Te Akau Singapore Update

Mark Walker writes:

Our rain dance finally worked with Singapore receiving its first decent rain fall in over two months yesterday. It is always hot here but usually we get a good thunderstorm and heavy downpour at least every 2-3 days but this year it has been unbelievably dry here with even the oldest locals saying they had never seen usually very green, tropical Singapore turn dusty and brown before.  We definitely could do with some follow up rain over the coming days but it was a welcome start at least.

The weather was probably  a little bit more remarkable for us than the racetrack results overall yesterday - although it was a horse raced under the Singapore based Remarkable Stable that gave us a nice win for the day. Vitalico is an 8 year old NZ bred gelding by O'Reilly and while he is no star by any stretch - he generally races in our lowest grades here - his win yesterday saw his Singapore career prizemoney creep up over the $300,000 mark with 8 wins from 67 races over a career that has now spanned five full racing seasons and he is still going strong into sixth season of racing here. There is no other country in the world where a horse like Vitalico could win anything like $300,000 - so long as they stay sound and the owners give them the time they need to run up and down the grades between wins, that is what we can achieve with average horses here in Singapore.

With a good horse the $300,000 can very realistically be more like $750,000 and with a really good horse it is not hard to rack up prizemoney well over $1million here in a reasonably short time - like our recently retired stable favourite, Flying Fulton (stay tuned for an update on “Ace” a little later).

On Friday night we scored a really satisfying win with another horse that is well short of being anything special but he has very patient and dedicated owners who just love their horses. A little Cape Cross gelding, Zac Star Destroyer has been racing here for 4.5 years and on Friday night he scored his fourth win of his career. One win per year might not sound much but he has also clocked up the sum of $141,000 in prizemoney which is a nice enough reward for his faithful owners.

The rest of our Te Akau Racing Singapore team runners put in respectable performances with a few  looking like “next up” prospects with nice runs.  Riedel has shown plenty of promise since arriving in Singapore with two wins thus far and just over $60,000 in prizemoney since September and he ran another nice race yesterday - he should improve a lot from that and should be very competitive next run.

Raced by our good friends at Fortuna Racing, Ready Fortune flashed home for an eyecatching fourth behind Vitalico and our other runners on the day all raced pretty much to expectations for this stage of their campaigns as they prepare to step up over more distance at their coming runs.

As well as the welcome rain, undoubtedly the highlight of our weekend was having our terrific Te Akau Singapore and New Zealand stable supporters and great friends, Aussie and Leslie Browne in town for a few days. Aussie and Leslie have raced many good horses with us in New Zealand and Singapore over the years and we always have a great fun time, win, lose or draw, when they come to visit us.

They love Singapore and now race two of their home bred Saperavi's with us here, Browne's Anatomy and Pharma Browne, as well as having shares in several of our Te Akau Racing Stable horses with which they have enjoyed a lot of fun and success particularly through our just retired champion, Flying Fulton.

This week we have Dane's Anatomy and Sebrose having one last trial to ready them for the Singapore race debuts. Single Act will also trial before he heads back to the races for his second campaign, having earned $26,000 already from just four career starts here since December, which saw him finish 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and we are confident he will greet the judge this campaign.

We have our latest Te Akau team member Jamie Richards staying with us in Singapore for 10 days to gain some insight into Singapore racing which will be really helpful to his role with Te Akau New Zealand in identifying suitable candidates for the Singapore stable and helping to provide information about Singapore racing to our Te Akau owners in general.

Thanks for being part of the Te Akau team.
Have a great week ahead!