Starcraft celebrates a brilliant new stakeswinner
Celebrity Girl‘s commanding victory in the $125,000 VRC Cap D’Antibes S. 1100m LR at Flemington has given Arrowfield’s leading young sire Starcraft his ninth individual stakeswinner.
Pictured: Michael Rodd steers Celebrity Girl to black type success at Flemington this afternoon. (PHOTO: Sportpix)
The 3YO chestnut filly, cast in the imposing mould of Starcraft’s dual Group One-winning daughter We Can Say It Now, travelled easily, moved forward at the 300-metre mark and kicked clear to win by 2.5 lengths from Star Salute and Platelet.
Mark Kavanagh, who prepares Celebrity Girl for her owners Trevor & Beth Robertson, indicated that The Thousand Guineas G1 at Caulfield on 13 October is the filly’s main spring target.
He told Racing & Sports, “It is the right time of year to have a filly like this running.
“She has always shown us plenty, her win first up at Sandown ([in April] was super, she broke 33 seconds at her first start for her last 600 metres and you know you’ve got a good filly there.
“Certainly today she showed she is above average.”
Kavanagh had to go to an above average price to secure the filly, bidding $500,000 for her at the 2010 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale, where she was offered in the Yarraman Park draft on behalf of Victorian breeder Bramleigh Holdings. Celebrity Girl is Starcraft’s top-priced yearling from three crops sold to date.
Arrowfield sold her stakes-winning dam Dashing Granada (by Keltrice) in foal to Starcraft at the 2008 Magic Millions Winter Broodmare Sale. The mare returned to Starcraft last year and, in a nice piece of synchronicity, was due to foal today.
Dashing Granada is a sister to Group 3 winner Northeast Sheila, and half-sister to stakeswinner Kablammo. This is the family of Group 1 winners Savana City, Mr Vitality & Little Papoose, as well as the high-class New Zealand mare Waihora’s Lass (by Tights), winner of 11 races including the CRC Auckland Thoroughbred Breeders’ S. G2. They are all descendants of the US-bred mare Eagle’s Eyrie, imported to New Zealand in the 1960s.
Starcraft was last season’s leading ANZ second sire of stakeswinners (seven, including Group 1 winners Star Witness & We Can Say It Now). He stands the 2011 season at a fee of $44,000 inc. GST.
