Te Akau Monday Update

David writes:

Te Akau has two apprentices that we are unbelievably proud of.

Daniel Miller who has tremendous talent over the jumps, a real natural - and if it wasn't for his weight/height, he would be riding plenty of winners on the flat.  Dan also looks after King's Rock, the Fastnet Rock colt out of Nureyev's Girl.  He has done an amazing job with this colt and rides him every morning in trackwork.  Dan will be accompanying this colt to Wellington for the Wellington Guineas, before heading to Riccarton for the Group 1 NZ 2000 Guineas - both races we won with Darci Brahma.

Michael Dee is a class act who we have on loan for three months from Kevin Myers.  Mick rode three winners at Hawera on Saturday.  For quite a tall young man, Mick is very light.  He has fitted in really well to our stable and is doing a good job for us.  Mick undoubtedly has a very bright future.

Both Dan and Mick are very hard workers and they set high standards for and are very popular with the rest of our team.

Gosh it was an exciting day on Saturday for Karyn.  Working in the Hamilton Trackside studio, where she was completing the end of her First Call programme, her filly Enhance who she bred and races, won the third race at Matamata.  She now has two wins from her two starts.

Enhance is by Saperavi who is a half brother to Darci Brahma and Burgundy and she is out of a Pins mare and was very intelligently ridden by Matt Cameron.  Matt rode a double on the day and his riding is fine tuning all the time, he is in career best form.

The next month is going to be a very exciting period for Te Akau and we are really looking forward to running in all the big 3YO races.  Our 3YOs are running out of their skins - Jason and Pam and the team are doing a fabulous job with them.  Yet another Te Akau 3YO won today - this time Flirty Gertey - a Thorn Park filly that I bought from the draft of Mapperley Stud at Karaka for $110,000.  She was hugely unlucky to get beaten a nose on debut so she thoroughly deserved to get home today at just her second start!  Jason's strike rate currently is simply outstanding.

Last night we had family and friends at the farm for dinner and I put a leg of lamb on the weber.  I made sure that it was ready nice and early as I wanted plenty of time to settle in and watch the Singapore races.

Well what a night Mark and the team had.  Following on from Clutha Lad winning on Friday night, he trained another three winners on Sunday.  Dreamcatcher won for Jayven See, then it was Jenny Grieve's Brahms and Liszt and finally war Affair claimed the major Group 3 feature.

What a horse War Affair is (pictured) - before the race, and all week really, Mark had been so confident in his horse and this confidence just kept growing after every track gallop.  I don't think I have ever known Mark to be as confident before a race as he was on Sunday.  Mark is a great judge of a horse and again he was spot on.

So well done to Mark on training this great horse that I was able to buy for just $70,000 from Karaka - he has now won $530,000 in just seven starts.  It certainly was a memorable night - actually it's been a great four days really - two winners in New Zealand and four in Singapore including a Group 3!

The other piece of good news is that my health is improving quite quickly now and although my chest is still a bit sore, there is improvement every day.