

“I’ve looked at the programmes and there are $60,000 races every Saturday and I’ll have a base at the Gold Coast with Graeme Boyd.”

Boyd and Mitchell’s father, the late Bruce MacDonald to whom she was apprenticed and rode 83 winners before retirement in 1999, were lifelong friends.

Mitchell is in her first season of training after getting to know Civics and his stock well during a 10-year working spell at the stallion’s home at Cambridge Thoroughbred Lodge.

“I’ve got a yearling by him as well that I’ve just broken in,” she said.

Call Me Royal provided Mitchell with her first success in September and he has since won a further three races and failed by the slenderest of margins on Saturday to advance his record.

He travelled well in front for rider Lisa Allpress and rallied gamely in the straight before going down by a nose to Merci Cherie.

“He faltered a fraction and changed leg and there was a bit of swelling in his fetlock joint, but I got him checked out and he’s fine,” Mitchell said.