"Te Akau Lockdown Love"

Welcome to Day 4 of our new daily feature - as our world around us changes indelibly, we want to bring some smiles and sunshine every day - yes a small distraction but it does everyone good to be able to smile when times are tough.

When our horses arrived home to Te Akau Stud last week, one of the first floats brought home a girl that stole hearts from the first day she arrived after the Karaka Sale.

Aromatic ( 3f Sacred Falls - Vickezzchardonnay) is the most striking, grey filly - she has so much presence and poise about her - and a ton of kindness. She is a very intelligent girl, a thinker, who looks to have a bright future ahead of her.

She also has the biggest ears that you have probably ever seen - they are massive! Obviously we did not want to nickname her "Big Ears" so she is called "Vino" after the mother!!

Now the big - long - ears are something David loves in a horse.

So what's with the ears? I did some checking and actually it may have been a longer held belief than we could imagine! This is what the ancient Bedouins have believed for over 1000 years. They described the ideal Arabian war horse like this:

Three things short: the dock, the hind legs and the back.
Three things broad: the forehead, the chest and the croup.
Three things LONG: the EARS, the neck and the forelegs
Three things clean: the skin, the eyes and the hoof.

The Bedouins developed a breed of horse that went on to found every other light, athletic breed in the world (including the thoroughbred) - Racing History tells us - "perhaps they just might have been on to something".

Aromatic is a terrifically bred filly that spelled out a future in no uncertain terms with an effortless victory in the NZB Insurance Pearl Series Maiden 1400 metres on 18 March at Rotorua, where she also collected an $11,500 bonus.

After charging home for second in
the fastest last 600m (34.7) on debut, she was narrowly defeated at her second
start, but distanced her rivals and simply cantered home to win by six and a
half lengths.

In just his second season of
training solo, Aromatic provided Jamie Richards with his 200^th
winner.

Her dam, Vickezzchardonnay,
by the highest priced yearling to ever sell at Karaka - Don Eduardo ($3.6
million) (Zabeel) - was an impressive five-time winner from 1600m to
2100m. Aromatic, the fifth foal and third individual winner from the mare, is
from the first crop of ill-fated Waikato Stud stallion Sacred Falls (O'Reilly),
a Champion Three-Year-Old (up to 1600m) and quadruple Group One winner that
passed away late last year.

She was bred and sold by Tony
Rider (Milan Park) at Karaka, and, along with recent debut winning stable-mate
High Achiever (Pins), may have got under the guard of few after they were
bought within an hour of each other, late in the day, at the 2018 Karaka Book 1
Sale.

After the pair sold, Rider said: “David (Ellis) and Jamie (Richards) stole those two and they're both bloody nice horses”.

#loveinthelockdown

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