From Scone to Doomben, Morphettville, Flemington, and Belmont, a mind-boggling seventeen-stakes races will keep enthusiasts entertained on Saturday – some off-season.
I will resist the temptation of making the I Am Invincible x Shoals debutant Isthmus the Best On Breeding. However, she will create a tremendous amount of interest in the opener at Flemington.
She is contesting the same race Fragile Love a David Moodie homebred by No Nay Never (USA). Across to Morphetville, Fragile Love’s stablemate Nodachi is favoured in the Group III South Australian Sires’ Produce Stakes.
No sugar-coating it; this is a sub-standard edition of the race. Except for Rebel Raider and Go Indy Go, there has not been a winner this century to elevate itself past the Group III status the race enjoys.
Fragile Love and Nodachi are the only 2yo winners for No No Never (USA) this season. They come from the fourth and final crop of the Coolmore shuttler, which stood his first two seasons at $11,000, and the fourth at $44,000.
The son of Scat Daddy enjoys superstar status in Europe. He is standing at a fee of €175,000 (A$286,000).
Never the most fertile stallion, No Nay Never (USA) left 36 foals in his fourth crop with a fertility rate of 58.4%.
Nodachi heads to Morphettville off the back of a hugely impressive win five and three-quarter length romp in a 1400m maiden at Bendigo on April 30.
The Mathew Ellerton-trained filly had placed at her first two starts at Ballarat and Cranbourne.
She is the second foal of the winning Exceed And Excel mare Kaiken, whose first foal is talented though often frustrating Churchill (IRE) filly Tanto.
A winner at Sandown and Kilmore, Tanto has placed eight more times in 13 starts, most recently when second at Sandown on May 6.
A half-sister to Group II VRC Let’s Elope stakes winner Sword Of Light and Listed winner Sword Of Justice, Kaiken is out of the stakes-placed King’s Best (USA) mare Joyeuse
This
a quite closely held family, although Sword Of Light was a $900,000 purchase for Widden Stud at the 2020 Inglis Chairman’s Sale.
The Fastnet Rock filly she was carrying sold to Aramco Racing / Rick Connolly Bloodstock / MG Price Racing & Breeding at Easter this year.
We have waxed lyrical for many years about David Moodie’s overachieving Blazing Sword mare Razor Blade.
A Group III winner of eight races, Razor Blade, left nine winners from her ten foals highlighted by the 3-time Group 1 winner and $1.8 million earner Flamberge (Exceed And Excel), dual Listed stakes-winner and Group I placed Curtana (Exceed And Excel, Group II winner Sunburnt Land (Scenic), who was killed by lightning while spelling after placing in the Group 1 Patinack Classic and Salinger Stakes, and the Group III Standish Handicap winner Durendal (Medaglia d’Oro).
It is a family with a storied history tracing back to the remarkable Chicquita.
In her second career, Chicquita produced the charismatic Todman colt Eskimo Prince, winner of the Breeders’ Plate, Golden Slipper, AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes and Rosehill Guineas.