Snow Excuse makes up for lost time

10 July 2013

Snow Excuse returned to the winners’ list with a vengeance at Pukekohe this afternoon with a runaway victory over 1200 metres. The Ralph Manning-trained four-year-old gave his Rating 75 rivals an emphatic five and three-quarter length drubbing under the country’s top apprentice Rory Hutchings.

The son of No Excuse Needed had been a dual winner as a two-year-old, but his defeat of Testa Secret in the Listed Ryder Stakes nearly two years ago was his last taste of success. “He’s a big horse and improved with each run after a long time off,” he said. “He’s got major joint issues so we gave him a long break to decide if we would even run him again.”

Raced by Manning with his parents Bob and Kathleen and Ivan Julian, Snow Excuse was a $4500 weanling buy from WS’s 2009 draft to Karaka. He is a half-brother to four winners with their dam the former smart Australian juvenile and Listed Maribyrnong Trial Stakes winner Kirkberg.

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.