Jerry Chau graduates in style as he clinches 70th victory
Marking the end of a decorated apprenticeship in emphatic style, Jerry Chau intends to capitalise on status as the second-fastest rider to make the graduation from indentured to senior ranks after Transcendent (Dabirsim) snared yesterday’s Class 3 Gloucester Handicap (1200m) at Happy Valley. Competing in his 639th Hong Kong race, 21-year-old Chau unfurled a clinical... Read More
Fast Knightstown out to put Gumeracha and Summerset Park Stud on the map
Valentia three-year-old given chance in Caulfield Guineas three years after half-brother did the same South Australia hamlet Gumeracha, population 701, is famous for the world’s largest rocking horse, but come Saturday the town could also lay claim to another equine title, the breeding ground of a Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) winner. The said horse... Read More
Get In The Spirit
There’s a line from an American author named Jack Kornfield – not coincidentally a Buddhist practitioner – that says to let go and move on means we release “the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit”. Surely there can’t be a more apt setting for that than racing and breeding, where ifs,... Read More
Price and Baker strike for colts on solid opening session at Tattersalls
Mick Price and Michael Kent Jnr and Bjorn Baker continued their northern hemisphere spending sprees at yesterday’s opening session of the Tattersall’s Book 1 Yearling Sale in Newmarket, purchasing colts by Frankel (Galileo) and Australia (Galileo). Following on from their US$275,000 (approx. AU$377,000) purchase of a filly by War Front (Danzig) at the Keeneland September... Read More
Heroic Valour hits the mark immediately for Queensland’s Raheen Stud
Doomben win of Kenmore Lodge-bred colt Heroic Son a first for long-time studmaster Basil Nolan Snr Sometimes racecourse victories mean more than others and cannot be measured simply by a race’s status or the prize-money it carried and one result in particular last weekend was an example of that for the tight-knit Nolan family and... Read More
Moor and Bayliss confirm that opportunity is everything in racing
“You could throw the colours into the jockeys’ room and you wouldn’t care who picked them up.” That’s not a line you haven’t read before. Plenty of trainers have trotted it out on occasions but I cannot recall hearing it from a current jockey until Michael Walker said so on television last Sunday. Walker is,... Read More