News

Scone Announces Spectacular Cup Day Program

12th Jan 2010

Breednet - Media Release by Brian Russell Media - Tuesday, 12 April 2010

SCONE Race Club, the racing centre for Australia’s answer to Kentucky, have finalised the program for their Emirates Park – Inglis Million Dollar Race Day to be conducted on Friday May 14. It is a program that is to challenge as the richest country race day held anywhere in the world with over $1.2million on offer, including four six figure events, two of them Listed Stakes.

The money is more than double that on offer at the Scone meeting in 2009, given a huge boost through the launching by national bloodstock salesmen William Inglis of Australia’s richest country race, the Inglis 3YO Guineas. It is a1600m event to be run annually at Scone open only to graduates of the Inglis Sydney, Melbourne and Scone yearling sales, a pool that includes many of the best racehorses in the age group.

Derived from bonuses which have jackpotted during the year, the Guineas will carry a spectacular $770,000 for 2010, comprised by first money of $500,000 and rewards down to 16th place.

The other $100,000 plus events on the program are to be the Emirates Park Scone Cup-LR ($120,000), Yarraman Park – Hunter Breeders Dark Jewel Classic-LR ($110,000) for fillies and mares and the Inglis 2YO Challenge ($100.000) for graduates of the Hunter Valley Breeders’ Yearling sale. In addition the program is to have a Quality Open Sprint valued at $60,000 and three $20,000 events.

The incentives can be expected to attract the highest level of horses seen at a country meeting, including representatives from leading Sydney and Melbourne stables. It should draw a record crowd, including a whose who of racing and breeding. Bookings for the huge trackside marquees where many will enjoy fine food and wines, entertainment and race viewing in a mini Melbourne Cup atmosphere are already starting to flow in.

Scone Cup Day is the biggest highlight of the two-week long Horse Festival which showcases in May each year Scone’s role as the Horse Capital of Australia. It is recognised as the horsemen’s town for the main rival to Kentucky as the world’s leading thoroughbred nursery, that encompassed by the Hunter Valley, rich pasture land nurtured by the Hunter, Goulburn and Pages rivers and their tributaries.

In addition to the big boost to the Cup Carnival, Inglis, a historic bloodstock sales company who have been selling at Scone annually for over 60 years, are to make the Scone sales, and the 2010 Horse Festival, even more appealing this year by offering yearlings on two days,Thursday and Sunday May 13 and 16, instead of one. It is expected there will be about 400 yearlings available, including representatives of many of the sires at leading Hunter Valley studs.

Since the rapid acceleration of the size of books put to sires, there has been a big lift in the quality of Scone yearlings and their strike rate. A very impressive current 2-year-old from the 2009 Scone catalogue is One More Grand, a Snitzel colt who won by 5.5 lengths at Queanbeyan on December 17 and 3.8 lengths at Rosehill on January 2.

Another recent star from the Scone yearling sales is Happy Gladiator, a gelding who at early January had been unbeaten in Macau in all his seven starts, the last of them in course record time. Sold through the Woodlands stud, Hunter Valley for $57,500, Happy Gladiator is by the Quest for Fame (GB) triple Group1 winner Viscount and from a daughter of the Sunday Silence sire Bubble Gum Fellow (JPN).