Prime Thoroughbreds

This season Prime Thoroughbreds syndicated horses have won 45 races with horses of the calibre of Believe 'N Achieve, Lord Monty, Hidden Wonder, Rose Of Scotland, Unser, Hyginus, I Am Magic, Our Moscato, Danseda, Unchain My Heart, Namsarai, Commands Gold, Too Many Reds, Sea Coral, Merry Miss, Izacat, Bavarian Belle, Valize and Admiral's Cup wearing our colours.

It has also been a year where we retired some of our best gallopers with Captain Chaos, Greenmount Belle, Shine On Anna and Magnifique Lass heading to greener pastures.

The Filly

This filly is by the leading first season sire in Australia in Stratum. Stratum also has the distinction of being the leading two year old sire as well. This is the first time this double has been achieved since the incomparable Danehill in 1993/94.

Stratum won the Golden Slipper and has a terrific pedigree being by Redoute's Choice out of a Luskin Star (Golden Slipper winner) mare.

Croisette is by the champion sire and broodmare sire Canny Lad (Golden Slipper winner). Canny Lad is currently 9th on the broodmare list in Australia.

The filly's 2nd dam is by Snippets. Snippets is the dam sire of the Golden Slipper winner Crystal Lily. This is a good pointer.

Canny Lad is one of our great broodmare sires with his daughters having produced Desert War, Redoute's Choice, Platinum Scissors, Mnemosyne, Happy Zero, El Cambio, Blur, Frit's Princess, Collate, I Am Invincible, Dubleanny and Manhattan Rain. Interestingly, Mnemosyne is in Rose Of Scotland's pedigree.

This is Croisette's second foal. The first is yet to race. The second dam is by the Champion sire Snippets (Magic Millions winner). On the dam's side there is a double cross to Lunchtime. Vain (Golden Slipper winner) appears close up in the pedigree.

The Trainer

I have decided to send this filly to Tony McEvoy. I have been working closely with Tony since I first moved horses to Lindsay Park in December 2005. I have always had a terrific relationship with him and hold him in the highest regard.

He has already done the job in extraordinary circumstances taking over as head trainer of the Lindsay Park racing operation when Peter Hayes was tragically killed. Tony trained the winners of 903 races prior to David's return to Australia.

The Stud

I have often commented that is more important where a horse is reared than who its parents are. This filly was reared at Yarraman Park Stud near Scone in the Hunter valley.

The first horse that I purchased from the Magic Millions was our handy stayer Doodle Dandy which was reared at Yarraman Park. That was back in 1998 and he went on to win seven races and was a very popular horse with our owners.

That was the start of a tremendous association that has seen us race some very good horses reared at Yarraman with probably the best being the Group 3 Grafton Cup winner Desk Top Lover, Bedi, Argentina, Incorrigible, Tricolours and of course Believe 'N Achieve.

Currently, I have six horses in our racing team that were reared at Yarraman Park. Five of these are winners with Believe 'N Achieve, Too Many Reds, Sea Coral, Hyginus and I Am Magic having won 17 races from 44 combined starts with stakes earnings of $293,128. This is a winner's to runner's ratio of 38% which is exceptional.

Mark Kavanagh has the best strike rate of our top 20 trainers with 25.1% to give you a comparison. Given that these six horses are only lightly raced there should be plenty of wins ahead. The sixth is Foreboding which is yet to win but looks a nice staying filly in the making and has been placed in two of her four starts.

This is a beautifully well balanced filly. The photograph tells the story.