Brent and Cherry Taylor and the Trelawney Stud team will have a triple interest in Saturday’s running of the Gr. 2 Lisa Chittick Foxbridge Plate at Te Rapa.
Trelawney bred and sold the former Singapore Horse of the Year War Affair and sold the Group Three-winning mare Francaletta, while their home-bred mare Vinevale will carry the farm’s distinctive green, red and gold colours in the $100,000 weight-for-age feature.
The time-honoured Te Rapa race, which was first run in 1950, is named after the Hall of Fame stallion Foxbridge, who along with fellow Hall of Famer Seton Otway, put Trelawney Stud on the map in the 1940s.
“It's fair to say we’ll be watching all three pretty closely on Saturday,” Brent Taylor said. “It’s great to have three horses from the farm running in a race like the Foxbridge.”
It will be the toughest test yet for the six-year-old Flying Spur mare Vinevale, who is unbeaten in three starts since moving north to the Ruakaka stable of Chris Gibbs and Michelle Bradley in May.
“She and Richie McHorse (this year's Hawke’s Bay Cup winner, also trained by Gibbs and Bradley) are both talented horses who certainly seem to have enjoyed the beach training environment,” Taylor said.
“She’d need the track to be reasonable on Saturday. It’s probably fair to say it’s a big throw at the stumps – a throw right from the boundary. We knew it would be a strong race, but it’s probably even stronger than we imagined.
“But her form’s good and she deserves a shot at a race like this. Hopefully the track will improve a bit (currently a Slow9).” -The Informant