Te Akau Monday Update
1 October, 2018
David writes:
If I could have one wish in life, do you know what it would be?
I would love somebody to give me a calendar with the rainfall we will get each week for the next 12 months! That would make a huge difference to how we manage a farm!
Although we are just comfortable for feed, we don't have a surplus and the normal Spring flush certainly hasn't arrived yet. We need rain in the Waikato however on the up side, the lambs are doing really well with all the fine weather. We will have our first draft of fat lambs in four weeks' time and we will also then wean and shear all the sheep.
The Spring is such an exciting time of the year seeing the cattle putting on weight and losing their thick winter coats and it's also a great time of the year for young horses to spell - the grass is so full of goodness. The racing also starts to step up with the better horses out on the improved tracks.
We are so lucky training at Matamata - the facilities that we have there are unmatched anywhere in New Zealand in my view and it's been a big help to Jamie and our team getting the horses ready to race. We have some pretty exciting horses that are just about ready to race now that the tracks have dried out.
It's been great having Mark Walker home for the past few days - with his children and our godchildren Zavier and Alexis. We had a wonderful catch up over the weekend with Mark and also our daughter Julia-Rose, her fiance Hamish and baby Lucia-Rose. Mark has still been busy working, not only with his Singapore commitments but he went to Matamata last week at 3am to take in our trackwork and is back there again at the same time tomorrow.
This weekend Karyn and I are going to Hawkes Bay to stay - Livamol Classic day at Hastings is one of our favourite race days in New Zealand and we will have a runner in each of the Group races. Hastings has been a very good track to Te Akau - we have won all of the Group 1's of the Spring Carnival there - the Tarzino Trophy (Melody Belle), the Windsor Park Plate (Princess Coup, Gingernuts and Melody Belle) and the Livamol (Distinctly Secret and Princess Coup twice - when the race was twice worth $2 million) which has been known as the Kelt and the Spring Classic.
Outside of the Group 1 of course, the race of the day is starting to look like the Group 3 Red Badge Spring Sprint where Te Akau Shark will step out. This is an unbelievably strong field in the making but Te Akau Shark has been flying in his trackwork so we are looking forward to seeing him back at the scene of his last start, impressive victory. We believe that he will only get 53kgs which is too light a weight for our stable riders Opie Bosson and Shafiq Rusof, so we have engaged senior jockey Michael Coleman to ride him.
As well as a strong representation at Hastings in the black type races with Our Abbadean in the Group 1 Livamol and Sword of Osman contesting the Group 2 Hawkes Bay Guineas, we will have nine runners at Riccarton on Saturday so we will be glued to the TV screens at Hastings in between races.