Te Akau Friday Update

David writes:

It has been another exciting week at Te Akau Stud and we were all absolutely thrilled to see our Racing Manager Jamie Richards win another amateur riders race at Te Aroha on Wednesday.

What an incredible record Jamie has, underlining what a capable horseman he is.  To have had seven amateur rides for four wins, two seconds and a fifth placing is a truly remarkable achievement.  Although Highly Likely only won by a head, it was a good ride by Jamie to get him over the line.

It is also nice to have a good winter horse in the stable - I bought Highly Likely out of the South Island Sale from Southland breeders the McKenzie brothers who are large dairy farmers and who are mad keen on their racing.  So it was great to win with a horse that they bred and no doubt follow with interest.

It was quite amazing that, even though some riders said that Te Aroha on Wednesday was the heaviest track they had ever ridden on, Highly Likely didn't blow a match out afterwards (not sure about the rider tho - ha ha)!  The horse went home and ate up all his feed that night and that shows us that he handled the heavy track really well.

I can see this horse in years to come really performing at the likes of the Wellington Winter meeting in races such as the Parliamentary and so on.

New Zealand racing in the winter can be quite uneventful (some say even boring) without a horse like this and I can see he has the potential to be an exciting winter horse in the future for the Fortuna team. He still has a lot of strengthening to do and he is going to develop into a pretty decent sort of horse.

Karyn was in Wellington this week for another meeting of the Arts' Council and has a busy time ahead before we go away with commitments for the Waikato Racing Club.

I have been following the Royal Ascot meeting this week and noticed that in the Ascot Gold Cup the Queen's horse was narrowly beaten - she won this race last year and they were aiming for a back to back double.  No such good fortune in 2014 sadly for Her Majesty.

One of the most exciting stallions to emerge at Royal Ascot this year is Starspangledbanner.  He only has a very small number of live progeny due to fertility problems. I bought a beautiful filly this year at Karaka by Starspangledbanner out of Miss Echezeaux for $200,000 and this filly has broken in beautifully and is now back in the stable where we will aim to have her ready to trial in August.

We have had a huge amount of rain this week but the grass is still growing as it is just so mild - it is amazing what a mild winter we are having thus far.

This weekend I have my daughter Sarah and her partner Nick coming to stay on Saturday night.  My sister Sue is also coming for dinner with my nephew GD Jones, as are our great friends and (sort of) neighbours Diane and George Brown.

So it will be roast lamb on the weber followed by rugby!  It would be great to see our boys have a clean sweep against the English - go the All Blacks!

Before that of course we will be closely following the Brisbane races as Costa Viva lines up in the Group 1 $500,000 Tattersall's Tiara - it's a cracking field and she has a dreadful draw, something which has plagued her whole Australian campaign.  We know how good she is and she is superbly well within herself - all she needs is luck.