Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

What an incredibly exciting week it has been for Karyn and me.

Karyn went to London for our daughter Lydia's 30^th birthday and celebrated that and then two days later, her partner Jamie proposed to her in Lisbon where he had taken her for a birthday surprise.  He popped the question on an open rooftop restaurant where they were staying and the hotel staff secretly videoed it for Jamie.  It was lovely to see Jamie get down on one knee with the ring in hand, and all Lydia can do was cry, she was so overwhelmed! So now we have two weddings coming up so I need to work a bit harder!!

Another highlight for Karyn was going to Ascot and seeing Torcedor win a Group 3 race by five lengths - just incredible to see the tangerine win at this famous racecourse. It was an amazing five days for Te Akau wining Group races in three different countries - now that is a hard act to follow.

On Monday I went to the May Sale at Karaka - I had Jamie Richards as well as the Hayes family with me - Hamish and Julia-Rose and their baby Lucia-Rose - she was getting an early education of the sales experience and took it all in her very young stride! I bought a beautiful Savabeel filly at the sale for John Galvin.  Te Akau train all the Fortuna horses and they are really on a roll at the moment - it was great to see our training team deliver a double recently for John and his team.

We still have shares left in fillies from the Sydney Easter Sale.

This is a wonderful opportunity to get involved in the racing industry.  They all have beautiful pedigrees and watching them work at the farm this morning they are pretty exciting racehorses in the making and for the pedigrees great buying - all these fillies have serious residual value.  Have a look at the video I did of them all at the farm - you will see how happy and settled in they all are.

This week we have sent 16 horses from the farm back into training.  It is so rewarding seeing them come out for a spell then watching them thrive with the break - then seeing them go back into the stable is great.  It has been an amazing autumn at Te Akau and very warm with the best grass I have ever seen!  So horses have done particularly well while spelling and all of our weanlings have also done very well too on this beautiful grass.  They all look amazing.

Karyn gets home from London tomorrow morning so it is all go at Te Akau.  She will be straight back in to the office - and she tells me she can't wait!

I hope you are having a great week!