A real good Knight coming up in near future
Racing & Breeding News - Brian Russell - Bloodstock Media Service - 25 July 2007
One of the most impressive victories on a major Queensland circuit on Saturday was the front running dominating race debut effort of the first crop Sunday Knight 2-year-old gelding Punch Up in a13-runner maiden at the Gold Coast. Sent out as a short priced favourite, support merrited following two good trial performances, a head second at Eagle Farm and then a win by a length and seven lengths at the Gold Coast, Punch Up cruised to winning margins on Saturday of 2.3 lengths and 2.0 lengths.
Although he doesn’t stand Punch Up’s sire, the very promising Gold Coast win was a very pleasing result for one of Australia’s most astute top stud owners, John Messara (Arrowfield, Scone), the breeder and major owner of Sunday Knight. Reared for Bill Duncan Bloodstock on Couzinz near Allora, Darling Downs and sold for only $10,000 at the Gold Coast yearling sales, Punch Up is the second foal of a former Arrowfield home bred mare, School Blue, a daughter of the Mr. Prospector sire Geiger Counter and the Sadler’s Wells product Blue Feather.
Punch Up is another good example of the fact that lack of proven racing class in parents is no impediment in producing ability. Punch Up’s sire Sunday Knight, a son of Japan’s awesomely prepotent Sunday Silence, and his first two dams were all unraced.
By a remarkable coincidence, the dam of Sunday Knight, the outstanding Bletchingly sprinter Wrap Around, and Punch Up’s grandam Blue Feather were among a small number of mares Messara sent to Japan in a world first for breeding, matings to southern hemisphere time on behalf of owners outside that country. The result has provided Australia with a small reservoir of breeding stock by Sunday Silence which would not have been available if Messara had not secured the arrangements with the Japanese. It was an exercise that ended after four seasons with the death of Sunday Silence at the age of 16 in 2002.
Two of the Australian bred Sunday Silence products have been Sunday Joy (efforts included a win in the AJC Australian Oaks and a third in the Rosehill Guineas) and the lightningly fast Keep the Faith (following wins by big margins in Australia, he had three starts in America, setting a US turf record time for six furlongs in winning at New York’s Belmont Park).
Keep the Faith has the credentials to become an outstanding sire at the Sangster’s Swettenham Stud at Nagambie in Victoria, one at which he had 131 mares in his first season last year.
Confidence in his sire prospects has been boosted by the early success of the first two Australian bred sons of Sunday Silence to go to stud and have runners, 2-year-olds of 2006-07. Both unraced, they are Punch Up’s sire Sunday Knight (Heather and David Pascoe’s upmarket young Toowoomba district stud Plaintree Farms) and the prematurely deceased Any Given Sunday. Used in Victoria, Any Given Sunday appears a tragic loss as his only four runners have included two dashing winners.
When Punch Up scored his debut win on Saturday, he became the first winner for Sunday Knight, a big, impressive near black son of Sunday Silence standing on a fee of $4,400 at Plaintree Farms with Conatus, a Danehill Sydney speedster from the Denise’s Joy family, but his sixth money earner from ten starters. Placegetters have included Knight In Tights (Melbourne), Mythical Memory (Toowoomba) and Wullkuraka (Ipswich).
There have been good reports about others in training in his first crop, one which has over 30 potential runners and many, in typical Sunday Silence fashion, could be good 3-year-olds. It is a breed that has consistently provided tough, sound performers who continue to compete well with age.