Punch Up A Big Hit For Sunday Knight
Racing and Sports - 24 July 2007
Last Saturday’s Gold Coast winner 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 awesome stud king 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 Arrowfield’s John Messara sent to Japan as the first to be mated 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 AJC Oaks winner Sunday Joy and the brilliantKeep the Faith, who followed wins by big margins in Australia with three starts in America where he set a USturf 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 Swettenham Stud where 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 two-year-old runners this season.
Both unraced, they are Punch Up’s sire Sunday Knight, standing at Plaintree Farms in Queensland, and the prematurely deceased Any Given Sunday.
Any Given Sunday appears to be a tragic loss as his only four runners have included two dashing winners.
Punch Up is the first winner for Sunday Knight, who stands at a fee of $4400 at Plaintree Farms with Danehillspeedster Conatus.
Reared for Bill Duncan Bloodstock 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.
She is a daughter of the Mr. Prospector sire Geiger Counter and the Sadler’s Wells product Blue Feather.