Te Akau’s big guns to step out at Ellerslie barrier trials
New Zealand thoroughbred empire Te Akau Racing is fresh off another dominant season in which the all-powerful tangerine won a quarter of all stakes races run in the country and more than ten per cent of all prize-money on offer in 2020-21.
And the sheer depth of talent of the Matamata stable, which has 100 horses in training at any one time, suggests the formidable Te Akau outfit’s standing won’t be declining any time soon.
Led by David Ellis and trainer Jamie Richards, Te Akau will unleash many of its stable stars at barrier trials at Ellerslie today and on the Cambridge synthetic circuit on Thursday in an entree of what the new season holds for New Zealand’s premier stable.
Group 1 winners Probabeel (Savabeel), Avantage (Fastnet Rock) and Amarelinha (Savabeel) will be at Ellerslie and the trio will be joined by the likes of 1000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Kahma Lass (Darci Brahma) and Group 3 winner Entriviere (Tavistock) at the Auckland track.
Sixteen will have hit-outs at Ellerslie with another 46 Richards-trained slated to have barrier trials at Cambridge ahead of the spring.
Three-year-old Palamos (Extreme Choice), the one-time favourite for the Karaka Million (RL, 1200m), will also make a new season appearance at Ellerslie having been unbeaten in his two starts late last year before his summer-autumn campaign was curtailed by injury.
Ellis yesterday revealed that studs had made inquiries about Palamos but so far his Hong Kong-based owner has rejected the overtures.
“He was favourite for the Karaka Million and needed to have a chip removed from his knee but he is coming back and he has been working up really nicely,” Ellis told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“He will go to the 2000 Guineas in the spring and then we will look to take him to Sydney in the autumn.
“He is owned by a really good client and friend of ours in Hong Kong (Edmund Wong) and he’s not interested in selling at this stage.”
Six-year-old Avantage, who is down to trial in heat four, will embark on her final racing season by following a similar spring campaign to last year by resuming in the Foxbridge Plate (Gr 2, 1400m), a race she won, before going on to win five Group 1s.
However, Sword Of State (Snitzel), the Sistema Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner in the autumn, is one of Te Akau’s big guns who won’t be making an appearance over the next two days.
Ellis, though, said a spring campaign in Australia remains in the offing for the exciting colt. The Golden Rose (Gr 1, 1400m) in Sydney and the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) are legitimate targets after connections resisted the temptation to send him to Sydney in the autumn for the Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m).
“Our plan is to race him early on in Sydney and then take him down to Melbourne. He’s a horse who is by Snitzel out of an Encosta De Lago mare and Cambridge Stud have bought into him and he is going to stand at Cambridge Stud.
“He has already won a Group 1 and the goal is to win another Group 1 with him. He is a very good horse.
“He was trialling this week but we are just going to wait another week with him.”
A trait displayed by almost all successful people with few exceptions is the drive to achieve and continue to improve and while Ellis is proud of last season’s 160 race wins, he said Te Akau and Richards are striving for more.
“It was very special and it is very rewarding when you have a really good team who works so hard,” said Ellis on last season’s achievements.
“But we are going to take the business to another level and do it all over again, absolutely. We have got such good staff, we want to buy more good horses.
“This year we’ve syndicated 78 horses and we want to do more to take the business to the next level.”
The effect of Te Akau on New Zealand racing is enormous with Ellis underpinning the country’s yearling market for the past 16 years.
With that comes envy and detractors and when questioned yesterday about whether Te Akau’s dominance could be seen as detrimental to the New Zealand industry, Ellis paused for thought.
“That is a good question. It is a little bit like the All Blacks. They have completely dominated world rugby for the last 50 years, but what that should do, and hopefully it does, is make other teams aspire to reach the goal and the reach those heights, too,” Ellis said.
“It’s the same with the Olympics that we are watching now. There are some countries that are dominating in some areas, but what I would like to think that does is make people in other countries aspire to reach those goals.
“There was nobody in my family who was in racing when I started. I was behind everybody else, but what I am doing, other people can do. I hope our success inspires other stables to do the same by buying yearlings and making them into good horses.”