Kiwi owners celebrate Irish Group Three win
Several households across New Zealand were wide awake and tuned into the racing at Gowran Park in Ireland at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning as their filly Je Zous powered home to win the Gr.3 Denny Cordell Lavarack and Lanwades Stud Fillies Stakes.
The Joseph O’Brien trained three-year-old is the latest success story for Go Racing’s global racing strategy of targeting the best races in Europe and Australia with horses purchased from Europe through bloodstock agent Stuart Boman.
The concept is to buy young horses in Europe and race them there as two and three-year-olds, targeting black-type races, from the stable of racing royalty Joseph O’Brien in Ireland. The horses are then transferred to champion trainer Chris Waller in Australia to take advantage of the lucrative prize money on offer there.
“We’re really excited to be giving our owners the best of both worlds,” said Go Racing’s General Manager Matt Allnutt.
“They have the chance to race horses up in Europe, where they’re aimed at the best races, they’ve been able to go to Royal Ascot and watch their horses run, and then we bring them down to Australia where they’re trained by the best in the business in Chris Waller and they race for the good prize money.
“It’s a formula that’s proving very successful. Albert (Bosma, Go Racing director) has put a hell of a lot of work into it to get it off the ground and Stuart has been an instrumental part of the plan, presenting us with these horses, it’s just going from strength to strength.”
Je Zous’s win came hot off the heels of another Group Three winner to have come out of this system, with Etna Rosso, a stakes performer for O’Brien now trained by Waller, having won the Gr.3 Newcastle Gold Cup in Australia on Friday.
He’s now being aimed at the A$750,000 The Metropolitan (Gr.1, 2400m) on October 5 and then on to the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.
A winner and stakes placed as a two-year-old, Je Zous has shown great promise this season, she placed twice at Group Three level and finished fifth in the Gr.2 Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot and sixth in the Gr.1 German Oaks last start.
Ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle, the daughter of Zoustar led Group Three event, with McMonagle opting to come home on stands’ side while the rest of the runners came up the centre of the track, the pair crossed the line a length and three-quarters ahead of their rivals.
“It was a really good victory from her and to be fair it was a thoroughly deserved win, Allnutt said. “She’s been super consistent all the way through her career,” Go Racing Director Albert Bosma said that while official plans are yet to be confirmed, Je Zous will be heading to the Waller stable in search for Australian black-type at some stage before being sold as a broodmare prospect Down Under.
As for Je Zous’s owners who watched blurry eyed in the wee hours of the morning across New Zealand, this morning’s coffees will likely be replaced with something stronger as they celebrate at a more friendly hour.
“I was speaking to an owner this afternoon and he and his wife were off to the bottle shop to buy a nice bottle of gin to celebrate. I’m sure a lot of the syndicate will be celebrating tonight and I’ll be having a glass of champagne too.”
“I saw a couple who are involved in her this morning,” Bosma added. “They got up at 3 a.m. and watched her and they were just delighted.
“They said they’ll be celebrating with champagne tonight, they didn’t feel like they should be doing that this mornign, but they’ll be celebrating with gusto tonight.”
The Go Racing team and Boman will be going back to the well next month, to source their next globe-trotting stayers from the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale, to register your interest email matt@goracing.co.nz or phone 0508 GORACING.