Racing: Queensland win for Igraine

Igraine winning the Caloundra Cup in Queensland on Saturday.

The last campaign of Igraine's career may be proving the most valuable.

Because not only is the Waikato mare winning a stack of money during her Queensland winter but she is adding plenty of dollars to the price of her future progeny.

Igraine capped a consistent Queensland assault with a huge win in the A$175,000 Caloundra Cup on Saturday, swooping past her rivals after settling beautifully for new rider Robbie Fradd.

That followed placings in the Premier's Cup and Chairman's Handicap during the meatier part of the Queensland carnival and trainer Robert Priscott says Igraine could now head south of the border to New South Wales for the A$165,000 Grafton Cup next week.

"She is handling the racing so well it really is a revelation," said Priscott.

"When I first got her, and she started racing for me about this weekend last year, she was quite nervy and got quite hot before her races.

"But she has really matured all the way along and she is a different horse now." That meant even after three hard races in Queensland, Igraine was able to race up to her peak on Saturday, with the return of a genuine wet track helping after it was too firm for her in the Brisbane Cup last start.

Igraine is only racing so late in the season because she is a spring date with super stallion Fastnet Rock before she returns home to Trelawney Stud in Cambridge.

Trelawney owners Brent and Cherry Taylor secured Igraine, from a leading German family, with the help of astute bloodstock agent Paul Moroney, who picked her out of a sale in England.

While she was bought for her future broodmare value, Igraine's Australasian form has carried her into a different broodmare bracket, with wins in the Counties Cup, placings in the Waikato and Hawkes Bay Cups before her Queensland heroics.

But while her New Zealand staying efforts solidified her future worth, any black type New Zealand-based mares can gain in Australia enormously helps their future value as the Australian bloodstock scene goes crazy and the Aussies, like everybody, love form and horses they know.

Earning that black type is a lot easier said than done though, with few New Zealand-trained mares gaining Australian black type in recent years, that honour usually the domain of our Oaks fillies.

So Saturday's win coupled with the possibility of a Grafton Cup victory can only help the trans-tasman appeal of Igraine's future foals.

"The way she is racing at the moment every performance is helping increase her worth," says Priscott.

"I have spoken to Brent and Cherry a couple of times since the win and they seem keen on Grafton and the way she won I think we will probably go.

"But whether that is her last race or we race on into the spring when she gets served will be up to them."

Igraine being served by Fastnet Rock will hardly come cheap but the decision probably wasn't a hard one for the Taylors.

For all his magnificent feats as a stallion, Fastnet Rock has proved a stunning cross with daughters of European wonder sire Galileo, so much so in his latest Northern Hemisphere breeding season, 37 per cent of the mares served by Fastnet Rock were by Galileo.

Galileo's record as a stallion is so extraordinary the fact he sired the trifecta in the Irish Derby on the weekend, headed by shock winner Sovereign, seems almost normal.

But for the Taylors it just a further reminder that buying Igraine may prove to be one of the smartest purchases of their lives.

KIWI CAN

• Cambridge mare Igraine wins the A$175,000 Caloundra Cup.

• She is nearing the end of her career and will visit champion stallion Fastnet Rock.

• It was the 11th New Zealand-trained winner of the Caloundra Cup since 1985.