Observant readers of this site will notice a sudden mini-surge of winners listed on the sidebar – and another SW on the tally.
The explanation lies in the work I did for Stoney Bridge back in 2006 and for a short time in 2007. If you had contacted the stud back then and asked for pedigree advice it is highly probable that the advice would have come directly from me. Clearly, as I was contracted to Stoney Bridge, the vast majority of queries related to the stud’s stallions so I have decided to annotate winners resulting from such advice as “Stoney Bridge Recommendation”.
To date two winners have come from my work for the stud: the Castletown Stakes winner Extra Explosive (Ekraar – Explosive) and the Korean import Donggwangilchul (Postponed – Vettori Tycoon). The former looks especially promising.
A milestone of a different sort has been the retirement of our homebred Sunshine One (Chinese Gold – Sult by Creese). The veteran of 136 Macau starts, the gelding was successful on 15 occasions from 1300m to 1600m and was notable for having only one spell necessitated by injury.
It was a real thrill to watch his career on the net.
As I’ve mentioned before, I rate durability and consistency very highly on my list of thoroughbred virtues and there’s a stallion out there that is beginning to impress me quite a lot in this respect. He’s Handsome Ransom. After a quiet start he’s beginning to leave winners all over the Southern Hemisphere: if you check out his recent performance on www.arion.co.nz you’ll see what I mean. At $4000 +GST he’s great value – and you get half the fee back if your mare produces a filly!
