Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

Wow we had some heavy rain last night - together with thunder and lightning! And there is more to come.

The Waikato is pretty wet now and we are really lucky we don't have many horses still to race this season with the tracks deteriorating.  Most of our focus is on educating our young horses that we have bought, while soon starting to gear the team up for Spring trials and campaigns.

Yesterday we did a video of two fillies that we bought in Sydney and gee it is so exciting watching them work.  The two we videoed are the Zoustar/Luminous Harmony filly and the Redoute's Choice/Aware filly.  They are both stunning fillies that you should seriously look at.

The Redoute's Choice filly looks a real two year old and will be nominated for the Golden Slipper.  She has a beautiful and very fast pedigree.  Her grandmother ran third in the Group 1 Golden Slipper after winning both the lead-up races.  It is a family full of speed and this filly to my eye could well be winning races in October to November.

The other filly we videoed was the Zoustar filly who is out of a Fastnet Rock mare.  Both Zoustar and Fastnet Rock have been on fire lately and this top filly has broken in beautifully.  There are only two shares left in these two fillies so it is not too late to be involved in a rising two year old filly.

I only bought fillies at this sale for four reasons:

1. Fillies can run in a Group 1 NZ 2000 Guineas and the Group 1 Derby etc against the boys.


2. They have a terrific weight allowance .


3. They have terrific residual value even if they do not win a race and are worth a fortune when they finish racing if they win black type.


4. As three year olds we have the New Zealand Bloodstock Filly of the year series that is popular with a terrific bonus for the winner.  Te Akau has won this five times.


5. Not to mention races like the Group 2 Matamata Breeders stakes which are for fillies only that colts and geldings cannot run in - plus the fillies are registered for the lucrative Pearl Bonus Series which for a one-off fee, they can contest bonus races across their two, three and four year old seasons.

So with all of these top yearlings it is little wonder there is a spring in everybody's step - yes everybody is extremely excited about the new season.

Also we would like to congratulate Paul Richards on his impressive winner last week in Melbourne.  With Paul coming to join the Te Akau team in just over two weeks, we will also be welcoming his Melbourne winner Mazzuro to the stable. Mazzuro is owned by Bill and Sandra Duell and the first horse we started for them was Bojangles who won and is racing at Avondale today.  So best of luck to the team.

Karyn is off to Wellington today for an NZTR members' Council meeting and is then heading south to visit her mum so a busy week for everyone.  We have had Julia-Rose and baby Lucia-Rose at the farm too since Saturday and have had great fun!

Go the tangerine.