Distant Sky’s victory rewards connections

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At Sale on Thursday, the win of Distant Sky at his 16th race start was a victory for patience and perseverance, as much as one for the owners and the stable.

We really can’t believe it has taken this long for Distant Sky to win his first race. He has always shown some ability in track work, trials and several of his races. He was extremely unlucky on at least two occasions in his career to date, but arguably his size has also restricted his progress to some extent.

“He has taken a long time to mature, and we can see that he is just starting to look like a racehorse even at this late stage of his four-year-old season. We accept now that he is on the small side and not growing up as we expected, but he has the soundness and the attitude to progress to being a good benchmark level horse to reward his owners.” – Nigel

 

Distant Sky
Distant Sky (NZ) winning at Sale, 1 June 2017 (Alice Laidlaw /Racing Photos)

The race was run at a muddling tempo. As we see week-in week-out on all tracks in Victoria, Beau Mertens did not panic and simply allowed Distant Sky to settle where he was comfortable and find some nice rhythm. He settled third last and further back than what we anticipated. However, Beau got found a perfect position approaching the corner, hot on the heels of the favourite So You Rock.

It soon became apparent that So You Rock was not making progress, so Beau pointed Distant Sky into a gap and Distant Sky lengthened and was strong to the line to score by a clear length.

“For a small horse with a short length of rein, he has a lovely long stride. We have been avoiding heavy tracks for him because he is such a nice mover. I was confident going into this race at Sale on the soft surface, and glad he finally got the job done.” – Nigel

Trelawney Stud

Distant Sky was purchased at the NZ Bloodstock yearling sale in 2014, from the draft of Trelawney Stud. He was on the small side as a yearling. However we liked him at the price offered (NZD50k) and he is related to some very good horses – Headturner, Anacheeva, O’Marilyn and one of the stables former gallopers, Desert Wizard.

A syndicate of owners was formed with the financial and marketing services of Kinematic Thoroughbred Services. We now hope Distant Sky can continue his good form in benchmark races and provide some more thrills of ownership, no matter where that may be.

Watch race replay