No Excuse Maggie Headlines Top Day

13 October 2012

WS graduate No Excuse Maggie capped a grand day for the Matamata farm with a dominant victory in the Gr.3 Taranaki Breeders’ Stakes at Hawera this afternoon. They grey mare bolted away with the day’s feature to go with her Listed Matamata Cup success of 12 months ago.

The John Bary-trained six-year-old is a daughter of resident sire No Excuse Needed whose daughter I Do had earlier won for the stud and trainer Allan Sharrock.

“I’m not sure what we’ll do with her now,” Bary said. “She seems to have come through the race really well, but we’ll get her home and then decide where to next. I had been quite confident as she’d been working well and when the rain came that really played into our hands.”

From the family of the Group One winners Glamour Puss and Vision And Power, No Excuse Maggie has now won six races and nearly $170,000.

Leading New Zealand first season sire title in 2006-07 and champion two-year-old sire in 2007-08, No Excuse Needed stands at $6000 + GST.

As embodied by No Excuse Maggie, the cross of No Excuse Needed over O’Reilly mares has resulted in a superb ratio of 73% winners-to-runners, 15.4 stakes winners-to-runners and with the multiple Gr.1 winner Daffodil.

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.