Te Akau Midweek Update

David writes:

Even when we are not busy at the races, life is busy at Te Akau Stud.

Just last weekend, we had two truly great New Zealanders and their wives to stay at Te Akau Stud - Tony Sissons and his wife, Julie, and Ian McKinnon and his wife Jenny.

Tony is Headmaster of King's School in Auckland and taught my son Davey when he was Headmaster at Southwell School in Hamilton.

Ian McKinnon had a great teaching career. He started as a teacher the day I started as a pupil at King's College. He was a truly inspiring teacher with an incredible passion for the success of each student combined with being a firm but fair disciplinarian - something that is sadly missing today.

After teaching at King's College for around ten years, Ian became Headmaster at Wanganui Collegiate before going on to become Headmaster of the Lower School at Eaton.

I was incredibly proud to show these two wonderful couples several of our horses, and of course, take them around the farm. We then had a great evening reminiscing about the past and talking about the good old days.

Ian McKinnon was easily the best teacher I had as a young man growing up and being a top teacher is an incredible gift.

The farm is in good shape but we could really use some decent rain. Although the stock are thriving and doing extremely well, there isn't the surplus of feed. Some really good rain next week would fix this.

Last night, several of our senior staff and Fortuna's John Galvin met at Jamie's home for drinks to celebrate Melody Belle's unbelievable Spring. This season Fortuna has had six runners with Te Akau for five wins and a second, so it was good to have a small celebration of that success.

I always enjoy going over and inspecting the horses, and seeing the wonderful team we have in Matamata looking after them.

Tomorrow we have the Waipa trials, which will see some nice two year olds ready to go and several older horses trialling as part of their fitness programme.

It's all go with the horses at the moment, with something literally on each day. And it only gets busier as we lead into the Cup Carnival at Riccarton which is now only about three weeks away.

My focus at present is the Ready to Run Sale at Karaka in four weeks' time. Early next week my analyses of all the pedigrees will be complete and the videos of all the horses galloping at the Te Rapa breeze ups will be ready for me to start watching. Then the following week, the inspections begin.

Team Te Akau has had incredible success at this sale. Three years ago, we bought two horses  - Gingernuts and Hall of Fame - and they won four Group 1 races between them. The following year we bought Te Akau Shark, then last year ten horses - and we like them all. Some have already been in the winner's circle and some are just about ready to race and have shown serious ability on the training track.

This Saturday, our focus is the lead up race at Ashburton for the Cup Carnival.

Opie is going down to ride some of the team, including Our Flying Ace in the Listed Barneswood Farm Stakes, which used to be called Ray Coupland Stakes. This is a race that we have won on numerous occasions. Our Flying Ace is an unbeaten son of Darci Brahma that I purchased at the NZB Premier Sale for $140,000. We also have some other good chances at Ashburton.

Jamie Richards has had an amazing start to his training career, and I thought that you may be interested in seeing the current standings on the NZTR Trainers Premiership below.

Yes, it sure is a very exciting time of the year to be involved in this great industry.
Premierships are based on performances during each racing season (August 1st - July 31st). The jockey and trainer with the most wins at the end of the season are the Premiership winners.