Smart three-year-old doing family proud

[Wandering Eyes]

Dan Vegas is continuing Totara Park Stud’s outstanding run of success with the family of the unbeaten three-year-old.

He is out of Dirk and Nicci Oberholster’s Savabeel mare Miss Bluebell, who has a 100 percent winning record from two visits to Little Avondale Stud’s Per Incanto.

The Kenny Rae and Krystal Williams-trained Dan Vegas followed up his debut victory at Ruakaka over 1400m earlier this month with another dashing course and distance victory on Saturday.

He is raced by co-breeders Totara Park and the Little Avondale Trust and is a younger brother to the Oberholster-bred and sold pair of Listed Members’ Handicap (1600m) winner Gringotts and stakes placed half-brother Millefiori.

The flying start Dan Vegas has made to his career has attracted buyer interest.

“There’s been nothing concrete yet. We’re probably getting harder to deal with by the day as far as selling him goes,” Nicci Oberholster said.

“With the stakes in New Zealand racing now, things are a lot brighter on that front as far as keeping them to race here.”

Dan Vegas was to have been offered through Riversley Park’s 2022 New Zealand Bloodstock Ready to Run Sale draft before fate intervened.

“He was always going to be a sales horse but for one reason or another he never got there and that’s ended up being our good luck,” Oberholster said.

“He breezed up for the Ready to Run Sale and ran a good time, but when they did the final x-ray he had a little chip on his knee.

“We took the chip out and gave him to Kenny to get him up and going.

“We’ll just see where he takes us. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to just have some fun.”

Dan Vegas’ unraced mother Miss Bluebell is out of a half-sister to dual stakes winner Vegas Showgirl who secured her place in breeding and racing folklore as the dam of champion mare Winx.

“We were halves in Miss Bluebell, she was a foal share with Mark Chittick,” Oberholster said.

“She didn’t get to the races and Mark signed her over to us as he had Savabeel fillies and mares coming out of his ears at that point.

“She’s had a stakes winner and stakes placegetter who have both won seven and now he (Dan Vegas) has come out and won two on the trot.”

Currently empty, Miss Bluebell will be returning later this year to Per Incanto after producing a daughter to champion sire Proisir last season before she failed to get in foal to Satono Aladdin.

“The Proisir filly will be going to the sales with a healthy reserve on her. She’s a beautiful filly and we’ve got Miss Vegas who has got a Proisir filly and a colt,” Oberholster said.

The first foal of Miss Bluebell’s half-sister Miss Vegas, a daughter of Carlton House, is Dan Vegas’ stablemate Vegas Queen who ran third in Saturday’s two-year-old event at Ruakaka.

From the same family is Vegas Dancer, dam of the multiple winner and Gr.2 Wakeful Stakes (2000m) and Gr.3 Ethereal Stakes (2000m) runner-up Vegas Jewel, a daughter of Shocking.

“We’ve got an Ace High colt out of the old girl and that’s probably her last foal. We probably won’t mate her again, she’s been very kind to us,” Oberholster said.

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