I always find it interesting to find first winners of stallions - whether high profile horses or unknowns - when scouring race results, and then to dive into the pedigrees.
During my recent findings (that I have not already documented this season), there were new winners by Contributer, I'm All The Talk, Office Bearer, Pure Champion and Sun Of May.
Vinery Stud's champion stallion More Than Ready was represented with sire-son Ready For Victory, who opened his juvenile sire record last month when his gelded son Macleay won on debut at Kembla Grange.
Macleay was bred at Sun Stud at Riddles Creek in Victoria, also home of Ready For Victory, a Melbourne stakes winner and Group 1 placegetter, who is closely related to champion Meurice, and Australian Horse Of The Year Rubiton.
I'm All The Talk can be recalled in the Warwick Farm stables of Gary Portelli, who prepared the chestnut son of Golden Slipper winning sire Stratum to win the 2013 ATC Skyline Stakes, a major lead-up event to the world prestigious Golden Slipper Stakes race.
Bay filly Watch Me Dance not only became a first crop winner, but she also is the first stakes winner for I'm All The Talk, when she won the WATC Sires' Produce Stakes-G3 at Ascot, Perth. I'm All The Talk stands at Mungrup Stud, located in the south-west region midway between Albany and Mount Barker.
Early this month, Office Bearer, who stands at Tim and Celie Nolan's Murrulla Stud at Wingen, sired his first winner when juvenile gelding One To Remember won at Muswellbrook.
Trained by Peter Moody to win his first three starts before later taking a Listed race at Sandown, Office Bearer was represented with only 15 foals in his first crop. He is by US Group 1 performer Officer who is line-bred to In Reality, a wonderful sire who also appears in the pedigrees of such champions as American Pharoah, and Snitzel.
Godolphin-raced and Irish-bred bay Contributer has surprised many, coming up with his first winner when Lion's Roar won his first start on the Wagga Wagga Gold Cup program.
A UK juvenile winner, Contributer was more known for his middle-distance racing and won four stakes races including the ATC Chipping Norton Stakes-G1 and Ranvet Stakes-G1, before being transferred to Mapperly Stud near Matamata in New Zealand.
A new name for myself is Sun Of May, a Snitzel stallion who died early in 2017, and who only served three tiny books of mares in Victoria. While Kiwicod was Sun Of May's first winner, juvenile filly Chillie Cod became the bay horse's second winner when he won at Grafton last month.
Then there is Pure Champion, an Irish bred and performed son of Giant's Causeway's Footstepsinthesand, who before becoming a stakes winner in Hong Kong, later relocated to New Zealand, where he won the Hawkes Bay Windsor Park Plate-G1, a celebrated weight-for-age test at Hastings in the North Island.
His first winner was three-year-old New Zealand bred gelding, Manhattan Spector - who won at Ballarat this month, and who belongs to Pure Champion's first small crop of foals.
Manhattan Spector is a home-bred galloper for Mike and Barbara Cooney, who stands Pure Champion at their Willow Glen Stud at Waimate, a town half-way between Christchurch and Dunedin on New Zealand's east coast of the South Island.
Vale Caryl Williamson
IT was only last Sunday week that I read a story written by well-known and respected Sydney racing scribe Caryl Williamson in the Sunday Telegraph, then two days later I learned the sad news that she had passed-away at age 67.
While not a close friend, but having a similar role, I talked with her during my Sydney racing expeditions and knew of her long-time dedication to the horse racing game.
Born in New Zealand, Caryl joined Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 1984, and rose through the ranks to become AAP Turf Editor in 1996, the first woman to head an Australian racing media arm, and that's where she remained.
In 2018, Caryl won the TAB Champion Tipsters Challenge over the two days of The Championships at Randwick, and chose to give the $5000 winners' prize to St Vincent de Paul Society.
Caryl will be sorely missed as a regular in the Australian Turf Club's media rooms.