Winners a plenty

Rockmount’s pretraining and water walker facilities continue to produced a steady stream of winners this season. John Hoare’s Devon Park Stud has enjoyed a good start to the racing year with two wins in the month of September. On the 2nd of the month the Tale Of The Cat colt Nine Tales easily accounted for his rivals in a 1200 metre maiden at Cranbourne. This home bred colt will now be set on a Caulfield Guineas campaign by trainer Mick Price. On the 24th of the month, the 4 year old mare Hanover Fist made light work of the opposition in a 1200 metre maiden at Kilmore. The Flying Spur mare has taken a while to mature but on this effort she will no doubt step up to better class wins.

September 4th saw Perfect Persuasion break her maiden tag with ease at Kyneton over the 6 furlong trip. Already stakes placed as a 2 year old, the full sister to Alinghi spent two months at Rockmount in the water walker and this was her first run back. She is all quality and Lee Freedman will be setting her for the Thousand Guineas.

A stakes win was well deserved by one of Rockmount’s favourites Orange County on September 8th at Flemington. The Sofitel Stakes over the 1400 metre trip was run at the “new” Flemington with the track having undergone refurbishing over the previous 10 months, and Mark Zahra just found enough in reserve to get our favourite grey home. We don’t think that Orange County was quite ridden to Brian Mayfield-Smith’s instructions but he still got the cash!

Bendigo on September 9th was the venue for another of our graduates wins with Belcentra saluting in the 1100 metre maiden. First up after a month in our water walker, the daughter of Bel Esprit, who is siring plenty of good winners this season, was way too good for 13 opponents and is a filly with plenty of scope to go on to better things.

Back at Kilmore on September 24th Wood Nook Farm produced yet another home bred winner in the shape of Cot Case. A Rockmount pretrainer, Cot Case is by Belong To Me, the sire of recent Group 1 winner Bon Hoffa, out of the Gold Ace mare Cotoletta. Not blessed with perfect conformation Cot Case is all heart and you would be hard pushed to find a tougher filly. Cliff Brown, who is heading to Singapore in December to continue his training career, has placed this filly well and I am sure she is worth following through the grades.