Te Akau Friday Update

David writes:

Rain is on the way.  This always puts a smile on the farmers' faces.

What a great week Te Akau Racing Stables has had.  On Wednesday we had three runners at Te Rapa and I was pleased with the way they all went.

I was especially thrilled to see Vive La Difference, our Choisir filly who I bought off Haunui Farm for $67,500, have a great win.  The syndicate was formed so that a couple of good friends of mine could race a filly together and we then widened the group.  The first in to the filly was John Elstob, a Board member of the Waikato Racing Club.  John and I have raced a number of horses together including Corsage who won at top level in New Zealand and in Singapore.

Also in this filly who we know as "Sophie" is Gilbert Southworth who is the Te Akau Stud accountant and who came to work for me initially when he was 14 years old as is Sam Boyd who is well known having worked at Te Akau Stud for 30 years. My most important owner Karyn Fenton-Ellis is involved together with Alan Radford and his wife Glenys.  Alan has been buying my sheep and cattle since 1979 and is a huge part of the success of the Te Akau operation.  Just this week already he had bought over 100 cattle for me.

Blair Alexander, Matt Cameron's partner has a share in the filly.  And you can see now why Matt was so thrilled when he went past the post.  Wayne Guppy is the Mayor of Upper Hutt City and he and his wife Sue are involved, both first time owners with Te Akau.  Wayne is also the Vice President of the Wellington Racing Club and is putting a lot of time and energy into racing administration. Sophie's other owners are Ray and Marg Shine from Hawkes Bay who were on course, as was Terry Duggan from Te Kuiti and Vicky Brinkman from Christchurch watched the race with friends in Auckland.

I could not be more thrilled for these people because it looks like they have a filly that could finish up running in the 1000 Guineas.  She is improving that quickly and it  was a great sign for the owners when Jason rang me on Thursday morning to say that she did not leave one oat after her win.

Then the very next race Matt was at it again with Rockfast.  Rockfast was really impressive and is part of a Four Colts' Syndicate that I have put together.  I thought this colt was pretty stylish in his win and you can be rest assured that he will be given every opportunity to win the 2000 Guineas at Riccarton in seven weeks' time.  We will probably run him in the Hawkes Bay Guineas, the Wellington Guineas and then into the New Zealand 2000 Guineas which is literally the same programme that we had with Darci Brahma.

I was rapt for the owners of this colt because the day before at the Cambridge trials they had Imperium (an Encosta De Lago/Ethereal 3YO, another one of the horses in that same syndicate) and he won stylishly in the last heat of the day.  The other horses in the syndicate are Bordeaux, a High Chaparral colt out of Madame Echezeaux who foaled a Frankel colt earlier in the week.  The last horse in the syndicate is Sequitur another High Chaparral colt out of Seduction.

There are a great bunch of guys and girls in these colts with some first time owners and a lot of our longer term owners.  Included in the ownership are Catherine and Glenn Holmes, Glenn is also a Board member of the Waikato Racing Club.

Both of these horses were ridden beautifully by Matt Cameron who bounced them out, steadied them, got them into a beautiful position in a very relaxed manner, had them travelling beautifully, did not cover too much ground, had them well balanced at the 200m and they both finished off in a manner that really impressed me.

If you study racing carefully you will notice that Matt's riding recently has gone to another level.  He is now using the whip in the left hand, right hand and it is such an advantage the moment the horse starts to lug in to have the rider change the whip from the right hand to the left hand.  In the first race on Vive La Difference I felt it was the difference between winning and losing.  Not many of our top jockeys can use the whip in both hands but if I  was the riding master at these apprentice schools they would not be allowed to ride until they could use the whip in the left and right hand equally.

At present at Te Akau Racing we have the best group of staff we have ever had with some really top track work riders and it makes such a difference.  You can see that Jason has had eight wins this season from just 27 runners with half his starters paying a dividend and a strike rate of 3.3 which is unbelievable and this tells me he is putting the right horse in the right race.

As I said Alan Radford has been busy this week buying a lot of cattle.  It is my belief that store cattle are very cheap still and we have been buying cattle in the 270-320kg bracket and these cattle will just explode when the spring grass comes shortly.

Our attention to the weekend turns to Rotorua on Sunday where we have two jumpers running , Secret Whisper in the hurdle race and Sunset Pass in the highweight. Both will be ridden by our really top apprentice Dan Miller who claims 1.5 kgs in the hurdle race and 3kgs on the flat race.

Then we have a big team in Singapore over the weekend.  We have seven in on Friday night and 11 running on Sunday afternoon in Singapore. Isn't the stake money in Singapore just unbelievable with a maiden race $75,000?  It is no wonder that the moment I mention to our owners that Mark is making a box available for their horse, they are so keen to jump at it.  Mark said his best chance this weekend is a horse bred at Te Akau Stud called Riedel who is going to be ridden by Manny Nunes. This horse is by Saperavi who has been winning quite a few trials and races lately.

I have been looking forward all week to the rugby in Wellington on Saturday night which has been taking my attention away from these opposition politicians that talk about implementing a capital gains tax and raising taxes too.

If only they realised just how much effort went in to running a business and how easy it is for them to talk about more spending and more tax. I also see some parties are going to put the minimum wage up to over $18 an hour.  Well that will just about single-handedly destroy the horse racing industry in New Zealand.  I was interested to see Mike Hosking say on the news last night that the minimum wage in America is $7.  Why have a minimum wage?  When I first started working on a farm I knew absolutely nothing and was not worth the equivalent of $5 an hour so who would have wanted to employ me and pay $18?

It all sounds good but when it comes to running a business I am afraid politicians it does not work.  The other thing that is driving me crazy is when the politicians talk about Lochinvar Station by way of example. The point that they are missing is that the political parties do not own Lochinvar station.  It is a privately owned farm and surely they have the right to sell the farm to whoever has the most amount of money.

NO more from me on politics until after the election.