An Xtra-Special Weekend

David writes:

It was another hugely successful weekend for Te Akau Racing - kicking off with two runners and two winners at the Tauranga meeting on Thursday.  The winning roll then continued into Friday for the Te Akau New Zealand team - with two further winners from just three starters, this time in Blenheim.

That meant four winners from five starters and all in about 24 hours.

Well done to the connections of Highly Likely and Skyscraper (both bought by me at Karaka) who prevailed at Tauranga and then Affinee (another Karaka purchase) and Hushed (on co-breeder/owner Dr Ronald Boet's birthday) at Waterlea, Blenheim on Friday.

The Te Akau New Zealand team was racing at Te Rapa and Hawkes Bay on Saturday and we saw some very good performances indeed - Our Abbadean who we train for the Wentood Grange's Hawkin's family went very close to scoring a winning hatrick and Hall of Fame (a Savabeel two year old who I bought at the Ready to Run sale) went a super race on debut for second just caught in the very final stages.

At the other end of the spectrum, Abidewithme scorched home to finish second in the Group 2 Travis Stakes at Te Rapa, a race she had won last year.  That's more valuable type for the well-bred daughter of Redoute's Choice who we train for Sir Patrick and Lady Hogan - she will now go back to Cambridge Stud and be served by Tavistock and then we look forward to preparing her for what will be her final campaign.  Gosh it would be fitting to win a race like the Group 1 Zabeel Classic as a swan-song for this very good mare.

Obviously the highlight of our weekend was the win by Xtravagant to claim the $70,000 Group 3 Inglis Cambridge Breeders' Stakes over 1200m in superb fashion at Te Rapa - his time was the fastest time recorded since they changed the race to the metric distance - he was a joy to watch as he notched up his third Group race for the season.

As you know Xtravagant's stable name is Blake, named after the intrepid new Zealand adverntuerer Sir Peter Blake and his twitter handle is #sexonhooves.  He did look in magnificent order - a real credit to all our team coming back in with only an exhibtion gallop under his belt - Steve and Jamie and of course Daniel Miller (his constant companion) and Kerry Jones who was also with the team on Saturday - not forgetting another star ride by Matthew Cameron who didn't turn a hair when Xtravagant was taken on and crossed for the first time in his career.

Well done to his fabulous group of owners, many of whom were on course to enjoy the success!

I also want to say how proud we were of Windborne who lined up against Xtravagant and went a ripper of a race for fourth - a truly inspired effort by this game filly who has already won two stakes' races for the Fortuna team.

I unfortunately couldn't be at Te Rapa as Karyn and I had a wedding of a very good friend in Sydney but we decided that one of us needed to be at the wedding and one needed to be at the races and so it was - Karyn, who was joined by our daughter Julia-Rose and her partner Hamish, reported a very good day of racing staged by the Cambridge Jockey Club and the track was in pristime order - and the wedding was also a very happy occasion.

A weekend of winning like this wouldn't be complete without Te Akau Singapore trainer Mark Walker also bringing home a winner.  This weekend there was no Friday racing at Kranji, rather back to back meetings on Sunday and today Monday.  A 2YO Minstrel Court filly called Hello Michelle race a super race to be a narrow winner of the feature juvenile event, the Silver Slipper, worth S$90,000.

So don't forget that Mark has a nice team racing today at Kranji and locally we are loooking forward to racing on our home track of Matamata on Wednesday.