Farewell Weekend Beauty
Weekend Beauty, dam of 2008 Australian Horse of the Year Weekend Hussler, died on Monday at the age of fifteen.
The last of her seven foals, a colt by Animal Kingdom, was born at Arrowfield on 14 November and has been fostered.
Arrowfield Bloodstock Manager Jon Freyer says, “Weekend Beauty was a very special mare for us, she almost single-handedly justified Arrowfield’s selection and purchase of Hussonet, and gave Australia the champion racehorse Weekend Hussler, whose extraordinary 2007/08 season will be long remembered.”
Weekend Beauty was bred by Katsumi Yoshida and owned by the Arrowfield-Jungle Pocket partnership. An unraced daughter of Arc winner Helissio and the very good Group-winning filly Not On Friday (by At Talaq), Weekend Beauty was a half-sister to Group 3 winners Phantom Thief and Saturday Fever.
Weekend Beauty’s fifth dam was the New Zealand Broodmare of the Year Wuthering Heights, celebrated as the dam of 1970s champion Battle Heights, and grand-dam of Group 1 winner Noble Heights.
Weekend Hussler was his dam’s second foal, born at Arrowfield on 3 November 2004 in the first Australian crop of Hussonet, the champion sire of Chile who had been purchased by Arrowfield a year earlier.
Sent as a yearling to the Inglis Melbourne Premier Sale, the bay colt was an $80,000 buy from the Arrowfield draft by trainer Ross McDonald. The price was below the average figure achieved by Hussonet’s first yearlings, but there was nothing average about the subsequently gelded Weekend Hussler.
An educational fourth placing at Sale marked his debut in August 2007, and he progressed rapidly from his second-start win at Cranbourne and a pair of city wins to Group 1 victories in the Caulfield Guineas and the Coolmore Stud Stakes at his fifth and sixth starts.
Five more Group 1 wins from 1100 to 1800 metres followed in the next ten months until 20 September 2008, when he won the Underwood Stakes, which was to be his last success before his eventual retirement in October 2010. “The Hussler” signed off with career prizemoney of just over $3 million earned in twelve wins and one placing from 21 starts.
He achieved a 122 rating on the 2008 World Thoroughbred Rankings, and an annual Timeform figure of 130 in the 2007/08 season.
Weekend Beauty’s three other named foals include Weekend Hussler’s year-older half-sister Talaq Dancer, successful in Adelaide and the dam of multiple Group winner Lucky Hussler (by Hussonet’s son Husson).
Arrowfield and Jungle Pocket will offer Weekend Beauty’s penultimate foal, a stunning bay filly by Redoute’s Choice, at the 2015 Inglis Easter Sale.
The partnership continues to breed from Weekend Beauty’s half-sister Any Other Day (by Redoute’s Choice), who produced a Charge Forward filly last month, and has been served by Dundeel.
Arrowfield also owns Weekend Hussler’s only full sister, Good Weekend, who has a Smart Missile yearling filly and foaled a colt by Snitzel in October.
