Breeding operation features on Moe Cup day

OCTOBER 2009: Moe Cup day at Cranbourne saw the Emirates Park breeding operation playing a major part in proceedings.

Early on the card, Kornati proved to be one of the most impressive winners of the day, running out a three lengths winner of Race 3 after rounding the field on the home turn and surging away from his opposition in the straight. This 3-year-old gelding is the latest winner for Al Maher, and another to have excelled over the distance of a metric mile early into its Classic season. Majestic Music was also a brilliant winner of the VRC Edward Manifold Stakes (G2) over 1600 metres a fortnight earlier.

Notably, Kornati became the 11th individual 3-year-old winner for Al Maher since the beginning of the 2009/10 racing season. Just a few minutes earlier, Favours Traded had won a 1200-metre Maiden event at Ipswich on debut as a red-hot favourite, after impressive lead-up work on the Gold Coast for trainer Alan Bailey.

Al Maher's progeny has now won close on $450,000 in this, only their second season of competition, placing Emirates Park’s Group 1 winning sire-son of Danehill (USA) in the top-3 sophomore stallions on current standings.

Later in the day, in the feature race on the program, the Emirates Park-bred Savquaw did best in a slogging finish to land the Listed Moe Cup. A 5-year-old son of Secret Savings (USA), Savquaw is the last named foal of Squaw Angel (USA), an imported daughter of Sunny’s Halo and half-sister to Dancing Brave, one of the world’s greatest racehorses of all time.

Savquaw is one of three winners produced from the mating of Secret Savings with Squaw Angel. Rednrich was born two years prior to Savquaw, and Cash Carter two years before that. Significantly, the Emirates Park-bred trio has now won a collective 22 races.