Te Akau Thursday Update

David writes:

Well the birthday celebrations are well and truly finished and it is back to work.  First up this morning I inspected the 18 month steers that we bought yesterday at the Frankton sale.  They will be earmarked and drenched and vaccinated before going out into the paddocks.

Mark Walker and I have spent the last couple of days looking at everything at Te Akau Stud.  Each foal, each broodmare, all the horses that are spelling and today we change tack and we had to be at Waikato Stud at 10.30am to look at all of their Karaka yearlings.  They have about 70 in the sale. Waikato Stud is a beautiful property about three miles out of Matamata - 1200 acres of some of the best horse country in the world.  They currently have three fantastic proven stallions in O'Reilly, Savabeel and Pins along with young stallions like Ocean Park and Rock'n'Pop.

Waikato Stud has certainly put a lot of investment back into the industry in the last few years by retaining their best fillies to race and putting money into buying young stallions.  We currently have three fillies in work for Waikato Stud, two by O'Reilly and one by Pins.

After we have finished looking at the yearlings we head to Te Akau Racing Stables in Matamata where Mark and I will inspect each horse that we have in work.  We will then look at some horses that we have in pre-training at Matamata and spend a bit of time at the stable before heading back to Waikato Stud where we are having dinner and staying the night.

Tomorrow we will be at the Matamata track first thing to watch track work and see our horses train and then we head to Cambridge to Mark Brooks' property to inspect the horses that we have bound for Singapore.

After that we move on to Trelawney Stud to inspect their yearlings.  They have about 40 yearlings in the Karaka Sale. We have bought some very good horses from Trelawney Stud in the last few years including Champion 2YO of the Year in Warhorse, Champion 2YO and 3YO War Affair in Singapore, plus some other nice horses that we will be racing in the near future. We have two nice fillies in work for Trelawney Stud - Urban Angel and a Pins filly out of the good race mare Ruud Van Slaats.

Tomorrow night we have Julia-Rose our youngest daughter coming home from Auckland after working a busy week and she will be joining us at the Waikato Times Gold Cup Race Day at Te Rapa.  This is always a fantastic day's racing and one that I really enjoy.  It will be Karyn's first Cup Day as Chairman of the Club so a busy day for her after she has finished the First Call on tv.

This weekend is also a major weekend for Te Akau Singapore as the season there comes to a close.  Mark has been working each night on placing the final weekend's  horses.  We have got 26 horses to race this weekend in Singapore and remember that providing the horses do not finish first or last, their owners get a $900 starter's bonus for running.  So under normal circumstances our owners are going to get about $22,000 just for running this weekend in Singapore plus of course any stake money they win.

Mark is four behind the current leader on the Trainers' Premiership table in Singapore and is in second position.  He is giving it his best shot on the final day.  I do not think he is really confident that he can pull back on the four win lead but you never know in racing!

We have the last of our mares and foals coming home today from the studs where they have been served.  We have some beautiful foals this year.  Absolutely stunning individuals and they are all on paddocks that have never had horses before.  We have this year developed about 40 acres on a new property where we have horses for the first time and you can see just how good the grass is and the foals are absolutely thriving.