Te Akau Friday Update

David writes:

What an exciting weekend of racing we have in Australasia this weekend.  Te Akau has horses racing at four venues in New Zealand and Singapore.

On Saturday we have our first two year old runner in New Zealand for the season in Windborne.  This is a Darci Brahma filly that John Galvin of Fortuna Thoroughbreds astutely purchased for $100,000.  She has been most impressive at the trials and she will be ridden by Cameron Lammas.

Cameron had a severe injury about 18 months ago and has only just resumed riding.  He is one of the best horsemen in the business and it is great to have him back riding work each morning for us.

Also at Ellerslie is King's Rock, a four year old gelding by Fastnet Rock, and Dan Miller has done a sensational job with him getting him back to the races.  With any sort of luck he can be in the winner's circle tomorrow.

We also have No Tricks, a Savabeel filly owned by Monovale Farm - of course who also race Puccini.  This filly has been most impressive in everything that we have done with her and looks like she is headed for a very exciting future.  Jason Bridgman will be at Ellerslie tomorrow.

At 1am this morning Jamie Richards pulled out of the Te Akau Racing Stables heading for Otaki with Rockfast. This colt is running at Trentham on Saturday. We like to get the horses down there by Friday morning and then we take them from Otaki to Trentham just for the day.  Providing he goes a good race and comes through it well Jamie will head to Christchurch with Rockfast, where he will join five horses that we already have there.

At Riccarton tomorrow we have Flaming and Darci's Gold in the Listed Ray Coupland Stakes - which we have won seven times. Bronte Lass is also down there and she is racing too.

Yesterday afternoon we flew Wolfwhistle down.  He is in a stakes' race, the Spring Classic which we won last year with Viana.  Wolfwhistle flew down well and has settled in well into his new surroundings.

Te Akau Assistant Trainer Pam Gerard is looking after our team in Christchurch and, provided they keep plenty of water on the track and it does not get too firm, we will finish up with eight or nine horses at Riccarton for the Carnival.  Te Akau stable rider Matt Cameron will be riding all days of the Riccarton Carnival.

On Monday at Te Rapa the Waikato Racing Club has a terrific race meeting.  Karyn and I will be there and in the last race we have Vive La Difference racing.  She has been working really nicely and we feel that although she is really looking for 2000m she is still going to go a good race at Te Rapa.

We have had a very busy week at Te Akau Stud and yesterday we sold the first cattle that we have had to sell for six months.  We are selling a truck and trailer load of heifers that we reared on nurse cows.  I am expecting them to weigh out at about 300kgs so they are worth over $1,700 each which is record level for us for heifers.  Next week we are taking advantage of the very firm prices and we are selling the first of the steers and three units of bulls.

Yesterday I was talking to Australasia's champion jockey, James MacDonald on the phone.  James told me he had been able to get on Criterion in the Cox Plate, a Sebring colt owned by Sir Owen Glenn and trained by David Paine.  This came to pass with James' great friend Hugh Bowman being suspended.  I thought Criterion could be very hard to beat in the Cox Plate going on his run last start.  My own feeling is that this is not a vintage Cox Plate field although there are some obviously very good horses in the race.

Yesterday at the Cambridge trials we won five trials including one by an Encosta de Lago/Grand Echezeaux filly owned by Sir Peter Vela.  This filly is a half-sister to three stallions at stud including Darci Brahma and Burgundy and we are looking forward to seeing her at the races in the next few weeks.

In the next month our attention turns to the Ready to Run sale and we hope to buy horses at all levels at this sale.  Mark Walker has been looking carefully at all the horses that breezed up at Te Rapa on Monday and Tuesday of this week and we would love to think that we could buy another Savabeel.  We bought seven Savabeels at the Karaka Sales and you just cannot have enough of them.  He is developing into a sensational sire with his progeny winning at all levels.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you at Te Rapa on Monday.