Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

It has been a terrific few days for the stable, with five winners across Thursday through to Saturday, which is always great for our owners.

We kicked things off with a nice win in Melbourne with Wonderful Sky, an Ole Kirk filly I purchased at the Magic Millions' Sale. She is raced by our long-time friend Ronald Lau and will likely now target a stakes' race in Adelaide. 

This win was followed up with a quartet of winners on Saturday. Avantaggia was a very good winner at Otaki and looks well placed to step up to stakes' company at her next start.

At Riccarton, where Hunter and our team is doing a fantastic job, it was a winning treble for the day. Enchantment was a particularly special result, becoming our 10th winner of the Listed Welcome Stakes - a race we have had wonderful success in over the years. It was great to see her add valuable black type to her pedigree, and we are delighted for Seamus Mills and his team, who we really enjoy training for.

To make it even better, we quinellaed the race with Never Too Much, another horse we feel very fortunate to have in the stable for Cliff and Janice Matson and Katrina Dansted.

Our tough and genuine horse Insatiable recorded his sixth win, showing great determination to take out the Open Handicap 1200m, while Cognoscenti rounded off the day with a strong performance to make it back-to-back wins.

There were also a number of very good efforts from horses that went close. Hakkinen ran a strong second, as did Cool ‘N’ Fast, while Vivacious ran a brave race for third. Perlino also secured valuable black type when finishing third in the Listed NZB Insurance Stakes.

These results mean that Te Akau leads the New Zealand Trainers’ Premiership by 28 wins, now sitting on 107 victories, with a very pleasing strike rate of 5.9. Mark and Sam also lead the way in prize money won for our owners with $7,453,845, and for Group and Listed wins, with Enchantment’s success bringing our season tally to 16 - three at Group 1 level.

Across our entire operation, spanning both New Zealand and Australia, and across both Islands, we have now recorded 130 wins and almost $10.5 million in prizemoney for our owners this season. We are very proud of what the whole team continues to achieve - both at the stables and on the farm - and very grateful for the support of our owners who make it all possible.

It has also been a busy and productive week on the farm. We have been sending lambs to Wilson Hellaby, and I was very pleased with how our tailing lambs killed out at 17.2kgs. We have now finished sending our steers to the works for the time being.

The rain we have had over the past couple of weeks, and especially over the weekend, has made a huge difference, and we have grown a tremendous amount of grass - the farm is looking as good as it ever has.

On Friday morning I was out working with the fertiliser truck, opening the gates. We use Wealleans Groundspread out of Matamata, and on Thursday we had two planes spreading fertiliser over the hills - covering over 2,000 acres in just five hours. It was a perfect day for it, and with the ensuring rain, the result has been outstanding, we are in a very good position heading into the winter.

We have also had four young people helping out on the farm during their school and university holidays. They have been doing a great job clearing weeds and helping with general work - it’s always good to see young people getting involved and showing such great work ethic.

On Friday we also weaned a further five mares. The foals have done extremely well this year, and we have a lovely crop by Sword of State, Embellish, Noverre and Paddington. They had their feet trimmed and were drenched, before heading out into a 35-acre paddock.

Friday night it was off to Raglan, catching up with my son Davey and his partner Lucy, and my daughter Sarah, and their boys Corey and Benji. Then on the weekend we were back on the farm putting more fertiliser on, before settling in to enjoy the day's success at Otaki and Riccarton.  While the predicted storm weather saw Te Rapa postponed, we look forward to being there on the new date on Friday where we will have a nice team engaged. 

Have a great week ahead!

Main picture - Enchantment wins the Listed Welcome Stakes