Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

For the last two days we have been on the road looking at yearlings. On Monday afternoon we went to Mapperley Stud and then Blandford Lodge where we saw nice yearlings at both places.  Simm's Davidson's Mapperley Stud is a wonderful nursery in Matamata that is not dissimilar to Te Akau Stud as has a lot of beautiful rolling country and they have bred some really great horses off that farm.

On Monday night Karyn, Julia-Rose and I went and stayed at Waikato Stud - they have a terrific guest house there and we were fortunate to be able to watch first hand the way the property is being run. The Chittick family has owned Waikato Stud for approximately 20 years (before that it was a public company) and they have developed it from 400 acres to around 1200 acres. This season they have served about 800 mares and they have 40 full time staff which throughout the season gain an additional 15 staff to prepare yearlings for the sales. It is operated on a hands-on basis by Mark Chittick who now owns Waikato Stud after purchasing it from his father around 18 months ago. It is an unbelievably good property and gee they really breed some good horses on this farm.

One of the stallions they stand is Rock ‘n' Pop and a lot of the staff told me just how impressed they are with the Rock â€˜n' Pop foals and what a genuine chance he has of making it as a successful stallion in the years ahead. Rock ‘n' Pop was syndicated by Te Akau and trained by Jason and the Te Akau team. He won the Group 1 2000 Guineas at Riccarton and stands for $9,000.  We have eight foals at Te Akau by him and I certainly agree with the team from Waikato Stud with how impressive they are.

Yesterday morning Julia-Rose and I were up at 4.00am and were at track work by 4.30am. It is a marvellous time of the day to see all the young people working, riding the horses out and it's sad that Matamata has such a miserable day today for its Christmas racing functions.

At the Te Aroha trials yesterday Te Akau had some very nice two year olds that performed well. We had a Swiss Ace filly that I bought for $20,000 - now called Love Actually she had her first trial and won very impressively. We had a Fastnet Rock filly who I bought for $400,000 now called Special Memories and she was also very impressive.  Another to impress was Unsurpassed, the Exceed and Excel colt that I bought in Sydney.  It is such a shame that tomorrow's trials (that were so necessary after they cut back the fields on Tuesday) have been abandoned - the wild weather has damaged the venue so the trials have been called off.  So frustrating!

After watching the horses work and having some breakfast it was time to see the first of 70 yearlings that we inspected yesterday and of course there were some magnificent types.  This year at Karaka I believe we will see some unique value and I intend to buy some really nice fillies as with New Zealand racing it is such an advantage with weight allowance they get as well as the NZB pearl Series opportunities.