Te Akau Tuesday Update

David writes:

The staff that works at Te Akau Racing has undoubtedly been the key to our success in the last few years and yesterday we welcomed Paul Richards to the team.

It is really exciting to have a person of Paul's experience - in the world there are very few horsemen with his knowledge and experience.  We are constantly on the look out for highly talented and skilled people to join our team and this week we also welcomed Nadayna Johnson who was a stable foreman at a Taranaki stable.  Great to have her on board!

Meanwhile in the Te Akau office we also welcomed Emma Hyde-Richards into the office team to help Robyn Bregmen, Jenny Jackson and Karyn run the  business.  Please do say hello to Emma if you call the Stud.

While racing in New Zealand is very quiet as we have very few to race until August, the opposite is the case in Singapore with Mark Walker who is on fire.  Just this past weekend he won three races including the S$500,00 Group 2 Stewards' Cup with Elite Invincible who was ridden by champion jockey Vlad Duric. Well done Mark - you are a champion.

One of the best parts about getting good horses to train is you get the best jockeys and this coming season we will have Opie Bosson and Shafiq Rusof doing most of our riding but we also have some very good apprentices in the wings waiting to go.

Opie and Shafiq are currently on holiday and they will be back in business big time by the middle of July.

Talking about Opie, he has now won 16 Group 1 races for Te Akau  including four this season alone. That's incredible - in the last 16 months Opie has won three $1 million races for Te Akau plus a Group 1 in Australia with Gingernuts - in total he has won seven Group 1's for us in the last 16 months.

We had a terrific week on the Gold Coast and bought a lovely Ocean Park filly out of Bucklebury. The three weeks of selling on the Gold Coast were a huge success with record levels of sales.  The one thing that really stood out was how much fillies off the race track are making - huge money as future broodmares.

Two weeks ago we produced a video of two fillies that we have shares remaining in.  The video has been seen by 26,000 people - quite incredible how social media works today.

There is still one share available in our Redoute's Choice filly.  Redoute's Choice had his 35^th Group One winner on Saturday when a  colt by the great sire won the Group 1 JJ Atkins, a 2YO event in Brisbane. Redoute's Choice  has already had nine Group 1 winning two year olds and the one I bought in Sydney is a ripper of a filly - all our track work riders say she is a beautiful mover, strong and athletic and we are nominating her for the Group 1 Golden Slipper.

Email Karyn today if you want the last share in this top class filly - [email protected]

On Saturday I came back from Brisbane and had a great night at Eden Park watching the rugby.  Gee it is exciting to watch the All Blacks live - when they did the haka, you could hear a pin drop and in the second half there was some pretty exciting rugby to watch.

Just before we left our hotel to watch the rugby, I watched the Queensland Derby with great interest as only eight days earlier I purchased a Snitzel gelding called Augustus in an online auction.  We bought him with a view to running him in the S$1.15 million Group 1 Singapore Derby next year but with the Queensland Derby only eight days away (for which he was already nominated) we decided to run him from the Chris Waller stable.

Unbelievably he started at 120/1 and ran a great race to finish fourth, earning A$30,000 in stake money.  His owners have plenty to be excited about with this horse's future, that is for sure.

Now our attention turns next week to Royal Ascot where we have Torcedor running in the Group 1 Ascot Gold Cup.  This is the European equivalent of the Melbourne Cup.  He won a Group 3 at Ascot last start and has to be a serious contender in the race he ran fifth in last year.

News from the farm is we have had six frosts in the last two weeks so the grass is not growing too much at present but we are still lucky to have plenty of grass for the sheep and cattle and we are only ten weeks away from the start of Spring.

Have a great week and keep warm.