Critic makes her mark

21 August 2013

Former top-class WS mare Critic produced her first winner yesterday when Critical Angel broke her maiden on the synthetic track at Geelong. Trained by Peter Moody, the filly had finished runner-up in her juvenile debut last season and was then turned out after one more appearance.

Ridden by Michael Walker, Critical Angel sat in behind the pace and then bolted clear in the straight to win by three lengths. A nomination for the Gr.1 Thousand Guineas, she is raced by Stuart Ramsey’s Turangga Farm and was a $70,000 purchase from WS’s draft during the Premier Session at Karaka in 2012.

Her dam Critic was the winner of the Gr.1 Otaki-Maori WFA and is from an outstanding WS family. It features Critical Angel’s champion sire O’Reilly and recently crowned New Zealand Horse of the Year Ocean Park, who will stand his first season at the Matamata farm in 2013.

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.