It's been a quite some autumn for LA broodmare Laebeel culminating in the success of her Danny O Brien trained four-year-old son Sesotho in Sunday's $75,000 Victorian Country Cups Final over 1600m.
A fortnight ago her three-year-old son Larry's Never Late (Pentire - Laebeel) ran fourth in the Group One South Australian Derby taking his stakearnings to nearly $200,000 in the process.
We have retained Laebeel's stunning Pins yearling filly who has been leased out for a racing career in Victoria where she will be trained by Leon Corstens who trained mum to run second to Sky Heights in the 1999 Group One Caulfield Cup.
Laebeel has an O'Reilly colt who will be sold at Karaka next year. She is currently back in foal to O'Reilly.
Sound Lover (Sound Reason - Country Flower) who has done sterling service for the farm, firstly on the racetrack and then as a broodmare where her first five foals were all significant winners in Hong Kong and Australia, showed she's far from a spent force being represented of late by the promising Bellabaci (Zabeel) in Melbourne and Smart Knight (O'Reilly) a winner over 1400m in Hong Kong on 9 May.
Congratulations to Awapuni trainer Lisa Latta on a great training performance to produce Wai Zonners (Towkay-Death by Chocolate) after 2 years away from the race track for a first up victory at Hawera on Sunday.
Towkay had two local winner for the week with Kay's Dream (Towkay-Forest Dream) scoring over 1200m at Riccarton last Friday and Robbiemjay (Towkay - Marji Marji) won down south on Wednesday.
If you followed our newsletters leading up to the 2008 Karaka Yearling Sales you will recall the No Excuse Needed - Soneri yearling colt from our Select draft, nicknamed Charlie, whom we followed through to his eventual sale to Foxton trainer David Haworth for $60,000.
Well Charlie (he's as yet unnamed by his connections) was a nice winner first time out at the Foxton trials last week winning his catchweight heat in the fastest time of the three heats for two-year-olds.
