When Waikato Stud’s Pins mare Make A Wish gave birth to a Savabeel colt in 2017, it didn’t take long for the excitement to build. For Make A Wish – a dual winner whose dam and granddam were multiple stakes winners – it was her first colt after five straight fillies. It was her third... Read More

Old hands and new have combined to bring us So Dazzling, the latest piece of equine excitement amidst the seemingly unstoppable rise of So You Think (High Chaparral), and an early favourite for the VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m). In terms of the former camp, she’s the emerging potential star from New Zealand expat John... Read More

If Theo Marks Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) winner Kiku (Zoustar) wins the Epsom (Gr 1, 1600m), her owners might want to turn their eyes skyward – not to the stars evoking those on her silks, but to the nearest pair of golden arches, and say a prayer of thanks to Ronald McDonald. Fast food, and... Read More

Empires rise and empires fall. But in breeding, only some do the latter. As most of us know, thoroughbreds started with the importation to empire-building Britain, in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, of the holy trinity of foundation sires: the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian. By the mid-1980s, one... Read More

Lindsay Maxsted is feeling a lot of tension as the winter turns to spring. Happily, it’s not Monday-to-Friday pressure drawn from his various roles as one of Australia’s corporate high-flyers, in which he’s been at the pointy end of firms including KPMG, Westpac and BHP. Instead, the anxiety comes about on weekends. For one thing,... Read More