The race favourite looked in real trouble at the top of the straight when hard ridden by jockey Mark Zahra towards the back of the field, but eventually picked up and produced a scintillating finale to only go down by a half-head on the line.

O'Sullivan was somewhat happy to accept the result given he gave the horse little chance of being in the finish when looking under pressure and given the fact she claimed the group 2 Matriarch Stakes over the Flemington carnival in a photo.

"I'm disappointed to not get it, but in saying that at the 400m mark I'd sort of given up, so to get second prize I'll sort of take," O'Sullivan said.

"At one stage I thought we were going to get nothing.

"We got the photo at Flemington and could have missed that one and so we could have got this one but we missed it.

"I'm grateful we got the photo finish in Melbourne but we can't begrudge not getting this one."

Given a chance to reflect, O'Sullivan rates the Matriarch Stakes the biggest win of his career.

"It's probably my biggest win because of the stage it was done on," he told The Courier.

O'Sullivan now has some big plans for the four-year-old, which include a mission towards the lucrative All-Star Mile in the autumn and then a trip to Sydney for a group 1.

"Loosely we might come back, and we'll need the public support here, for the All-Star Mile. We might try to run her second-up in that," he said.

"She races well at Flemington and she seems quite a popular horse and I reckon she'd vote up well.

"And we've all got an affair to remember, haven't we?"

Meanwhile, the fairy tale shot at a third-straight Ballarat Cup came up short for Kiwia, his trainer Archie Alexander and jockey John Allen.

Kiwia began slowly and sat at the back of the field for much of the race before running home for 11^th, beaten close to five lengths by winner Irish Flame.