Line Honours scores at Randwick for Hussonet & Alinghi

Stepping up from a country maiden win to city company is never easy but Line Honours, the 3YO daughter of champion sire Hussonet and champion racemare Alinghi, accomplished it in style today at Randwick when she scored by a neck over 1000 metres.

Pictured right: Alinghi with the newborn Line Honours at Arrowfield, 5 November 2007.

Bred by the syndicates representing John Messara & John Leaver and raced by them in partnership with Alan Jones’ Belford Productions Syndicate, Line Honours began her career in October with two runs from the Lee Freedman stable. She was then covered by Flying Spur but failed to conceive, so she returned to training, this time in the care of Paul Messara.

After running third at Scone on 23 November, Line Honours won over 900 metres at Muswellbrook a week later and coped well with the 10-day back-up, winning today by a neck in handy time of 57.70 seconds. That took her record to two wins and two placings from five starts.

Line Honours is one of ten winners that have put Hussonet among the top 15 sires of of 3YOs (by earnings) in Australia this season – along with Redoute’s Choice (1st) and Not A Single Doubt (12th).

Four-time Group 1 winner Alinghi delivered a full sister to Line Honours in 2008 – named Lahana, she has been retained by her breeders and is also in the Paul Messara stable. Sadly, Alinghi’s 2009 Redoute’s Choice colt was destroyed after birth, and she subsequently missed to Redoute’s Choice that season.

However, alongside her daughter’s racetrack success comes news that Alinghi is once again safely in foal to Redoute’s Choice. There are no prizes for guessing why Arrowfield is so interested in that particular mating: the resulting foal will be what used to be called a full sibling-in-blood to last season’s brilliant juvenile colt Beneteau (by Redoute’s Choice from Alinghi’s full sister Slice of Paradise).