Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

It's been great to have a couple of relatively quiet days on the farm.  I am now super organised because I will be away all week and all of my team members have lists of the work that needs to be done!

We have had beautiful rain at Te Akau Stud - 25mls in the past three days - and I have never seen the farm look so good in January.  The green grass has to be seen to be believed.

It is quite incredible how the mares and foals are doing at present.  Each day we will be bringing about six mares and foals in and handling the foals, just getting them more and more used to people.  They are being moved on to fresh paddocks every 10 days.

However there is no question that my main focus right now is the upcoming yearling sales.  Tomorrow we inspect the drafts of Brighthill Farm, Rich Hill Stud, the Matamata arm of Westbury Stud as well as Prima Park and then on Wednesday it is Waikato Stud before I fly to Brisbane that night.  I will be attending the Magic Millions' Sale on the Gold Coast where we hope to buy some future champions and then it will be all about Karaka!

This year yearlings from the Karaka Sale will qualify for the $1 million Karaka Million as two year olds over 1200m and also for the Listed Karaka Mile when they are three year olds which for the first time will also be worth $1 million (a significant stake rise in a race Te Akau 3YOs have excelled in).  There is also a $250,000 Stayers' Cup and all races are restricted to horses from the Karaka Sale.

Once again horses from this sale will represent great value for money and we are going to buy the next Xtravagant for certain.  Mark Walker, Steve Autridge, Jamie Richards and I between us will be looking at the line up of Karaka yearlings so if you would like to join the sucessful and fun Te Akau team - email Karyn today [email protected]

As I have previously mentioned, last calendar year Te Akau Racing won 150 races and my goal this year for our owners is 200 wins!  Four days into 2016 and we have four wins on the board already too!  We started the year off brilliantly winning those four races on 1 January - two at Hastings and two in Singapore.

Congratulations to Cameron George and the Auckland Racing Club for putting on such a great carnival.  The weather didn't help on New Year's Day but the track still held up pretty well - Boxing Day however was just superb in every way.  The atmosphere was incredible!

Next week we have three huge days of yearling inspections finishing with Cambridge Stud on Friday and then it is off to Wellington to cheer Xtravagant on in the Group 1 Levin Classic.  He will take huge improvement out of his race at Ellerslie.

Have a great week!