Hansen goes fishing for QTIS Jewel

By Glenn Davis

Trainer Kris Hansen has thrown a line out hoping to hook a spot in next month’s $500,000 QTIS Jewel Final at the Gold Coast with unbeaten filly Ready Marea.

Ready Marea - a Chris McIver mount - lines up against a small field of three rivals in the QTIS Jewel qualifier over 1100 metres at Rockhampton on Tuesday.

A daughter of Better Than Ready, Ready Marea showed she had a bright future when she downed the Clinton Taylor-trained Anthropology at her first race start in a 1050 metre maiden at Callaghan Park on February 5.

Ready Marea was a $25,000 graduate of the 2025 Capricornia Yearling Sale and is raced by Central Queensland grazier Fred Noffke who also races exciting three-year-old Sheza Alibi. 

Sheza Alibi started her career with Hansen and won two of her first four starts before she was transferred to Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman.

The Victorian training partnership subsequently claimed the Group 3 Vanity at Flemington and Group 2 Sandown Guineas at Caulfield last November with Sheza Alibi.

The three-year-old filly completed a hat-trick of wins in the Group 2 Armanasco at Caulfield on Saturday.

Hansen contemplated sending Ready Marea to Brisbane for her debut appearance before deciding to take the easier option at Rockhampton.

“I was looking at sending her to Brisbane for a two-year-old race but in the end, I decided to stay at home,” Hansen said.

“It was a very good win against older horses and I knew she had the ability to take them on.

“Her opposition doesn’t look too strong this time so she should be hard to beat again.

“But, she’ll need to win and win convincingly to run in the QTIS Jewel Final and if she does, she’ll definitely go south.

“Her main aim is the Capricornia Yearling Sale race here, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Hansen has a team of eight horses in work and is the son of highly respected Rockhampton trainer Kevin Hansen and has been involved in racing most of his life.

He was an apprentice jockey for his father before weight ended a promising career when his family was based at Ipswich.

Hansen also rode trackwork and was foreman for 10 years with top Sydney trainer John Hawkes as well as working for former trainer Bryan Guy at the Gold Coast.

He also spent time riding work in Singapore and is currently in his fourth year of training.

Hansen rates last year’s Northern Jewel winner in Townsville, Astra Star, as his best horse he’s trained outside Sheza Alibi.