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.

Tivaci’s Movie Night steals the show at Newcastle

A sister to the Gr.1 ATC Flight Stakes (1600m) winner Never Been Kissed, the Waikato Stud-bred and raced Movie Night (NZ) was rewarded for her consistency, breaking her maiden with an all-the-way win over 1400m at Newcastle for trainer Tom Charlton.

9 July 2026

Oilman’s stud stake could change course of NZ breeding

Eighteen months ago, Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt walked through the lush Waikato pasture of Matamata’s Balcarres Stud and announced he wanted some just like it for his own.

Today he has-360 acres about a mile down the road which has been transformed from a dairy farm to one of New Zealand’s leading horse and cattle breeding establishments.