With three weeks of the season remaining, Vinery sire Star Turn has the highest winning strike rate of any stallion on the Australian Top 50 premiership table.
For the current season his 64% strike rate, generated by 81 individual winners from 127 runners is the best by far. Next best is UK-based Juddmonte champion Frankel (56%) and then there’s another gap to a log-jam for third between Per Incanto (52%), Zoustar, Magnus & Maurice (51%) and Better Than Ready, Astern & Capitalist (50%).
Star Turn (Star Witness) has three crops racing and his Stakes-performers-to-winners strike rate is also bubbling just below a more than creditable 14% headed by Startantes. The Brisbane sprinter-miler won last year’s Group 1 Tatt’s Tiara, which earned her further honours as Australia’s Champion 3YO Filly.
Leading the Star Turn Stakes winners this season has been Perth-based Alsephina who was a dual Group 3 winner of the La Trice Classic and Starstruck Classic at Ascot. The Grant & Alana Williams-trained mare is the opening $8 pre-post favourite for the Group 1 Railway Stakes (1600m) worth $1.5million on Day 2 of the 2023 Pinnacles Carnival in the west (25 Nov 2023).
Gerry Harvey’s Baramul Stud homebred Me Me Lagarde weighed in for the Eureka Stud Classic (LR, 1200m) at the Gold Coast in November before Sydney 2yo Saltaire cashed in with a lucrative victory in the $500,000 Inglis Nursery (RL, 1100m) at Randwick in December.
Star Turn claimed a fourth black-type strike this season when his Singapore expat Golden Monkey won the Stewards Cup (LR, 1600m) last Sunday. He will return to Kranji on July 23 for the Singapore Derby (LR, 1800m).
Star Turn is finishing this season with a flourish on the domestic front with 10 individual winners in May, 13 in June and there’s been another 5 in the first week of July.
His Melbourne 3yo filly Refreshing looked a promising maiden winner for trainer Mike Moroney when getting out to 1200m for the first time at Sandown Lakeside on Wednesday. “She jumped cleanly and adding the blinkers helped today,” said Damien Oliver who was just home after a golfing holiday in California. “When I got back, Mike told me he had a winner for Wednesday.
“His judgement proved right and I feel refreshed, too. She was prominent and really toughed it out on the Heavy 8.”
Refreshing was bred by Japanese trainer Kazuo Konishi and is the first foal from Beyond The Dream (Dream Ahead). The dam had been runner-up on debut for trainer Yoshitomo Shima in the 2016 VRC Cap D’Antibes Stakes (LR, 1100m) at Flemington and there’s stamina close-up through Warrnambool Cup winner Tinamou (Quest For Fame).
Beyond The Dream has a filly foal by Exceedance and was bred back to him last October.
Star Turn will stand at Vinery for a $27,500 (inc. GST) service fee this year, payable on a live foal. For bookings or further information, contact Adam White (0414 800 918) or Harry Roach (0401 970 006).
