Friday Flash – 6th January 2023

Headline News;
Mark Walker on fire – 100 winners for the season to date now in close reach

Singapore Racing for the 2023 Season gets under way Saturday 7^th January

John to attend Magic Millions Sale on the Gold Coast commencing 10^th January

Fortuna buying strategy for 2023 takes shape

Fortuna has three runners this weekend, two in NZ and one in Singapore

LEADERBOARD contests the Marton Cup (Listed) 2200m at Trentham Saturday 7^th Race 7 @ 4.48pm – Michael McNab to ride. His last start saw him put in a dogged effort to run 5^th in the NZ Cup at Riccarton, Then freshened, he trialed nicely over 100m at Matamata 23^rd December. On a path toward the Wellington Cup 28^th Jan. This trip is probably too short for him but he enjoys it wet and may strike a wet track on Saturday. Should be rattling home strongly if the rain comes

MOHAWK BRAVE runs in the R75 1500m event at Pukekohe Park Sunday 8^th Jan – Race 7 @ 4.08pm – Opie Bosson to ride. Has struck form of late with an unlucky 3^rd at Hastings and a strong finishing 2^nd off a wide gate at Otaki. Draws well here in gate 4 and has that man in the saddle – represents a very good each way chance here

ENTERTAINER resumes in the Kranji Stakes A event 1100m Polytrack – Race 11 @ 5pm Singapore time (10pm NZT) Stable apprentice Jamil to ride, claiming 4kgs – an eight time winner in Singapore, he has won 7 times at this trip and surface, but not in this grade. On paper he should find this grade a bit rich, but will carry just 48.5kgs with the claim, has an inside draw and loves to lead – if he can get a soft lead, he has a chance of featuring in the finish here

Here is what the Singapore Turf Club tipsters have to say about this race;

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Fortuna Track work – Matamata

No timed Fortuna trackwork this week

Fortuna Track work – Singapore

Saturday 31 Dec

Brutus (Jerlyn) – 800/600 39; Entertainer (Yusoff) – 1000/600 37; Kinppenberg (Yusoff)– 800/600 37; Rocky (Yusoff) – 1000/600 38;

Wednesday 3^rd Jan

Brutus (Jerlyn) – 800/600 39; Trident (Jamil) – 1000/600 39.5; King Arthur (Yusoff) – 1000/600 37.5; Briggs (Awah) – 800/600 40.5; Knippenberg(Aslam) – 800/600 37; Rocky (Aslam) – 800/600 38.5;

Other News

Mark Walker on fire – 100 winners for the season to date now in close reach

Yes, incredible though it sounds, Mark Walker appears to be unstoppable in his quest for a 10^th Training Premiership with 95 winners (including 15 Stakes winners) for the current season to date with still almost 7 months of the season to run. Amazingly, Mark is 56 wins clear of the 2^nd placed Trainer, Stephen Marsh. And to put things in perspective, at the same time last season, Jamie Richards was leading the 2021/22 season premiership with 57 wins.

Mark, as always is very modest about his achievements and will deflect praise to David and Karyn for buying so many talented gallopers and also to his stable staff, who put in a devoted and determined effort and, no doubt these things are true, but there is also no doubt that Mark is completely dedicated to his profession and brings many years of experience and horse knowledge to the task at hand.

We are certainly very lucky to have such a “Master Craftsman” at the Te Akau helm.

Singapore Racing for the 2023 Season gets under way Saturday 7^th January

A gap of 6 weeks since the last race day at Kranji in late November has seen all horses have a freshen up and many have been back in work for the last four weeks or so. There is a real buzz among Trainers, Riders, Stable Staff and Owners as some significant announcements around prizemoney and race scheduling were made toward the end of the season. Singapore Trainers were very active at the three Ready To Run Sales held in Australia and NZ October and November with a significant number of new horses acquired for Singapore racing.

Our Singapore Trainer, Donna Logan, had an exceptional first season at the helm of the Te Akau operation, finishing in 2^nd place and, as with other Singapore Trainers, Donna was very active at the 2yo sales and has a number of young horses joining her team. Donna kicks off the new season with 6 runners on Saturday

As readers would be well aware, Fortuna Racing has been active in Singapore since 2010 and despite the traumas of Covid, we have had two very good seasons in 2021 (19 wins) and 2022 (18 wins. Our Stable Star, King Arthur, has now won 9 times in Singapore and accumulated around S$450k in prizemoney. Entertainer has won 8 times and also has accumulated well over $300k and they are well supported by Brutus, Deception, Trident, Elliot Ness and Rocky, all Singapore winners. Briggs and Our Final Offer are yet to open their Singapore account, and we have two brand new horses yet to have their first starts, the 3yo Knippenberg and the 2yo “Rhett” by Charm Spirit out of Thurlow.

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John to attend Magic Millions Sale on the Gold Coast commencing 10^th January

This sale has built and built in popularity in recent years, no doubt helped by the hugely successful Magic Millions Race Day run at the same time with over A$11m of prizemoney on offer, with all races being restricted to graduates of previous years sales. Fortuna has not been a been a big buyer at this sale but all of our purchases from this sale over the years have won for us, Handsome Rebel, Meteoric Lass, Dancarina and our acquisition from last year’s sale, Rubicon Crossing

No question that yearlings at this sale are not “easy” to buy, and as you know we always “buy to budget” however, as we proved last year with Rubicon Crossing, it is possible (with no little dedicated research) to fund one or two that sneak under the radar. We are aiming to buy another nicely bred and well conformed Filly this year. My 12 year old son, James, is coming along on this trip as my apprentice – it is certainly time for him to be learning about this most important part of our business – thoroughbred selection and acquisition

Fortuna buying strategy for 2023 takes shape

Given the upcoming Magic Millions Sale, not to mention the NZ Bloodstock Karaka Sale coming up at the end of January, I thought it worthwhile to outline our overall buying strategy for the 2023 calendar year.

As readers are no doubt aware, Fortuna Racing is a “boutique” syndicator, usually restricting our purchases to around 12 per annum and we like to mix these purchases up with yearlings, Ready to Run 2yos, tried horses (aged 2 or 3) from the Digital Sales for Singapore and staying types from the UK sales.

So the physical sales I plan to attend over the next few weeks are as follows;

Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale 10^th to 16^th Jan – target – a Yearling Filly

Karaka Yearling Sale 29^th January to 3^rd February – target – a Yearling Colt or Filly who has the potential to run as a 2yo, plus two other Fillies that have staying type pedigrees.

Inglis Classic Sale – Sydney 12^th to 14^th February – target – a Yearling Filly (this sale will also feature the sale of our very first Breeding Syndicate Yearling – the filly by Xtravagant out of Secret Spice – lot 43)

Then we have the Inglis Digital Sales – these are run twice a month throughout the year and have been a happy hunting ground for us over the last three of four years in buying “tried” horses that go to race in Singapore. We have had significant success with the like of Federation, Red Rover, Brutus, Hadeer, Entertainer, Elliot Ness, Deception and King Arthur, all of whom are multiple winners, each with six figure earnings off relatively low purchase prices. Sure, we have had two or three failures as well, but on balance, it has been a highly successful buying strategy and we are going to continue the process during 2023 with the aim of buying two or three suitable candidates during the year.

UK Sales – traditionally, we have bought at the Tattersalls Horses in Training Sale in October, where we bought Leaderboard (2018), Khafeef (2019), No Envy (2021), all of whom have won for us. The objective here is to buy types with stout UK/Irish pedigrees that we think can make “Cups Type” stayers. We were not successful in making an acquisition at the 2022 sale – we bid on three that we had identified but got outbid by the big spending Australian syndicators/trainers who have incredibly deep pockets.

Last year in May, we acquired an unraced 2yo Colt by Churchill out of a Monsun mare at the Guineas Breeze Up Sale (this is like a Ready To Run Sale). Now named My Finest Hour, we left him in the UK  to be prepared by the young Newmarket Trainer, Harry Eustace. The strategy here was to have Harry prepare him as a UK Derby prospect in the first instance and then, depending on how he went as a 3yo, then look to bring him down to Australia and have him prepared for staying type races in that jurisdiction. Now a 3yo (as of 1 Jan), he is yet to debut, but has shown us a lot of promise in his early preparation.

This strategy seems to have a lot of merit and so we are looking to repeat it in 2023 at that May sale

Magic Millions National Yearling Sale – Gold Coast – June 2023 – target – a Yearling Filly

Ready To Run Sales – traditionally, there are three of these in Australasia, the Magic Millions 2yo Sale, the Inglis Ready2Race Sale and the NZ Bloodstock Ready To Run Sale – these are all held during October and November and this year we bought a Colt by Charm Spirit for Singapore racing at Inglis and a Filly for NZ Racing at Karaka – and we will probably follow a similar pattern in 2023.

To summarise, there are plenty of options available for our clients – as always, as soon as we buy something, we publish details in an email update to all on our mailing list (in excess of 1200 people) and on our website.

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Guest Selector – Butch Castles

Butch was unable to make it two in a row for us with his New Years Day selection running a competitive 4^th for us although I did note that the first 4 paid a whopping $24k so there may be one or two readers who scored a bit of that.

Here is what Butch selects for us this week

“Dear John and Team – It doesn’t matter where the winner comes from as long as it wins!! I have ventured South to the iconic Kumara Nuggets meeting for this weeks tip. It has been an up and down week on the Coast with the meeting Thursday abandoned after a horses slipped in the first but with rain and a Soft7 track Friday morning it should be all systems go for Saturday at Kumara.

Kevin Myers is synonymous with racing on the Coast circuit and it is to him we turn to invest our hard earned. I did the tapes from Greymouth on Tuesday and found Race 8 No 1 Bruno Magile. Ridden back Tuesday he had no luck in the straight on a track that was probably firmer than what he would prefer. The run resuming at Hawera was very good and with the 3kg claim of Lily Sutherland he will be very hard to beat. I think the bookies got his price wrong at the original quote of $4.8 which has now trimmed up to $3.8 but even that represents good shopping!! Butch”

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In closing, there has been a lot of publicity and a strong stench from the cryptocurrency  sector of late – Readers may be aware of my long background in the Financial Services sector so I sought some input so as to explain to Readers just how Crypto-Currency works … an analogy in layman’s terms.

A merchant found a lot of monkeys that lived near a certain village. He went to the village, saying he wanted to buy these monkeys, at $100 each. The villagers thought that this man must be crazy – How can somebody buy stray monkeys at $100 each ?

Still, some people caught some monkeys, and gave them to this merchant, and he gave $100 for each monkey. This news spread like wildfire, and people caught monkeys, and sold them to the merchant. After a few days, the merchant announced that he would buy monkeys at $200 each. Even the lazy villagers ran around to catch the remaining monkeys ! They sold the monkeys at $200 each.

The merchant then announced that he would buy monkeys for $500 each ! The villagers start to lose sleep !   They caught six or seven monkeys, which was all that was left, and got $500 for each. The villagers were waiting anxiously for the next announcement.

Then the merchant announced that he was going on holiday for a week, but, when he returned, he would buy monkeys at $1000 each ! He also said that his employee would be in charge, and would take care of the monkeys he had bought, pending his return. The merchant went on holiday.

The villagers were frantic and very sad, as there were no more monkeys left for them to sell it at $1000 each, as was promised by the merchant. Then the merchant’s employee contacted them, and told them that he would secretly sell them some monkeys at $700 each. The news spread like wildfire !    As the merchant promised on his return that he would buy monkeys at $1000 each, they would achieve a $300 profit for each monkey.

The next day the villagers queued up near the monkey cage. The employee sold all the monkeys at $700 each.   The wealthy bought monkeys in large lots.   The poor borrowed money from money lenders, and bought the rest of the monkeys.

The villagers took care of their monkeys, and waited for the merchant to return. However, nobody came ….. They ran to find the employee ….. He was not to be found! The villagers then realised that they had been duped, buying the useless stray monkeys at $700 each, and were now unable to sell them !

This Monkey Business is now known as Crypto currency !