Horse Overview

November 2023 Karaka Ready to Run Sale Purchase

Whilst looking at other horses we caught a glimpse of these beautiful black filly parading for another group of people beside us. A quick flick through the pages of the catalogue to find out what she was by found us heading over to see Luke MacDonald from Westbury Stud to have a closer look. On inspection she was outstanding so the lot number and photos were sent through to Mitch our Sports Scientist and Rodney our Bloodstock Agent with them returning with the tick of approval! Matt our vet was on site at the time with us so we sent him to work checking her Scope and X-rays and he come back with a big tick also.

We’ve had experience with the Redwood’s and we believe they are really nice middle distance horses which some can stretch out a little further in distance so we’d purchased our Oaks Filly, this filly was the perfect fit for our Guineas Filly!

Redwood himself was a bit of a globe trotter having raced in some of the world’s most prestigious Group races, running top three in most of them. The winner of the Group 1 Woodbine Northern Dancer Turf Stakes and Group 3 Goodwood Glorious Stakes, from 17 starts he was able to win 4 and place a further 7 times, only out of the placings in 6 career starts at the highest level! At stud he has now had 325 runners for 193 individual winners, they have now amassed 589 wins combined, 14 at Stakes level!

Torlundy, the dam, was unraced but has gone on to produce 6 foals to the races for 5 winners! Her dam, Tartan Tights, was joint head 3yo in NZ in 1994-95 and NZ 3yo Filly of the Year! The winner of 9 races including the NZ Oaks and the NZ One Thousand Guineas, both at Group One Level. As you go down the page, you’ll find other notable Stakes Winners such as Nevis, Ultra Sound, Lee’s Bid and Sequel Sound. A family littered in Winners and Stakes Winners!

This filly took our eye and we had to have her! She stood out in the crowd and that was the thing that drew us too her. She’s got plenty of scope, very leggy and you can tell she’s about to explode into a beautiful specimen. She’s got the looks, the personality and the swagger that you need in a good filly! She will be targeted towards the Guineas races and if she can stretch out she may well join our Pierro filly at contesting some Oaks races!

Comments from our Agent Rodney:

With a nice rating on her pedigree of a 31 this filly is bound for some nice races. Being out of a Zabeel mare I would think this filly would only get better as she got older and targeting her at some classic races. 

Within pedigrees I want to see where crosses have worked in the past and this filly has one large match that I really like within the pedigree. What my research has found over the past 20 odd years is that when epically good blueblood mares like Special are on the maternal line of Fillies your strike rates go up dramatically. This filly has a double cross of Special on both sides of her family. I also want to see crosses of the good stallions coming through different lines as well. This filly has a very nice family that can support her great type. Ethan was more than impressed with her as a type.