The month of March produced the highs and lows of racing and breeding horses, so let’s start off with the highs.
Yorkshire Park bred its first winner in the USA with Drain The Swamp (I Draintheswamp A) winning at Yonkers in 1.54.2 driven by Matt Kakaley. Drain The Swamp was raced in the Michael Stanley stable in Victoria before being sold to the USA last July. He has had 11 starts in the USA winning once and being placed on five occasions. He is Yorkshire Parks first $150K prize money winner and now has a record of 49 starts for 9 wins, 9 seconds and 9 third placings. On the sad side of things another Yorkshire Park bred horse Glenavril King broke down in a race at Menangle and unfortunately had to be euthanized. His record stood at 87 starts for 14 wins, 12 seconds and 12 thirds with a best time of 1.54.7 and prizemoney of $142K. He was a beautiful Courage Under Fire gelding out of Lombo Socialite. To add to the pain our Sydney sales purchase this year, a filly out of Downbytheseaside, had to be put down following a training mishap. You can’t explain the feeling when these types of freak accidents happen, and we all are deeply saddened by this. On the racing scene Dreams Are Bettor has been performing well with a second and a third in a heat and final of the Allen Williams Memorial in Tasmania, while Classy Countess just hasn’t had any luck at all recently. Our Miki Diva will go round at Bendigo this coming Friday 14 April and we look forward to a good showing from her.
The Melbourne Nutrien yearling sales came to a close on the 3rd April with both Yorkshire Park yearlings being sold. Our Vincent out of Watch the Dream colt sold for $40K while our trotting colt by Pastor Stephen out of La Tonneralla sold for $20K. The Vincent colt heads to the Shaun McNaulty stables in Victoria while the Pastor Stephen colt heads to the Gavan Holt stable also in Victoria. We wish the new owners all the very best with both of these colts. Go Zach and Alfie.
On the breeding scene all our mares are progressing well with the planning already starting to take place for the next breeding season. A lot of time and effort goes into selecting stallions for the mares and no doubt plenty of study of race performances and breeding lines will take up plenty of time.
Yorkshire Park were really quite surprised to be nominated in the top three for the Ian Daff Memorial Breeders of the year for 2022. While we didn’t end up taking out the award, we were very appreciative of being nominated for such a prestigious award and the recognition for our contribution to the Victorian Breeding Industry.
Yorkshire Park are also in the negotiating process to purchase a new mare to our breeding barn from New Zealand. A well credentialled family in New Zealand the mare is in foal for the first time to the highly sort after Captain Crunch, the most successful son of Captaintreacherous. More news to follow on this one but we expect to have the deal done in the coming week.
That is about all for now. Good luck and good punting.
Yorkshire Park team.