Things to know today
| 1 |
Pam Gerard has withdrawn Affirmative Action from Saturday’s Group 1 Proisir Plate at Ellerslie, and the withdrawal lets Stephen Marsh’s Tardelli into the 16-horse field. The Matamata trainer put it down to weight after the four-year-old ran fourth in the Foxbridge Plate: “if he were to run a good race and run a place, I think he would go sky high through the weights, and it would be very tricky for him thereon” (LOVERACING.NZ) |
| 2 |
Lisa Latta has retired Belardo Boy after an unplaced run at Wanganui, the dual Group 3 winner going to a private home at eight having won 11 of 62 starts and earned more than $475,000 (LOVERACING.NZ) |
| 3 |
Perfect Chaos is the first runner out of Kali, whose own career ended after the Group 1 New Zealand 1000 Guineas when, in The Oaks Stud general manager Rick Williams’s words, “something went off in the gates”. The Hello Youmzain filly, a $50,000 buy for Stephen Marsh and Dylan Johnson Bloodstock at Karaka, won Saturday’s Listed Wanganui Guineas, and Kali will go back to Hello Youmzain or to Savaglee (LOVERACING.NZ) |
| 4 |
American Eagle is unbeaten in two after the Group 3 McNeil Stakes and his owners now have a choice to make. MyRacehorse holds half the Too Darn Hot colt alongside Anthony Freedman Racing and Julian Blaxland Bloodstock, the Guineas Prelude is the intended next run, and chief executive Ben Willis says: “It’s not every day you get to wake up and decide with a horse if you’re going to go to the Coolmore or the Caulfield Guineas” (TTR AusNZ, ANZ Bloodstock News) |
| 5 |
New Zealand Bloodstock has put the Ready to Run catalogue online, 460 two-year-olds from 36 vendors and 119 sires, among them Proisir, Savabeel, Per Incanto, Shamexpress and Written Tycoon. Managing director Andrew Seabrook makes the case in one line: “No other sale of this type comes close” (Breednet) |
| 6 |
Jadzia won a 1100 metre three-year-old maiden on the Ballarat synthetic on Monday by 3.3 lengths in 1:05.69, leading throughout for Grahame Begg and Jordan Childs, the Ole Kirk filly a $65,000 Magic Millions National Yearling Sale purchase for Flying Start Syndications and Pinhook Bloodstock International (Breednet) |
| 7 |
Wild Monarch won a 1000 metre maiden at Taree by two lengths on Monday, resuming from a spell for country trainer Jenny Graham, and the win takes Wild Ruler to six winners for the season and to the head of the second crop sires table by winners, one clear of Home Affairs. The Snitzel sprinter stands at $27,500 at Newgate (Breednet) |
| 8 |
Duncan Ramage has argued for boosted prizemoney on metropolitan and provincial maidens for two, three and four-year-olds, and for a two kilogram tariff on runners from metropolitan stables or stables of more than 100 horses in country maidens. The bloodstock agent would fund it out of mid-tier races rather than out of the peaks, on the reasoning that most racehorses win only once (TTR AusNZ) |
| 9 |
Ann Belsham has died at 93 in Victoria, where she had spent her last 12 years near her daughter Sarah Moody, the wife of the trainer Peter Moody. A pioneering female trainer in New Zealand, she trained under her maiden name Bradley at Paeroa and later Te Rapa, and she taught Linda Jones to ride before Jones became New Zealand’s first female jockey superstar (LOVERACING.NZ) |
| 10 |
New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing has closed the 2025/26 season with 306 meetings and 2,508 races, eight meetings and 40 races more than the year before, 4,481 individual horses racing for 26,031 starts, funded prizemoney of $101.93 million and domestic wagering of $510.76 million, up 7.5 percent. Field size is the counterweight: 396 races drew fewer than eight starters, 44 more than in 2024/25, and racefields export income fell 6.4 percent (Breednet) |
| 11 |
Punxsutawney Phil won the Yarraman Park Maiden Plate over 1100 metres at Scone on Tuesday by 3.2 lengths in 1:05.01 on a Soft 5, a debut win for the Ole Kirk colt, a homebred for Neil Werrett and the first foal of Heroess, a winning Snitzel mare out of the dual Group 1 winner Srikandi. John O’Shea and Tom Charlton train him and Jean Van Overmeire rode (Breednet) |
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