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By Jordyn Bublitz After having nine driving wins across the Tasman, Brooke Wilkins will make her Kiwi debut at Alexandra Park tonight. The 27-year-old will drive Treacherous Baby in Race 1, the Alex Bar and Eatery Mobile Pace for her employers Mark and Nathan Purdon. Born in Sydney into a racing family Wilkins was always going to get involved in the sport but her racing career stalled in 2019. “I actually had a bad fall, and it put me out for quite a while,” she said, “afterwards I moved to Melbourne and worked for Emma Stewart, and she pushed me back into driving.” Across the Tasman she had 39 training wins and nine driving successes.   For the past two and a half years she has been honing her craft with Purdon Racing with driving taking a back seat due to travelling often with their horses. “Since moving up to Pukekohe Nathan (Purdon) pushed to see if I’d drive a couple at the trials and it sort of went from there.” “Then this mare on Friday needed a junior driver so it worked out pretty well.” Just this week Wilkins drove comeback pacer Akuta at the Pukekohe trials. Now she gets her chance on race night with Treacherous Baby, who’s rated a $2.30 second favourite in what is just a five-horse field. “I think she’s got a good chance. She hasn’t had much luck lately and her form isn’t too hot, but I don’t think she’s run a bad race at all,” she said, “I think we’ll just drive her a bit cold on Friday and save her for one run.” Mantra Blue looks to be her main danger, having her second start back this campaign after running a game fifth in the North Island Breeders Stakes last week.   “I think people probably underestimate how quick she (Treacherous Baby) is and being a small field, I think she’ll be right in it.” Herlihy with three well-favoured runners at Alex Park tonight  By Michael Guerin The harness racing season may be getting close to a winter wind down but our greatest ever driver is just getting warmed up. After a frantic last two months many of the code’s biggest names are enjoying their winter break and racing in the north is returning to something resembling normal. And Tony Herlihy is ready to take advantage. Our most successful ever driver, for those keeping count he is up to 3707 domestic wins, Herlihy is also one of the north’s great all time trainers, with 1132 training wins, rarified air in the north especially as Herlihy rarely travels his horses these days. He fancies he can add to that total over the colder months ahead. “I have got a few who are racing well and aren’t that deep into their campaigns so I am hoping to sneak a couple over the next month,” he smiles. There may not be too much sneaky about the likes of Youneverknow (R2, No.1), Roy Kent (R3, No.3) or Double Parked (R9, No.3) at The Park tonight as all three are in the market, two of them warm favourites. Youneverknow really caught the eye with a huge second to Meant To Be $120,000 IRT Sires’ Stakes Championship last start and only has to race up to that form to win tonight. “He is a lovely big horse and getting better and I think he will hold his own from barrier 1 so he has to be a good chance,” says The Iceman. Roy Kent has been a victim of circumstances lately, chasing home the likes of Marketplace in elite three-year-old races while when he dropped back into the grades last start and was outsprinted by Words in a no-pressure race on the subsequently abandoned race night where the passing lane he could have used was a puddle. “Roy always goes a good race and I think he will be even better next campaign but he has gate speed and is up to these horses.” That same quote suits Double Parked who won a heat of the Metro Series two weeks ago and races in another one tonight in probably an easier field. “He has that gate speed that helps and will be really hard to catch if he can get up against the marker pegs. He definitely has more wins in him.” Herlihy suggests his other runners tonight in Sadhaka (R7, No.1) and Always Ask (R10, No.2) will both be better for their outings tonight. The meeting has some small fields but some smart horses, headlined by Mantra Blue in Race 1 who looks enormously better off in a mobile in Race 1 tonight than when she resumed off a 30m handicap last Friday. View the full article

By Michael Guerin Craig Ferguson knows he might need another miracle at Addington tonight. But the difference between the miracle the Southland driver pulled off with Marketplace last Friday and the one he needs with Wag Star tonight is this time it could be the difference between winning and losing. Ferguson has had a wonderful year in the sulky with his flagship horse being superstar three-year-old Marketplace, trained by his close friend Regan Todd. Ferguson found a pathway paved in gold in the Group 1 Sires’ Stakes Final at Addington last Friday when he weaved through from the second line to lead after 400m. In reality Marketplace probably still would have won but such was the margin at the line Ferguson’s early awareness turned a maybe into a certainty. Tonight he faces another early disadvantage with Wag Star, who he trains, starting off a 10m handicap in a capacity field in the $100,000 Hydroflow Country Cups Championship.  Wag Star has been battling handicaps and poor draws all autumn, often booming home late but Ferguson says there is one key difference between his tactics tonight and Marketplace last Friday. “I think his best chance of running out a hard 3200m is being driven quiet in the first half of the race,” says Ferguson. “I wouldn’t want to be taking off on him over the long trip and usually in this race they run hard so I think it will suit him being driven that way. “But in a full field that still means he will need luck and maybe the right cart into the  race.” Alongside fellow 10m marker Pinseeker, Wag Star has been a promising newcomer to the open class pool and look like be belongs, albeit Pinseeker has properly dived into that pool and made a bigger splash. Either could win tonight but while their 10m handicaps don’t sound daunting over 3200m in the full field it could mean settling 15 lengths from the leaders so if either can make a quick beginning it may enormously enhance their chances. They are joined back in the 10m mark by North Island Country Cups winner The Surfer, who has raced well at Addington before, and Betterthancash.  All those off that 10m handicap are aided by the front line containing plenty of horses possibly not in their best form after the long, magnificent but tiring Country Cups series. That may allow for a rarity, a major 3200m winner coming from off the marker pegs, with the $5 Box Seat Boost for Pinseeker (available in TAB futures) looking very fair money for a pacer who finished fifth in the Race by betcha. While Fugitive is red hot to win tonight’s other Group 1, the Avon City Ford Welcome Stakes, the Group 3 Heather Williams Memorial for the trotting mares has a lot more moving parts. Favourite Eurostyle has been superb this autumn and could be an open class factor in the second half of the season as our elite trotting ranks start to reshape.  Her peak performance would probably win tonight but she does meet some high class rivals in Hidden Talent, Nellie Doyle, Julie Jaccka and the returning Empire City. The latter spent the back end of last season chasing home Australian champion Keayang Zahara and comes in tonight without a trial. “I don’t think that will bother her because she is very well and ready to go,” says trainer Phil Williamson. “But she is up against some good mares who are race fit. She can win but it won’t be easy.” View the full article

No doubt about it, the folks at Hagyards seem to have found themselves a promising intern. Still early days, mind. Richard Holder has only been there 53 years. In fact, Dr. Holder believes himself the first beneficiary of an official internship at the storied Lexington firm, founded in 1876, albeit Dr. William McGee himself was evidently granted a similar opening, less formally, by Dr. Charles Hagyard in 1940. (By 1953 the firm was renamed Hagyard-Davidson-McGee Associates.) In either case, safe to say that the internship model started pretty well. Holder had introduced himself, his first year at vet school, when a friend back in Corpus Christi sent him with an introduction to Craig Franks. Hoping to strengthen that connection, Holder returned as a junior–only to discover that Dr. Franks had left the practice. “So I'm walking out, wondering what to do now, when [Dr.] Jim Smith drives into the barn,” Holder recalls. “I explained what I was doing there, and he said, 'Well, why don't you hop in and ride with me.' We got to be good friends and the next year, 1972, I got the internship.” A vocation for horses had always been there, growing up in South Texas: working on ranches, rounding up cattle, playing cowboy. After the University of Texas, he proceeded to vet school at A&M–and his timing, in terms of the horse business, could not have been better. The old-school sporting programs were suddenly being supplemented by people trying to make money, big money, from breeding. An era was dawning when veterinary input could influence huge business decisions. “When I arrived, the July Sale average was $37,000,” Holder recalls. “The next year, the Japanese started coming in and it went to $55,000. And over the next 15 years it went to $700,000. The business just exploded. There were tons of horses, people buying farms, people bringing in mares. Hagyards was swamped. They probably only had 10 veterinarians, now there are probably 70-something. So I got hired on. And the theory then was to be good to kids: if they worked hard, give them a chance. So if everything worked out, you could become a partner in eight years. And it did work out.” His professional longevity qualifies Holder as one of the last links to names that still cast a benign shade over the Bluegrass, from a time when everything was done by palpation. “Dr. Charlie” retired the year Holder joined, but would regularly call by the office after a dove shoot, to take a drink and make the secretary blush with his teasing. Jane Lyon with Dr. Richard Holder | Keeneland “Dr. Davidson loved shooting, too,” Holder recalls. “As the only intern, I'd hang out with him at the racetrack and see what he'd do with the horses in training. But it was Dr. McGee who was my savior. He was trying to let up, so I hit at the right time. I got along well with Charles Nuckols–we were same age–so was able to take over Hurstland from Dr. McGee. Darby Dan, too, he kind of took me under his wing there. So just with those two, that was 300 mares off his list.” McGee's need was Holder's opportunity. “But he was also doing what I was most interested in, the 'ob-gyn' [obstetric-gynecological] stuff,” he says. “And he was extremely patient and supportive. His clients loved him: if he said I was okay, I was okay with them.” Dr. Charlie's nephew Ed Fallon (“a studious, exacting guy who took great pains with me”) maintained the dynastic core of the firm, while closer in age. Mind you, science was moving so fast that the old timers were also having to learn as they went along. And Holder would himself become associated with a breakthrough meanwhile taken for granted as a decision-making tool by farms of every size. In 1989, having expanded his clientele to include Waterford Farm and a burgeoning Lane's End account, Holder visited the man he considered the world's premier equine researcher, Dr. Oliver Ginther at the University of Wisconsin. They spoke of this and that, caught up on advances–ultrasound had just entered widespread use–until it was time to head back to the airport. Waiting for the taxi, Holder happened to make a wistful aside about embryos: “Boy, it'd be cool if we could figure out a way to tell what sex they are.” “You think people would really be interested?” said Ginther. “I know my clients would. 'Wish we knew what she's carrying.' Hell, people have been saying that ever since I got down there.” A few months later, Ginther telephoned. Thanks to ultrasound, they were learning their way round embryonic physiology, identifying nascent organs and tracking minute changes. And they had identified a barely perceptible, gender specific structure. “Two millimeters, kind of an 'equals' sign,” Ginther explained. “But if you can locate it, that genital tubercle might let you determine sex.” This examination of fetal tissue in Ginther's lab had been conducted by Sandra Curran, who came down to show Holder what to look for. All he needed now was a small, obliging program that might let him experiment on its mares. There was an obvious candidate. “Yeah, I had a little farm with a partner,” Holder recalls. “Fifteen mares. So I was my own first client for this. People don't like you just banging around in there without good reason. Then a couple for Dave Mowat at Fawn Leap. The first year, I did 25. All correct. So Dave said, 'Come on then, I'll let you charge for it.' Next year I did about 45. The year after, 80. Still all correct.” It spread like wildfire: first to Holder's clients, then the superpowers, soon even their sister farms in Europe. At first, volume was confined by assessment being restricted to the first 80 days of pregnancy. But then Holder discovered that this narrow window could be prised back open just a couple of weeks later. “At 80 days it goes out of reach but at 95, damn, there it is again,” he says. “It's a developed fetus, maybe the size of a rat, and the tubercle is no more: by now you're looking at external genitalia.” A.P. Indy | Sarah Andrew He returned to mares already sexed that year and cross-checked the later test against his original findings. Everything tallied. So now the testing spectrum had expanded radically. At one point Holder was scanning 2,000 mares a year, from Japan to Dubai. “I carted that 25lbs Aloka machine through airports for 15 years!” Holder says. “Wasn't always fun, if you were late for a flight…” Of maybe 50,000 tests across his career, no more than eight have proved wrong. So here was another transformative tool: science assisting business, but also business driving science. As the industry grew, ancillary specialisms flourished. In Holder's case, sexing fetuses ended up as 60 percent of his practice. But ultrasound was game-changing in so many other ways. Holder remembers the theatricality surrounding the firm's first machine, each farm booking its day and moving all its mares to one barn to take their turn almost ceremonially. Improved detection even prompted some of the older help to mutter that the machine “caused” twins. “I remember, one of the first mares I looked at, seeing three vesicles in there,” Holder recalls. “I thought she was full of cysts. Then next time you looked, damn, they were pregnancy vesicles. Triplets! Nobody really knew we had them. I've had as many as four or five pregnancies in a mare, but you'd never have known before.” His specialism could make heavy demands. In springtime, long days ran into long nights, as draining emotionally as physically: if you need a vet for the business end of a pregnancy, something is going wrong. The other big test of vocation comes when your arm is fully committed to that portion of an indignant mare with two lethal hoofs attached. One colleague lost a lung, ultimately with tragic consequences, attempting no more than a worming. Mostly, however, Holder has felt able to trust both his own instincts and those handling his patient. But while timeless crises abide, Holder could not have had a more dynamic environment for his long journey from intern to veteran. Now he, in turn, is fascinated by breakthroughs entering daily use among the next generation. Plenty of these, equally, have simply shown how well the old timers managed in the half-light of science. Holder has been privileged by intimate insights into the systems that produced A.P. Indy and Genuine Risk, among others. And while he takes it a little easier now, confining himself to sexing “only” around 600 a year, the professional ardor still burns. “I got here in '72, and I'm still practicing,” he says. “I think I'll have the record at Hagyards, in all the time they've been going. A lot of it's been pretty labor-intensive. But it's fun to get good results. Pregnant or not, that's different. Sexing, there's already good news: she's pregnant. Nobody blames you if it's the 'wrong' sex. But someone really wants a filly? And, yep, it's a filly–well, they go crazy. I've had such fantastic clients, over the years. So it's all been kind of nice to be part of.” The post Half A Century Holding Your Horses appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Field of Gold will face eight rivals as he bids for classic redemption in the Irish Two Thousand Guineas (G1) at the Curragh May 24.View the full article

Frateli La Vita is set to defend his title May 25 in the Gran Premio Club Hipico Falabella at Club Hipico de Santiago with an automatic starting position in the Breeders' Cup Mile on the line.View the full article

For the first time since 2000, Laurel Park in Maryland will host National Steeplechase Association hurdle races on Father's Day, June 15.View the full article

2nd-CD, $120k, Msw, 2yo, 5f, post time: 1:14 p.m. ET Winchell Thoroughbreds' SPICE RUNNER (Gun Runner) drew outside in a field of eight and is the 5-2 morning line second favorite to try to snap an unusually cool beginning to the local meeting for the Steve Asmussen barn. A March foal, the homebred is the latest to make the races out of Simple Surprise (Cowboy Cal), who won her maiden at first asking over a sloppy Churchill main track for coming up on 10 years ago for these same connections. Unsurprisingly covered by the Horse of the Year in her first year at stud in 2018, Simple Surprise produced Gunite, who needed three tries to break his maiden and celebrated his best season as a 4-year-old, defeating future champion Elite Power (Curlin) in the GI Forego Stakes before finishing runner-up to that foe in the GI Breeders' Cup Sprint. Gunite put together a record of 4-2-1 from seven appearances beneath the Twin Spires, with three of those scores in stakes company. TJCIS PPs The post Friday Insights: Gunite Full-Brother Unveiled at Churchill appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

Tattersalls Ireland, RATOATH – Oh what a feeling it is to be playing with the house's money. Eoin McDonagh, one of the most upwardly mobile handlers on the circuit, finds himself in that very position after a bonanza of a breeze-up season and he bids to end the year with a bang at the Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-Up Sale – the sale that got him going.  And he has a strong chance, too. His eight-strong Shanaville Stables draft features juveniles by Hello Youmzain, Starspangledbanner, Lope De Vega, Sioux Nation and more. And McDonagh admits to having saved some of his best bullets until last. “I have a good, solid bunch of horses and I am not afraid to support this sale,” the 35-year-old said. “This sale got me going a few years ago and it continues to go from strength to strength every year since. The footfall here last year was phenomenal and it seems to be strong already here this week again. And not just at the top end, which seemed to be strong at every breeze-up sale this year, but the market from the bottom right up to the top has historically been extremely strong at this sale. That's why we love coming back and hopefully this week will be the same.” Things have been humming along pretty sweetly for McDonagh ever since the Craven Breeze-Up Sale where his 30,000gns yearling purchase by Starspangledbanner rocked into 200,000gns. Jackpot. But the cards have kept on falling his way all year and, following another good week at Arqana, there is optimism in the air ahead of what has traditionally been known as the final big sale on the European breeze-up circuit.  He said, “I've had a great year – turned simple pinhooks into good money and I'm ahead for the year. Things are good and I'm fortunate I had a few nice horses. We'd a very good sale at Arqana selling a Palace Pier filly with a nice page for €165,000 and a Blue Point that we sold for €75,000. They both made a profit. I think the best result of the year so far was the Starspangledbanner colt we sold at the Craven – he sold for 200,000gns after we bought him for just 30,000gn as a yearling but I really do hold him in high regard. He was actually named Golden Conquer this week and I think there will be big things to come from him. He's based with Roger Varian and the vibes seem to be good.” He added, “I had 15 breeze-up horses last year and we upped it to 18 this year, which is the most we have ever had. I think we bought a lot more quality last year – did a lot of shopping at Book 1 and 2. We actually bought three of the cheapest horses in Book 1 last year and they all blossomed into lovely horses so it worked out well. I took a chance on horses by sexy sires who might have been falling between the cracks.” To that extent, McDonagh has come into the breeze-up game from a different angle. Having cut his teeth in National Hunt racing, a sphere in which he knows, loves and continues to operate well in, McDonagh revealed that it did take some time to refine his eye to what the market wants and appreciates on the level.  He explained, “I love National Hunt racing, I always have done, but as far as running a business goes, this works well. I spent a couple of years with Con Marnane when I was younger and that just opened my eyes to what scale there is on the Flat. We've been relatively successful at the breeze-up game throughout a short period of time but every year you are learning something new and adapting. I try to give myself a good chance with sire-power and pedigree. If you have that, you can get buyers to the door and, if they have done a nice breeze, it's an easy sell. I'm not afraid to think outside the box either.” He added, “I have always been sucked into those big-walking horses at the sales but I have learned that you don't need that big exaggerated walk for the Flat. Those horses tend to be slow so, when you come to this game from a National Hunt background, you need to adapt and change your eye to a certain degree. I'd often look at a yearling and be quite forgiving because I'd imagine what they would look like when they are trained up at the breeze-up sale. That forgiving mindset has worked in my favour. Take the Starspangledbanner for example. He was quite a heavy yearling but he came back a much better two-year-old and just transformed into a lovely horse with a bit of training. So I'm not afraid of taking a chance and trying to turn these yearlings into nice, athletic horses.” While a number of the Shanaville horses found themselves in the top 50 on the unofficial times sheets following Thursday's breeze, you won't usually find many of McDonagh's horses breaking the clock as a rule. Instead, the young handler remains committed to the later-maturing types, a modus operandi that has served him well thus far. He concluded, “I was never really tempted to get sucked into those fast, early types, because if they don't clock well, you've a long way to fall. On top of that, they are not worth much after Royal Ascot. Concentrating on the mile/mile-plus horses has served me well and I think it's the area of the market that suits us best. With those sharper, quicker horses, you have a shorter shelf life. If you have a horse with size, scope and movement, people will look at them with a view towards them being three-year-old types and some buyers might even be thinking of a horse that would go dual-purpose. I prefer to think long-term and the international market for those horses is very strong when you have a good one.” The Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-Up Sale, which produced classy performers Diego Ventura and Coto De Caza last year, gets underway at 10am on Friday. The post ‘The Tattersalls Ireland Breeze-Up Sale Got Me Going And I’m Not Afraid To Support It’ appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article

The deadline to nominate yearlings to the European Breeders' Fund (EBF) by a stallion not registered to the EBF is Saturday, May 31. This nomination stage largely relates to yearlings by stallions standing in the US and requires a registration fee to be paid of $600. “Owners and breeders looking to either campaign a horse in Europe or sell, should check that it is EBF nominated as over 80% of two-year-old maiden races are confined to EBF-qualified horses,” said the EBF's Kerry Murphy. “The EBF is contributing over €6 million in added prize-money throughout Europe every year.” The post EBF Registration Deadline Approaching appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article