Steps In Time Extends Blue Hen Record

24 February 2012

Last Saturday’s Gr.2 Breeders’ Classic (1200m) win by Susan Woodcock’s smart galloper Steps In Time (Danehill Dancer) provided an extra bounce in the step of the Waikato Stud team last weekend.

Trained by John O’Shea and raced with partner Mike Everett along with Neil Hoar and James Jackson, Steps In Time not only provided terrific result for a good friend and client but represented yet another black-type exponent for Waikato’s blue hen mare Escada.

Escada, who is currently in-foal to O’Reilly, is the dam of the Australian Gr.1 stars Glamour Puss (Tale of the Cat) and Vision and Power (Carnegie) and of the Gr.2 winner Rare Insight (O’Reilly) and the multiple stakes winner, Escadaire (O’Reilly).

Steps In Time is a dual stakes winning daughter of Escada’s aforementioned Gr.2 AJC Stan Fox Stakes winner Rare Insight, and counts four wins.

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.