Photo: Race Images
Emotions were running high at Ellerslie last Saturday as the classy racemare Belclare brought the curtain down on her domestic career with a second consecutive victory in the Gr. 1 NZEA New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes.
Immediately after the Lisa Latta-trained six-year-old had repeated her 2023 win in our only Group One race for fillies and mares, it was announced she will be sold at the Magic Millions Broodmare Sale on the Gold Coast next month.
According to the Per Incanto mare’s majority owner and breeder David Woodhouse, it was a big decision to sell her and a very emotional one for him and her trainer Lisa Latta, but now is the right time to let her go.
“I will most probably never get another one like her, but if I sell her now it gives me enough money to hopefully go on racing horses for many years,” Masterton-based Woodhouse told RaceForm earlier this week.
“I love racing horses, that’s what I really love doing, more than the breeding part. I love a trip and taking my horses away in my float.
“I am in my 70s now, I still have the mother, a full-sister foal, and a full sister to breed from, and it could be another three or four years before I got a foal to the races from her, and I find handling the foals is getting harder.
“It’s been a good run, it’s too risky, and she’s too valuable to be running around on my farm.
“She is in the paddock at home now and will go back to Lisa in two or three weeks for some pre-training before she goes to Bhima Thoroughbreds and on to the sales.
“She goes into the sale as a last start Group One winner; we won’t start her again so we don’t tarnish the sale. However, if someone wants to race her in Queensland following that or in the spring that’s an option for her new owner.”
Belclare has been trained throughout her 36-start, 11-win career by Latta, who is having a stellar season having trained 39 winners to date including seven at black type level.
Back in January Belclare won the Gr. 2 Westbury Classic at Ellerslie, while the Awapuni trainer has also prepared Diss Is Dramatic to win last month’s Gr. 2 Japan Trophy as well as the Gr. 3 WRC Thompson Handicap, Belardo Boy to win the Gr. 3 CJC Winter Cup and Gr. 3 Marton JC Metric Mile, and Lantern Way to win the Gr. 2 Hawke’s Bay Guineas.
Belclare’s earlier wins include the Gr.3 CJC Canterbury Breeders’ Stakes and the Listed Wairarapa Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes, while all up her stake-earnings stand at $980,000.
According to Woodhouse, Belclare is best on a firm track and her career has been frustrated by the watering of tracks. Her two wins this season have been on the new Ellerslie StrathAyr surface, ridden in both by Sam Spratt.
On Saturday Spratt recorded her 20th career Group One win and her third this year, having partnered Mercurial in the Telegraph Handicap at Trentham in January and his Stephen Marsh-trained stablemate Velocious in last month’s Sistema Stakes at Ellerslie.
As mentioned, Woodhouse is still breeding from the mother of Belclare, Miss Rhythmic, who produced a sister to Belclare last spring and is in foal to Satono Aladdin. The now 13-year-old O’Reilly mare went to stud as a four-year-old after winning one of her 20 starts. She and her stakes-placed sister Luxe are out of the Keeper mare Gymnast, whose dam was the joint Champion Filly of the Year in Olga’s Pal, winner of the 1988 New Zealand 1000 Guineas.
Belclare is Miss Rhythmic’s third foal, while Woodhouse also owns an older Tavistock half-sister, Cordal, who he is breeding from, and a year younger sister in Ballyane, a winning mare who will go to stud this spring. Ardroe, a four-year-old brother to Belclare retained by Woodhouse and also trained by Latta, has won two of his six races to date. The Rusties Syndicate, who shared in racing Belclare, will also be involved racing Miss Rhythm’s latest foal.
Woodhouse, the self-described lover of racing, has kept a 10 per cent share in the Time Test two-year-old filly out of Miss Rhythmic, purchased at auction by Latta. At present she is spelling at his Opaki property on the northern outskirts of Masterton where currently there are 17 horses requiring his attention.
Michelle Saba
