Te Akau Sunday Update

David writes:

Congratulations to all our owners who yesterday shared in the five winners that we had at Te Rapa and Wanganui - including two black type races.

What a thrill it was to deliver another day of bumper results for our owners, including victory in the Group 3 Eagle Technology Stakes at Te Rapa with Prise De Fer and the Listed Wanganui Cup at Wanganui with La Flora Belle.

Of course to trifecta the 2YO race at Te Rapa was also special.  This is the second time Te Akau has delivered a trifecta in a 2YO race in the past two and a half weeks - the previous being on 9 November in the Listed Welcome Stakes at Riccarton during Cup Week.

Our Te Akau New Zealand trainer Mark Walker has now won 69 races and the season is only four months old but what I love most is that nine of those wins have been Group or Listed ones.

NZ Trainers' Premiership - as at 27.11.22  - source NZTR

I want to congratulate all our team, both stable and stud, and thank them for their outstanding work. They are simply the best I've ever seen.

Saturday also saw the conclusion of another season of racing in Singapore.  Singapore works to a calendar year and the final meeting for 2022 was on the weekend at Kranji.  It's been a remarkable year for our Singapore stable.

In March, our Singapore trainer Mark Walker returned to New Zealand and we appointed Donna Logan as our new Te Akau Singapore trainer.  Donna and our team were in the fight for Trainers' Premiership honours right until the final two meetings and we could not be more proud of their results with 59 wins for the season - runner up on the Trainers' Premiership.

In the past 11 years, Te Akau has won four Singapore Trainers' Premierships, been runner up four times, third and fourth.  It's an outstanding record of performance.

So much good news has been announced by the Singapore Turf Club, including a doubling of feature races.  In other good news, the owners' starter incentives that you receive if your horse finishes 2nd-8th will also see an increase.

We have two final shares available in our Smart Missile gelding (below) who will soon head to Singapore to race.  We purchased him at the recent Magic Millions' 2YOs in Training Sale.  He is a belter of a colt and we are looking forward to him stepping out in the new year.  If you are keen to race in Singapore with us, drop Karyn an email.

Today I flew to Sydney for the week with Marcus Corban and we will be very busy every day inspecting horses, especially yearlings.

Tomorrow we are travelling four hours to visit Newhaven Park Stud owned by the Kelly family. It's a magnificent 10,000 acre property and we have two Te Akau trained stallions standing there - Xtravagant and Cool Aza Beel.

I bought both of these stallions as yearlings at Karaka.  Both won Group 1 races, Xtravagant won two, and Cool Aza Beel also won the Karaka 2YO Million.  Xtravagant was named the Champion 3YO of the Year in his season, and Cool Aza Been won the Champion 2YO of the Year title in his.

At Newhaven Park, we will inspect mares and foals and also their Magic Millions' yearlings, before heading to the Hunter Valley.  There we start at Coolmore Stud and we will be visiting other studs looking at yearlings all week.

The shares in our Ready To Run two year olds have all but gone - today we put the 'all sold' sign up on our El Roca colt and now there are only a couple of shares available in our promising Darci Brahma and American Pharoah geldings.

We have had three of our Ready to Run horses from previous sales win in the past two weeks - so if you are interested be quick, they will be gone very shortly.

I've never seen more grass on the farm, it looks simply amazing!  The horses and sheep and cattle are really thriving with all the rain we have had in the last three weeks. I cannot believe how much rain there has been and the last week has been awful with thunder and lighting which the animals don't like very much at all.

We are still sending two units of prime steers to Greenlea each week (70) and next week we are drafting lambs off our mixed age ewes so it's a very busy time on the farm.

We had our first float of mares and foals arrive home last week and the team that looks after the horses, led by Deane Lowcay, will be very busy handling the mums and their new offspring.  We like to start handling all of our foals from the moment they come home.  The time invested in them from an early age is always a huge advantage later in their lives, for example when they start being broken in.

I've always believed it's really important to spend a lot of time handling the foals and in about four weeks we will brand them and then the foals will be weaned in February.

This year we have sent mares to Savabeel (2), Noverre (5), Embellish (5), Sword of State (5),
Darci Brahma (2), Circus Maximus, Hello Youmzain, Vanburgh and Eminent, plus mares in Australia to Cool Aza Beel, Xtravagant and Heroic Valour.

Mark, Karyn and I love breeding and this last year we were finalists in the NZ Breeder of the Year award - two Burgundy fillies we bred won Group 1 races last season: Maven Belle who won the Manawatu Sires' Produce was named Champion 2YO of the Year and Belle En Rouge, our NZ Oaks' winner was joint winner of the NZB Filly of the Year title.

Good luck to all our owners with runners this week and I will give you a full report on my week in NSW in my update next week.