Icing on the Tauranga cake

17 November 2013

WS’s successful day at Tauranga was capped off when Costume downed fellow farm graduate Etoile Filante in the Rating 75 metric mile. Their quinella followed the earlier success of the No Excuse Needed mare I Do in the open sprint.

Bred and raced by Garry Chittick, Costume is trained by Graeme and Debbie Rogerson and continued her impressive progress with her third win at her 12th appearance. By Savabeel, she is out of the O’Reilly mare Disguised and is from an international family that features the Gr 1 King’s Stand Stakes winner and successful sire Godswalk.

Etoile Filante was bred by the farm with David Williams, who now races the mare out of Peter and Dawn Williams’ stable. The daughter of Pins and Etoile Du Nord has three wins and two placings from her seven raceday appearances.

The Corner with Garry Chittick

It would appear I now have to continue my weekly Corner with the amount of rumblings at the start of our new racing season. I have been around long enough to know we can never please all; my tenure as Chairman of the Racing Board was subjected to as much vitriol as subsequent Boards have had to bear, so what’s different this time, or is it different.

5 August 2026

First foal for Waikato’s Group 1 winner Skew Wiff

Group 1-winning Savabeel mare Skew Wiff (ex Starvoia), known affectionately as ‘Wiffy’, foaled a filly by Super Seth in the early hours of Wednesday, 5 August.