Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

It's that time of the year again!

On Friday I filed away my Ready to Run catalogue and the next day New Zealand Bloodstock hand-delivered the two catalogues for the January National Yearling Sale to Te Akau Stud. Gee, it really is a company the whole country can be very proud of.

I really enjoy going through the catalogue and seeing the pedigrees that interest me. I will spend at least two hours each night doing this as, next week, we start our yearling inspections, beginning with all the studs in the Auckland area. The following week, we then travel to the Central Districts.

I intend to personally inspect about 1100 yearlings, and from that we will finish up with about 120 that will really take my eye. I will then get Jamie Richards and Mark Walker, as well as our vet Dr Douglas Black, to inspect them. As you can see, it is very much a team effort when it comes to selecting our horses. It is a massive undertaking, but I do it because I enjoy it.

We have all our mares and foals home now, which is exciting. Later today, we will have our first foal by Xtravagant arriving home. I sent four mares to Xtravagant last year, and brought two home and left two in Australia to foal. Those two mares are now back in foal, and are set come home later this week.

Xtravagant was purchased by Newhaven Park when he finished his racing career. He is a very fertile stallion and all of the reports on his foals are very encouraging.

We have had more rain on the farm this past weekend, and now the only problem we have, is trying to control the grass. I love having this problem however!

This week we are drenching all our lambs, drafting all the ewe lambs off and splitting the wether lambs into size. The best of them will go on to our summer crop. We will have another 500 to 600 lambs ready to go to the works just before Christmas.

As I look out from my office window, I can see Avantage, Gingernuts and Te Akau Shark all enjoying the wonderful green grass that we have. They are three great horses that love the attention that we all give them, and they look amazing.

Karyn and I would like to thank all those investors who bought into our Ready to Run purchases. They sold in record time, and it is quite incredible the number of people that wanted to join the team which Karyn and I are so proud to lead.

We all got a huge thrill of winning our first race for Brendan and Jo Lindsay this [ast weekend. It's just amazing what they are doing for New Zealand racing. I purchased the Savabeel filly  Probabeel at Karaka for $380,000 and she looks like a very exciting filly to me.

It's been an amazing year with quinellas in two Group One races, but I think that one of our stand-out efforts was winning the Group 1 Singapore Gold Cup with Elite Invincible. Now that was a wonderful training performance from Mark Walker. It was just incredible to win that race after missing such a valuable lead up race.

Then for Jamie to win the Group 2 Coupland's Mile with Te Akau Shark who was going from 1400 to 1600 metres and hadn't had a race for five weeks. Another stand-out effort - and after the race "the Shark" wouldn't have blown a candle out.

I am very proud of both our trainers, but they can't do it on their own. I am so lucky to have the best staff in the world in Singapore, Matamata and at the farm supporting them.

That's why it was also very special yesterday afternoon to have our senior teams from both the Stud and the stable at the farm for a special thank you dinner - we had about 30 of the team there including our vet Dr Doug Black - it was a really enjoyable day, starting at about 2.30pm and off home by 7pm as there is always an early start to think about the next day!

Have a great week everyone.