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NZ Racing and Breeding News – 29 October 2023
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Gringotts too strong at Randwick
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Imperatriz a class above in Manikato
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They need to follow the NZTR initiative we have in place to fix the foal crop, anyone know what that is? -
He knows already & just an enriching himself job now, yet another one although he deserves a round of applause for being the most miscellaneous in years.
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We know your real world research doesn't go beyond the Annual Tangerine Calendar, but do tell us why they aren't doing this already?
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Group 1 winner Docklands (Massaat) will not take up an engagement in the G1 Dubai Turf and instead point toward a 2026 debut at Doncaster, according to trainer Harry Eustace. The 2025 Queen Anne Stakes hero has taken his show on the road internationally for owners OTI Racing and the Doncaster Mile is under consideration. “He's very well,” said Eustace of the bay, who will avoid the Middle East as the Iranian conflict continues and point for a long-term start in Hong Kong next month. “We wouldn't want to find ourselves in a situation where he ends up staying Dubai longer than planned and that makes sending him back to Hong Kong [for the G1 FWD Champions Mile on April 26] trickier. “He'll probably go to Doncaster for the Doncaster Mile as a prep run before Hong Kong. “The programme for him then writes itself, really, he's six this year and he was very consistent last year. “He deserves to have a shake at all of those Group 1s, Goodwood might be the only one we skip this year as he's run there twice now and it just doesn't play to his strengths.” G1 Commonwealth Cup heroine Time For Sandals (Sands Of Mali) is making progress toward her four-year-old debut. “She's very well, she was also meant to go to Dubai, but for various reason she isn't – partly logistics and partly because we haven't had the smoothest six weeks with her,” added Eustace. “She'll start off in the [G3] Abernant, I should think. What will be interesting this year is if, and it wouldn't surprise me at all, she sharpens up and ends up back at five furlongs rather than six. “Having said that, she's probably going to be quite versatile and the [G1] King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot will likely be the ideal spot for her.” The post Docklands To Skip Dubai And Make 2026 Debut At Doncaster appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Steve Landers knows a salesman when he sees one. And here comes a burly young man, into the paddock at Oaklawn, holding out a hand. “Mr. Landers,” he said. “I'm Brad Cox.” This was a good decade ago, when Cox was still trying to get established. So he made his pitch. If Landers could keep him in mind for a horse or two, he sure would appreciate it. “Well, I like to see somebody swim out to their ship, instead of waiting on it to come in,” Landers says now. “So I liked the way this kid had come out and asked for the business.” By the sound of it, relations were already strained with his current trainer. And when Landers called to say that he would like to pick out a couple to send to this kid Cox, the conversation did not go too well. “Made my trainer mad,” Landers says. “He said, 'Just give him the lot.' And I said, 'That's a great idea. Get the bridles on all 21 for 7 a.m. He'll be there to pick them up.' So I told Brad, 'You don't get two, you get 21.' So really that got him started. And the rest is history.” Certainly is–from a first Grade I winner for Cox, Leofric (Candy Ride {Arg}) in the 2018 Clark Handicap, to the pair's latest star, Destino d'Oro (Bolt d'Oro), whose lucrative winter in Florida was extended by a thrilling photo-finish success in the GII Hillsborough Stakes a few days ago. “There will always be up and down years,” Landers says. “But for the last 10 years or more that I've been with Brad, he's done a hell of a job for me. I'm not as patient as he is, but I've learned to let him steer the ship. Sometimes I tell him if I don't agree, and then he tells me why I should agree, and then we go on down the road.” Landers knows all about crossroads in life. That meeting with Cox was one, but none will match the day he got a blank diploma from his English teacher in Benton, Arkansas. He walked across the stage, and she told him: “You'll never amount to anything.” “And I just smiled at her and went on,” Landers recalls. “There are turning points in a man's life, and that's what turned mine around, when she said that.” Determined to prove her wrong, Landers went to a Ford dealer in Little Rock and asked for a job. No dice. He went back next day, and again the next. Eventually, the seventh day, the guy told him to go away, get a haircut, and he could start. If he was as persistent a salesman as he was a job applicant, well, he might amount to something. About four years on, his old English teacher came to buy a car. She apologized: she should never have said such a mean thing to a youngster. But Landers hugged her and thanked her. Steve Landers | Coady Media “You think you did something wrong,” he said. “But really you changed my attitude on life with that statement. And I love you for it!” She cried. And, yes, bought a car. Landers had married his sweetheart Sandy when they were both still teenagers. “I was the only one working, so I couldn't fail,” he reasons. “If I wasn't the best salesman there, I had to be the best worker. So that's what I always tell these kids in the auto business today. You've got to be willing to work hard, work with passion. That's what makes a good salesman, that and saying and doing the right things each day. Do that, and you'll do okay.” He started his first car lot with his dad, using a house trailer as office. “We started with $2,000,” he recalls. “He put in $1,000 in, and I put in $1,000. First month, we lost $2,000. Second month, we made $2,000. And then we went on from there and started making pretty good money. Stayed in the used car business for 20 years. And then I got into the new car business, in 1989, and by the mid '90s I was leading the world for Dodge Chrysler Jeep sales.” He sold up to Roger Penske, but didn't let $40-odd million burn a hole in his pocket. He worked for his buyer for nine years but eventually couldn't suppress an itch to get back into dealer ownership. So he's still going strong, 55 years in the business; unstoppable, even after losing a leg to a sudden attack of sepsis last year. “I do most everything that I once did,” he says proudly. “I drive, I get in and out of the shower, I'm pretty self-sufficient again. Which was hard, but you just push through.” But a man who plainly likes to take charge of his own destiny has found unexpected pleasure in a world where you are often at the mercy of dumb luck. Because if Landers never stopped working, a racing stable did allow him to play a little. It started as another bond with his dad. “He loved to go to the racetrack, and bet $5 across or $5 win-and-place,” he recalls. “He wouldn't bet much, just loved to watch those horses. So probably about 25 years ago I said, 'Well, I'm going to try and find a horse that he can go get his picture made with.' I never anticipated it going as far as it did. I've been as high as 28th owner in the nation. But I only ever wanted to be part of it. A lot of my friends in the horse business try to tell the trainers what to do. I've been pretty fortunate, by leaving it to the guys that know what they're doing.” Andrew Cary | courtesy of Andrew Cary In that category, besides Cox, Landers is also fortunate to have Andrew Cary. Destino d'Oro was the one and only purchase made by the Lexington agent at the 2024 2-year-old sales, for $185,000 at O.B.S. April. Cary had gone solo in 2020, with what he ruefully acknowledges as “impeccable timing” just before Covid. As bloodstock advisor, he has meanwhile established a fertile relationship with Coteau Grove Farm, whose graduates Tumbarumba (Oscar Performance) and Touchuponastar (Star Guitar) currently stand first and third on the all-time Louisiana-breds' earning list. And just as Coteau Grove bred Charlatan's first stakes winner, Little Miss Curlin, so Cary can vaunt equivalent breakouts for City of Light and Essential Quality among his modest annual portfolio of yearling buys. It was demonstrably an alert eye, then, that spotted Destino d'Oro. “The sire wasn't as hot then as he is now,” Cary recalls. “And the mare, though she was Grade I-placed, hadn't produced much at that point. There were some good judges on her, but she happened to be early in the sale. So she was a little bit under the radar. But I loved her workout. We went back and looked at the slow-mo and the reach she had was tremendous.” When he went back to the barn, he found ample to support the impression she made in her breeze. “Very much a nice Medaglia d'Oro/Sadler's Wells line type, with that coloring and movement, with maybe a bit more strength from her bottom side,” Cary recalls. “Great demeanor, easy-moving, very classy, well-muscled, with a big stride for a medium-sized horse. But most of all I just loved her action. And that has translated to the racetrack. Those were obviously different times, before these changes to the tax laws. But she looks awfully cheap, compared to what $185,000 will get you now.” The rising star of the female turf division is already closing on millionaire status in a six-for-nine start to her career. “She was extremely impressive on her first start and really unlucky in the GII Jessamine, in front a stride before the wire and again a stride after,” Cary recalls. “Then she came back last year to win an allowance against older horses, and in the [GIII] Pucker Up she was just dominating. After that she had a nightmare trip at Kentucky Downs, not a track where you want to be buried on the inside. She wasn't at her best at Keeneland, but she has really bounced back in Florida this winter. She's tremendously tough: she's encountered all kinds of trouble in her races, but just knows where the wire is. Especially the other day: we really thought she was done, but she re-rallied to get back up, giving weight. She's a superstar and hopefully she's got a Grade I in her future.” Landers credits the 4-year-old's progress to patient handling. Brad Cox | Sarah Andrew “Brad brings them along right,” he says. “He doesn't run them into the ground as 2-year-olds, let's them develop. When she'd had only had two or three races, she was sometime against horses with eight or 10. So Brad thinks she's maturing now, and I think she's right in her prime.” And Landers himself sounds like he might be getting the hang of things, too. After 55 years, his marriage is evidently off to a good start; and the same might be said of his business career. “I don't know why I got blessed to have such a good wife, but I was,” he says happily. “And I'm still in the auto business, too. I'm sitting at a desk right now in Arkansas, working deals. When I was five years old, I was selling papers on the street corner. I've bought and sold 70 dealerships, all over the U.S., Brazil, Mexico. All starting from about 30 cars on that first lot. But I got tired of sitting at home with my leg off, and decided to get a job. So I came back out and went to work.” A blatant parallel suggests itself between Destino d'Oro and her owner. “She doesn't like to lose,” he acknowledges. “You watch her down the lane, when she kicks into gear, she pins her ears back and turns it on. And she gets there. She clipped heels at the turn last week, got backed out of it and then came back and won. There's something about a horse, when they want to win: they just bust their guts to get there. I mean, it's in their genes. If you're going to beat her, you're going to have to bring their 'A' game. I like that. And I'm like that. I'm not going to get beat. If I am, it's not because I didn't bust my gut.” The post Landers Took Charge Of His Own ‘Destino’ appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
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