Snitzel’s stakes double starts the season
There was no warm-up required for Snitzel to make an early impact on the new season. One Saturday in and he’s already notched two new stakeswinners, Thronum in Sydney and Sooboog in Melbourne.
The quick start is an ominous sign for Snitzel’s rivals. Two years ago he posted his first stakeswinner on 9 August and by season-end he’d added a further 11 winners of 16 stakes races, including three Group 1 winners.
In testing conditions at Randwick, Sun Stud’s 3YO colt Thronum jumped smartly, took control of the pace and under topweight of 58kg, grittily held off his rivals in the $100,000 ATC The Rosebud 1200m LR.
Staunch finishes by Mediterranean (a new stakes performer for Smart Missile) and Miss Beneteau (ditto for Beneteau) brought them within a half-length of Thronum, and completed an Arrowfield-sired trifecta.
Watch Thronum win the ATC The Rosebud LR.
Thronum is the first winner and the first stakeswinner for the new training partnership of Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott.
Bott said after the race, “We were confident coming here today when we saw the rain throughout the week. The long range plan has always been the Golden Rose.
“He’s a colt that keeps improving. We’ll just see how he comes through the race. He’s done enough to get in so we’ll just take it from there.”
The last three winners of The Rosebud, Sebring Sun, Scissor Kick & Eurozone, all went on to Group 1 form during the Spring.
Thronum is the second foal of the US-bred mare Helena’s Secret (by Five Star Day), from the family of champion sire Street Cry and Shamardal. Bred by Ron & Deb Gilbert’s Highgrove Stud, Robert Anderson and Widden Stud, he was purchased for $300,000 by James Harron from Highgrove’s draft at the 2015 Inglis Easter Sale.
An hour later at Flemington Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Maktoum’s colt Sooboog decisively won the $150,000 VRC Aurie’s Star H. 1200m G3 by almost two lengths from Dibayani and Tashbeeh.
Watch Sooboog win the VRC Aurie’s Star H. G3.
Sooboog’s first black type success was one of five wins on the card for champion Melbourne trainer Darren Weir who said, “He’s a really good galloper – he’s shown us that at home and we knew that the day he got things fall his way he’d be winning a good race.
“He’s a Group 3 winner which is important for him as a stallion. We’ll look at targeting another good race with him in the Spring, I can’t see any reason why he can’t get a strong 1400 either.”
Sooboog, Arrowfield’s $1.5 million draft-topper from the 2014 Inglis Easter Sale, is the second of Snitzel’s nine million-dollar yearlings to achieve Group-winning status, after Australian Guineas winner Wandjina. (Five of those nine are just-turned 2YOs.)
Sooboog and his Group 1-winning older sister Snitzerland are the best of seven winners out of Arrowfield gem Monte Rosa (by Fraar), who has a yearling filly by Snitzel and is due to foal to him again this Spring.
Thronum and Sooboog take Snitzel’s tally of stakeswinners to 40 and his record of same-day stakes race doubles to seven. Expect plenty more of that kind of performance from the son of Redoute’s Choice: his 175-strong Class of 2014, conceived on a fee of $49,500, comes on stream this season, with 171 yearlings right behind them.
