It's In The Blood

Let’sbefrankbaby

Let’sbefrankbaby (Frankel), who broke through at stakes grade in Saturday’s SA Fillies Classic (Gr 3, 2500m) at Morphettville, packs enormous promise for more and higher success through a staying pedigree brimming with European blue blood. Take the stallions filling the first three columns of her pedigree. As British Isles breeding royalty goes, you can picture... Read More

Dunkel

A rich vein of breeding gold involving one of the world’s all-time great stallions was to the fore again with another Group 1 in Saturday’s South Australian Derby triumph of the exciting Dunkel (Dundeel). The gelding – who capped a four-straight winning streak with the Listed Tasmanian Derby in February – stormed home at the... Read More

Esti Feny

The only galloper in the history of proper horseracing to win more in a row than Winx (Street Cry) was Kincsem (Cambuscan). She was pretty extraordinary. She raced in the 1870s, won 54 from 54, and wouldn’t go anywhere without her best friend, a cat named Csalogany. We say “proper” horseracing because between Winx’s 33... Read More

Dunwoody

Rikki McDonald invokes the ladies’ first amendment in not revealing her age, and we’re not supposed to ask. But we can say the first equestrian event she won involved jumping off her pony to hog-tie a goat, and her prize was a shiny new shilling – a coin which became extinct the year Galilee (Alcimedes)... Read More

Caste

Racing and breeding sparkles with stories of twists of fate and happenstance that turn people’s lives. In the late 19th century, a young man named Robert Clyde “RC” Packer, enduring a rotten day at the track in his native Tasmania, found ten shillings on the ground, stuck it on something’s nose at 12-1 – and... Read More

Overpass

There are some crazy numbers about in Australian racing at present, and a few surround Overpass (Vancouver). He crossed the continent to win Saturday’s first edition of The Quokka, Perth’s $4 million moneyfest which follows the slot-holder model of The Everest, and which sits among the country’s multitude of new, lucrative and oddly-named races, this... Read More