The corner with Garry Chittick

It should not be difficult to fill a couple of paragraphs for the four of you this week. Not often do the best laid plans of man and mouse collude with the dream outcome.

Last Saturday, the G1 2000 Guineas was the culmination of another well planned assault on the time honoured race. Te Akau have not won seven 2000 Guineas as a result of a casual approach. Sure, David invests a lot of money, he is indeed a fearless syndicator but he buys and exercises his judgement, then goes to his supporters trusting they will buy into his aspiration. His mantra is if you attempt to put to bed a group before purchase, you have a committee making the decision. Doesn’t work.

I am a shareholder in Noverre. I was the vendor, aha you say, so it was a stitch up. Well, when you are attempting to sell the number of horses we do, I can assure the last thing you need is a reputation for pre auction deals. We sell 80 of our homebreds a year, we need more than one buyer. Our reputation is everything to us and our brand.

My shareholding is less than I asked for post sale, David had placed the shareholding before the day was done and I got what was left.

So there was no one more excited with the result than we at Waikato. We too, have an enviable record, breeding five of the last 10 winners of the Guineas, or four of the last five. Easy you reckon, when you are lucky enough to stand Savabeel, Pins (Madison County), Sacred Falls (Aegon) and O’Reilly.  It shows we have had a fair spread of Waikato sires who played their role.

Our excitement was surpassed by David. He was very emotional, having winked, as he does, at $800k, had gratifying support, then for the plan to culminate with a remarkable win. I often remind you four there are 8000 colts born a season in Australasia. Some are bred to sprint, the rest should be bred to win a Classic. It is not a walk in the park to get there, plus the girls can have a crack at the boys – not that a number do, but you can see whoever gets a run let alone wins will not be a horse of limited ability.

The naysayers often throw up “but the quality of our races are not well rated.” That may be so, but if you have the time, Google up the past winners that ventured across the Tasman. Not all have gone but the likes of Sacred Falls (two Doncasters) and Turn Me Loose who added two further Australian Group 1s to his record. I can’t go through the lot. You do it. You will not be disappointed.

As you know I don’t normally spend my time reflecting on Waikato. There is our Weekly newsletter to do that. There is always something deserving of comment in the industry but this week is always special, a week in Canterbury is a highlight of the year. Good people, a great show, NZ Trotting Cup, a couple of Guineas, a Waikato-bred winner – where else would you sooner be? Only I am not!

Cheers

G