Punch Up at Eagle Farm earns much applause
Brian Russell - Bloodstock Media Service - 17 October 2008
UNLEASHING his typical strong finish, the superbly pedigreed Punch Up, a 4-year-old gelded son of the Australian bred Sunday Silence sire Sunday Knight and School Blue, a daughter of Geiger Counter (by Mr. Prospector) and the imported Sadler’s Wells mare Blue Feather, recorded a well deserved 1.3 lengths win in a class 6 event over 1600m at Eagle Farm Saturday.
A horse with an iron constitution, he was appearing for the tenth time in four months and earning his ninth successive Brisbane prize cheque. Besides Saturday’s success, the efforts included a win at Eagle Farm on July 5 and after that three seconds, two thirds and a fourth. Now raced 17 times, the Peter Balzen trained Punch Up had got off to a very promising start to his career with wins on his home track, the Gold Coast, at his first two appearances.
Balzen purchased him for only $10,000 at the closing session of 2006 Conrad Jupiters Magic Millions yearling at the Gold Coast, one at which he was offered by his breeder Bill Duncan Bloodstock under the banner of Couzinz, Darling Downs. He is one of nine winners and all told 14 money earners from 21 runners in the first two crops of Sunday Knight, a foundation sire at the Heather Pascoe established Plaintree Farms Stud at Cecil Plains, Toowoomba.
Bred by his owners, the Arrowfield Stud in the Hunter Valley, to southern hemisphere time in a program that saw his dam and a small number of other mares sent to Japan and mated with supersire Sunday Silence, Sunday Knight was unraced. owever he is a half-brother to the dam of champion 2-year-old Fashions Afield and his dam was the magnificent Bletchingly performer Wrap Around.
Sunday Knight is one of two southern hemisphere bred Sunday Silence sires to have good winners at Eagle Farm in 2008. The other is the deceased Any Given Sunday, the sire in his only crop – 14 named foals – of five winners headed by Riva San, successful at Eagle Farm in the winter in the Queensland Derby and Oaks.