Muswellbrook racing has been given a boost with a world giant of breeding and racing, the Dubai owned Darley operation, providing support as a sponsor. The owners in the Hunter Valley of the stud farms Kelvinside near Aberdeen and Woodlands in the Denman district, they are sponsors of today’s meeting at Muswellbrook, the last in the Upper Hunter for 2009-10.The feature event is to be a $15,000 Darley sponsored event for 3YO fillies.
Darley and all the other leading studs in the Hunter Valley make big contributions as sponsors to racing around Australia. A number are sponsors of Muswellbrook, one of the busiest and highest TAB turnover New South Wales country racing. They consistently have more than one hundred starters, including horses from Newcastle, the Central Coast and Sydney and well known jockeys.
Muswellbrook is a major training centre with more than a hundred horses in work. It was here that champion jockey Wayne Harris learned his skills in the Pat Farrell stables. While an apprentice, he won the 1979 Golden Slipper for Bart Cummings on Century Miss and two years guided the Farrell trained Food For Love into second place in this jewel of juvenile racing.
Many of the horses in work at Muswellbrook have Sydney owners. Now on the eve of his tenth birthday and still competing, one of these horses is the Jeff Englebrecht trained Newton’s Rings, a winner of 22 races and earner of $774,000.
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Duane Dowell of Muswellbrook has a very interesting website under the name of
www.sportofkings.com.au which carries a lot of valuable information for breeding and racing enthusiasts. Their Sire Tracker feature, for one, is designed so a person is able to follow the progeny of their favourite sire or dam, and there are tools to help select winners.
Sport Of Kings is also into racehorse syndication and currently have two horses in work at Scone including Babelicious, a Not a Single Doubt 2-year-old filly who made an exciting debut in winning by 1.5 lengths at Scone last week. She was living up to a four lengths trial win on the same track.
Babelicious is trained by Rodney Northam and her ownership includes her breeder Mr and Mrs Fred Moses of Kanangra Park, Scone. Fred is from the same family as Star Kingdom part owner Reg Moses and the brothers who had Arrowfield, Jerrys Plains in the early last century.
The filly is another advertisement for inbreeding to the awesome speed influence Danzig. He is her fourth sire on the top line, descending down through Danehill, Redoute’s Choice and Not a Single Doubt, and her dam Elegant Angela is by the Danzig sire Perugino, also sire of Testa Rossa.
Elegant Angela ran ten times and included in her efforts two wins at 1200m at the Sunshine Coast and a second at Eagle Farm. She is from St Angela, a Sir Tristram half-sister to Silver Slipper winner and sire Kenfair.
Their dam, the Biscay Sydney 2-year-old winner Market Fair, was a sister to Golden Slipper winner and champion sire Marscay. Biscay doubles up in the pedigree of Babelicious as his grandson Canny Lad is the sire of the dam of Redoute’s Choice.
In winning on debut last week, Babelicious became the ninth juvenile winner in the second crop of Not a Single Doubt, a resident with his sire at the Arrowfield Stud, Scone. His juveniles and first crop 3-year-olds have established Not a Single Doubt (2010 fee $13,750) as one of Australia’s up and coming sires. Through to this week he had had 48 winners, 20 others placed and $2.8million for 2009-10.
