Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

It is an incredibly busy time for everyone at Te Akau every which way you look - at our New Zealand stable, at Te Akau Stud and of course for our Singapore stable too.

In Singapore Mark and Julia, Gus and Karen and the whole team are counting down to the end of the season in mid December.  It has been a massive year for our stable based at Kranji with Mark currently sitting on 79 training successes for the season.  He's had 80 runners up and 116 third place-getters and if you think that if even a quarter of those had been winners (many beaten by the narrowest of margins) he'd definitely had 100 winners plus for 2015.

We could not be more proud of Mark as he counts down to his first Singapore Trainers' Premiership - while we are not "home and hosed" yet, and we never take anything forgranted, the prospects are looking very bright.  He started the first day of the season 1 January 2015 with a winning treble and has been in front for basically the whole year.  It is a huge effort if he does claim the title - in only his fifth full season in Singapore.

It will be great to have Mark home in a couple of weeks with Julia and their children following a week later - they will be with us for Christmas and we will celebrate accordingly!

At the farm we have been flat out making haylage - the good news is, this was all completed and baled late last week and about 36 hours later the rain came - and in buckets - just perfect timing and the grass is taking off like you wouldn't believe.  I have the fertiliser trucks here again today and we are very busy with stock movements too.

Now I am moving towards preparing the paddocks with lovely fresh grass growth for the yearlings that will call Te Akau Stud home after the January yearling sales.  I love bringing those young horses home to fresh, clean paddocks - nothing helps give them a better start after the demands of sale time.

The team at the farm love this time of the year too as the foals and their mothers start returning back home, it really is a time of the year that we get very excited about, even though everyone is so busy!

Late last week I had Stephen Autridge, Jamie Richards and Daniel Miller out to the farm and we inspected every horse spelling at Te Akau Stud. We took their covers off and gave them a thorough assessment and then sat down together and planned out their next steps as well as discussed some plans for other horses in our stable.

It was great to then have some social time with the three of them - all very fine horsemen with such deep passion and commitment for what they are doing.  It is really wonderful to have them in the team - and by the way HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODAY TO DAN!

The weekend started well - and in a winning vein again - with Mark preparing a 6YO Coats Choice gelding Brahms and Liszt for another career win in Singapore.  Then on Saturday our Premiership-leading New Zealand time chimed in with Shillelagh.  This is a talented and well-bred daughter of Savabeel we have been entrusted to train by Christopher Grace QSM and Susanna Grace and she is now two starts, two wins.  We gave her a decent break after her first win and she spelled at Christopher's farm.  There she had plenty of time of the lovely Surrey Hills.

This type of environment is ideal for some horses and they just thrive on it - for example Smashing who won last week - we had been training her at Te Akau Stud where she relished the hill work.  We have a number of horses training at the farm at the moment and it is obviously delivering results - if you look at Smashing.  It was a wise decision by Trelawney Stud's Brent and Cherry Taylor.

Shillelagh's win was number 35 for Te Akau in New Zealand this season, putting Stephen and Jamie in front by six on the Premiership with a phenomenal strike rate of 4.91.  The whole NZ team has had an excellent start to the new season which is now four months complete.

On Saturday we had my daughter Jo, husband Leon and baby Ted came down for the day and to stay the night.  That was a real treat, Ted is a gorgeous wee lad and Karyn and I enjoyed spending time with him.  Then at 4.30am on Sunday Karyn was off to Auckland to host Weigh In and I attending a lunch in support of our local polo team - the Waimai team is one of the best in the country and we are very proud it originates from this district.

Hope you all have a great week and we will keep you in touch with all our news - we are really looking forward to our North Island Owners' event next Monday 7 December and we are looking forward to welcoming everyone!