News

$2 Million Dollar Scone Cup Carnival

23rd Apr 2015

The strength of the racing industry in the upper region of the Hunter Valley was showcased by the first three home in the inaugural running of the $300,000 Country Championship Final at Randwick on April 6, the opening day of the Australian Championships.

The trio, Artlee (the winner),Tarangower and then Voodoo Lad, are all bred, owned and trained in the Upper Hunter and several of them, plus others who contested this event or other races over the three big race days at Randwick, are likely to be competing at what appeals as the Australian Country Championships. It is the $2million Annual Scone Cup Carnival on Friday and Saturday, May 15 and 16.

Along with the annual Hunter Valley Breeders Yearling Sale, one to be conducted on the Sunday, May 17, the Cup Carnival is the grand finale to the two week long Scone & Upper Hunter Horse Festival, one that celebrates the region’s nearly 200 years association with the horse.The two days of racing add up to the richest for a country club in Australia and possibly the world.

A four-year-old gelding by Coolmore shuttled European champion miler Excellent Art (GB), Artlee, the winner of the Country Championship Final at Randwick, is a very promising galloper who has been successful in five of eight starts. He races for Singleton owners Peter Rogers (his breeder), Julie Rogers, Gerry Feeney and Kathleen Feeney and is trained at Muswellbrook by Todd Willan.

The second and third placegetters are both Scone bred, owned and trained. Paul Messara (Arrowfield), looks after runner up Tarangower (by Northern Meteor) for the 4-year-old gelding’s breeder Bill Rose, a stalwart of the Scone Race Club for forty years, and third place Voodoo Lad, a 3-year-old gelding by the boom Yarraman Park Stud sire I Am Invincible, is in the hands of Rod Northam for a Segenhoe Stud syndicate.

Bred by the current president of the Scone Race Club, Noel Leckie, Voodoo Lad was purchased out of the Yarraman Park draft at the 2013 renewal of Hunter Valley Breeders’ Scone Yearling Sale by Segenhoe Thoroughbreds for $36,000.

One of a number of prominent trainers at Scone and Muswellbrook, Rod Northam was also represented at the opening day of the Australian Championships by Odyssey Moon, a Snitzel colt who finished a close second in the Group1 Sires’ Produce Stakes. He backed up for a sixth in the Group1 Champagne Stakes at Randwick on Saturday.

Also last Saturday Northam brought the brilliant Big Money (Choisir gelding) back into action after a five month spell, tackling the $150,000 Hallmark Stakes at Randwick and running on strongly from well back to finish mid field. A $75,000 Scone Yearling Sale graduate, Big Money has won nine of 16 starts.

He came into prominence as a brilliant performer when he recorded a brilliant win in the Segenhoe Stud sprint (15 runners) at last year’s Scone Cup carnival. It was one at which Voodoo Lad won the $100,000 Inglis 2YO Challenge (16 runners) and Tarangower was successful in the Cressfield Handicap (also 16 runners).