August was a very active month with the Equus Awards and the Two Year Old Sale both in the same week!

The Award evening was held at Emperors Palace and was well attended by racing folk. Most of the Awards were not surprising with the exception of the Two Year Old Filly award and also the Champion Miler Award

As David Thistleton wrote in his article, bewilderment arose when it was announced that the winner of the Two Year Old Filly Award went to Majmu a facile winner of a Grade 2 race and was not a Grade 1 winner –it was expected to be a close decision between SAME JURISDICTION and Carry On Alice who had won the Grade 1 Nursery beating the colts! SAME JURISDICTION had beaten Carry On Alice on Gold Cup Day in the Grade 1 Thekweni Stakes! We will leave the decision to you......

The Champion Miler Award went to Capetown Noir and he had been beaten by BEACH BEAUTY on the 3 occasions they had met! He had won the Grade 1 Queens Plate and deserved to be recognised however it was an inconsistent decision on the part of the panel!

Congratulations to all the award winners from the big night –we were delighted that BEACH BEAUTY won the Champion Older Mare category. She now has retired to Drakenstein Stud and we wish her well on her new life!
The Two Year Old Sale was really big with over 500 entries! The sale was spread over 3 days and it really was a buyers’ market, not a sellers one! The sale was down on expectations as earlier in the year the prices increased and here the median and average was down on previous years. The big sires performed mostly as expected, and there was good interest in some of last year’s freshman and new sires, notably Mambo In Seattle, Elusive Fort, Ideal World, Querari and Noordhoek Flyer.

We received 11 Two year olds to school including horses by Horse Chestnut(2) Noordhoek Flye, Ideal World (4)Black Minnalouche, Kildonian, Greys Inn and one by Tiger Ridge. Thank you to all of the people who had the confidence to send their purchases to Ambleway to be schooled.

The record for the top priced yearling was broken when a colt was purchased for R2.6 million, one of the last untried sons of top sire Western Winter. This record broke the previous top price who was a son of Silvano (R 1 milion) whom we schooled at Ambleway for Knut Haug and is trained by Dennis Drier! The stud Varsfontein had a great week, having won the Breeders Award at the Equus evening, they also purchased a well related Dynasty filly form Cheveley Stud for R 1,4 million. Well done to all as another new record was set!

Ambleway has been very busy schooling yearlings over the past few weeks and exciting times are ahead as many of the babies are really nice and will be interesting to follow. Some of those include purchases made at the KZN Sale and some from the recent Two Year Old sale!

On the track we have had a few graduates running that have been successful mainly in KZN namely ETHYLENE, AFRICAN TRIUMPH, IMPERIAL WISH, BLUEBAYGIRL and GAMELOFT. The former three won their races for the Drier yard and the latter two, who also won a double at Greyville’s new polytrack, won for Robbie Hill and Duncan Howells.

The Drier yard were also successful with OFF THE RAMP who won easily by the margin of 3 lengths. She is a daughter of Toreodor and was owned and bred by Greg Blank and raced with John Finlayson and Dave Abery.

The Drier yard was back in the winning enclosure with OBREGA, a facile winner, and a daughter of Var, she won in impressive style for well known owner Knut Haug

In PE -TAKE OFF won for her new trainer and owners Ian Van Schalkwyk and Greg Blank who also bred this filly by Toreodor. The same occurred in Gauteng where St John Gray owned-bred and trained NORGAY to win over ground!

The following horses deserve following and should win soon......
LINK MAN , UNDERCOVER CAT, LIGHTENING LILY, DYNAMIC STAR, SAN VINCENZO,ACROSS THE LAKE, SUMMER SIXTY NINE, CAPTAIN ROMANOV, PLATINIM RULER , SARATOGA DANCER, CANDENAUT, CHILL and HIGH STAKES.

It is a very exciting time on all of the stud farms as new foals are popping out.....we were delighted to have a Kings Apostle colt out of the Western Winter mare WESTERN INTRIGUE who is a sister to the dam of One Cool Dude. She has already produced the honest filly Misty Morn. We wait with bated breath for FINE FEATHER and AIRBRUSH both are in foal to useful stallions Oratorio and Kahal respectfully!

That is all for now until next time enjoy your racing!

Jane Trotter