Experience accounts for youth

5 December 2013

Veteran Telecom Top Star upstaged his younger rivals at Happy Valley last night for the fourth win of his career. The WS graduate has now won three times in Hong Kong after breaking his maiden as a three-year-old in New Zealand where he raced as Tele Combo.

The son of O’Reilly was an $80,000 yearling at Karaka and is out of the Centaine mare Corsica. She is a half-sister to the stakes winner River Chant (Danasinga) and a three-quarter sister to the dam of the dual Australian black type winner Marquardt.

Corsica was unraced but she has been a good producer and Telecom Top Star’s younger sister Hera promises to continue to add to the family record. In a brief career for trainer Roger James she was won three races, including the Listed Great Northern Foal Stakes, and finished runner-up in the Listed Trevor Eagle Memorial.

The Corner with Garry Chittick

Well, I got a bit behind last week, with Friday slipping by without realising it; hence no Corner. I have said on too many occasions that negative messages are of no help to anyone, and yet there seems so often a reason to be concerned. Clearly, this week the well-constructed Guerin Report on the threatened downgrade of our Group 1 races demands our attention.

21 October 2026

Vale Ohope Wins, Ocean Park’s tough, kind and courageous daughter

Long before her Oaks double, Ohope Wins’ greatest victory belonged to the Waikato Stud staff and Matamata Veterinary Services vets who saved her as a desperately sick foal. Taken far too soon at Caulfield, her remarkable story is theirs too.