\n\t\t\t\t\tBy Tayla Dyke<\/b>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Listen<\/p>\n
Thursday morning\u2019s official Caulfield trials offered the first public glimpse of some of Victoria\u2019s most exciting juvenile prospects, with a strong field of two-year-olds stepping out on the Heath track.<\/p>\n
The opening heat over 1000 metres for the older horses saw Tropicus (Too Darn Hot), a last\u2013start winner of the Heath 1100 (Gr 3, 1100m), edge out a quality field in a blanket finish that included Group 1 winner Giga Kick (Scissor Kick) and Grahame Begg\u2019s progressive mare Niance (Swiss Ace).<\/p>\n
Bred and raced by Kia Ora Stud, the four-year-old entire is being aimed at the Schillaci Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) back at Caulfield on Saturday week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very happy with him,\u201d Kia Ora Stud\u2019s racing manager Luke Wilkinson told ANZ News. \u201cHe is a horse that loves Caulfield and loves 1100 metres. We had an idea of maybe running him in the Manikato, and then we decided to just step through our grades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won a Group 3 last start, so we\u2019re aiming to try to win a Group 2 in the Schillaci. He\u2019s a horse that races best fresh and spacing his runs, and Sam and Anthony are doing a fantastic job.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second heat, contested over 800 metres, was taken out by Profiteer (Capitalist) colt Commit for trainers Mick Price and Michael Kent Jnr.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A $90,000 purchase from the Lime Country Thoroughbreds draft at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale in January, he stopped the clock at 48.44 seconds in a small field of three as he defeated Senza Nome (Yes Yes Yes) by 0.1 lengths, with Stomping Ground (Astern) a further 2.9 lengths behind in the final spot.<\/p>\n
The juvenile fillies\u2019 division began with a standout performance from Face The Wild (Wild Ruler), trained by Tony and Calvin McEvoy. The filly pinged the gates to score by 1.8 lengths in 47.56 seconds, leaving Lindsay Park-trained duo Torture, a $250,000 Karaka yearling by Cambridge Stud\u2019s first crop sire Sword Of State (Snitzel) and a half-brother to Group 1 winner Ruthless Dame (Tavistock), and La Gitana, a $400,000 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale purchase by Coolmore freshman Home Affairs (I Am Invincible), chasing home.<\/p>\n
Raced in the silks of First Light Racing, Face The Wild was purchased for $55,000 at the 2024 Inglis Australian Weanling Sale from the Alma Vale\/Kitchwin Hills draft before then being bought by First Light and her trainers for $150,000 at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a really nice trial, she\u2019s a nice filly, very professional, which she\u2019s shown all the way through,\u201d Calvin McEvoy told ANZ News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been really pleased with the development she\u2019s taken physically and she\u2019s got a nice pedigree. She\u2019s really taking us all the way at the moment, so all going well, she\u2019ll be here in the Debutant Stakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The filly is from the maiden crop of Newgate Farm\u2019s exciting first-season sire Wild Ruler (Snitzel), who will be represented by The Wildling in the Gimcrack Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m) at Randwick on Saturday, and is out of a First Light-raced Charge Forward (Red Ransom) mare, Face Forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWild Ruler is a stallion that we, as a team, are very keen on, and being out of a Charge Forward mare has always been a plus. We had Sunlight, who\u2019s out of a Charge Forward mare,\u201d McEvoy said.<\/p>\n
First Light Racing director Tim Wilson echoed McEvoy\u2019s sentiment.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s been very professional for a little while,\u201d Wilson told ANZ News. \u201cCalvin let us know a month ago that he worked up a dozen two-year-olds at Ballarat and she put her hand up to say she was as good as any of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019ve got Tony and Calvin, who have got a two-year-old record the envy of any stable in terms of the quality of two-year-olds they produced from the numbers they have for their system, it gets you pretty excited when they tell you that yours is close to the best they\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson has long held ties to the filly\u2019s family, having raced her dam Face Forward, who provided his operation with its first stakes-quality runner in its early stages a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe raced Mum, she was our first genuine, stakes-quality horse in our very early days. She won consecutive races down the straight at Flemington \u2026 Face Forward was our first proper stakes horse, even though she didn\u2019t win a stakes race, she did run fifth in a Listed race at Flemington, but she carried 60 kilos that day and got beat by a boy, carrying 56 [kilograms]. So she was the best horse in it at stakes level,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven our connection with the family, she [Face The Wild] was just one that we had to have and we were delighted to get her. A few of the Face Forward owners from the day, ten years ago, have gone into ownership. Probably the only mistake we\u2019ve made with her was we didn\u2019t keep a share for ourselves \u2013 we fully syndicated her, and she looks elite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilson was also taken by the stock of first-season sire Wild Ruler, and his confidence in the stallion has grown since, as with the filly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey seem to be nice horses,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t go to Magic Millions specifically seeking out the stallion, but I did really like what we saw from his yearlings at the sales. So we ended up buying two. The other filly [out of Saratoga Treasure] goes really well too \u2013 she\u2019s jumping out on [Friday at Moe] for Mick Huglin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe two we\u2019ve had through our system are both very professional, early running types. It was a bit of a punt, as it always is, when you go on a first-season stallion, but he was a son of Snitzel, so that\u2019s the main box ticked for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having impressed at home and at Caulfield on Thursday, Wilson is confident Face The Wild can make her presence felt when she steps out under raceday conditions, with the filly aiming to start in the Debutant Stakes (Listed, 1000m) at Caulfield on Wednesday, October 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know the boys were considering putting her down the straight at Flemington last week to get to the Maribyrnong Trial, which had a bit of nostalgia about it because I remember how much mum used to love the straight, but the Debutant Stakes would be a real feather in her cap so early in her career,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously a very good race historically, King\u2019s Gambit won it, so it can certainly produce an elite two-year-old, but given she\u2019s been around Caulfield this morning, she\u2019s won her jump out really stylishly and ran really good time compared to the boys as well, you\u2019d like to think she goes there and she\u2019s a terrific chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The final heat of the morning clocked the fastest time of the day (47.23), with Free Flying (Snitzel) doing just that to score by a length over Tuzemak (Prague), with Dance The Boogie (Extreme Warrior) closely behind in third.<\/p>\n
Raced in the bottle green silks of Yulong, Free Flying was a $750,000 purchase for James Bester from Coolmore at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale and is trained by Ben, Will and JD Hayes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Out of star mare Ennis Hill (Fastnet Rock), who was also trained by the Hayes camp, the filly hails from the family of Hips Don\u2019t Lie (Stravinsky), Lake Geneva (Fastnet Rock), Acrobat (Fastnet Rock) and Learning To Fly (Justify).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a really nice trial,\u201d Ben Hayes told ANZ News. \u201cIt\u2019s a family that we know well. We actually trained Ennis Hill and she was an early type of horse as well. So to see her improve so much from her first to second and win her trial nicely, it gives us a lot of hope.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see how she pulls up and if she pulls up well, she\u2019ll put her hand up to look at maybe the Debutant, so we\u2019ll just monitor how she is and we\u2019ll go from there and hopefully she can get herself there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYulong are in her and there\u2019s all the other people, good supporters of our stables, so if she\u2019s able to be fast and get some black type early, it\u2019s all a bonus and I\u2019m really looking forward to seeing how she goes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tayla Dyke Listen Thursday morning\u2019s official Caulfield trials offered the first public glimpse of some of Victoria\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-468846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115305484564776506","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}