Bright Future For Talented Hera

14 May 2013

Promising filly Hera showed a measure of her family’s two-year-old ability with a strong win at New Plymouth on Saturday. The Garry Chittick-bred daughter of O’Reilly handled testing track conditions with ease to post the first victory of her career.

A $28,000 yearling purchase out of WS’s Select draft at Karaka last year for trainer Roger James, she is out of the Centaine mare Corsica and is a sister to the Hong Kong winner Telecom Top Star. It is also the family of the former champion juvenile and dual Gr 1 Ellerslie and Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes winner Ballroom Babe.

Placed at her three previous starts for James’ long-time owners Ron and Fran Dixon, Hera was given the perfect ride today by Darryl Bradley. They sat fourth on the outer before lengthening stride in the run home to win comfortably.

The Corner with Garry Chittick

I keep on proposing my retirement from the burden of a weekly Corner. I make the excuse it is hard to be credible, hard to let the two of you know about anything in our sport that hasn’t been covered before.

27 October 2025

WS-bred On The Lash scores at Sha Tin

Twenty-four hours following the final WS Cox Plate meeting run on the Moonee Valley track of old before it shuts for two years to make way for a new precinct, the race’s 2004 winner, Savabeel, continued his roll of runners, and this time it was via five-year-old On The Lash (ex Candelabra) at Sha Tin.