Horsing around

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:17:04 +0000

following recent posts some more horse stuff…….. but a little more personal! A good friend, Ben AKA ASBO who now resides in Australia has informed me via further person in the know (the grudge) won approx 4,000 oz dollars on a horse some years ago
The name of the horse was Octagonal
wiki link:
Octagonal (foaled 1992 in New Zealand ) is a retired champion Thoroughbred racehorse, affectionately called the big O or ‘Occy’. He was sired by Zabeel , out of the broodmare Eight Carat , a descendant of Man o’ War who was ranked No. 1 on the Blood-Horse magazine List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century .
Trained by John Hawkes , in 1995 Octagonal was crowned the Australian Champion Two Year Old . The two-year-old Octagonal won the AJC Sires Produce Stakes and earned a second placing in the STC Golden Slipper , and AJC Champagne Stakes .
In his three-year-old season Octagonal won seven times. But what was even more remarkable was the standard of his 3-year-old contemporaries. Saintly had already won the Australian Cup . (In the nextseason Saintly would win both the W S Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup ). Nothin’ Leica Dane had already been runner-up in the Melbourne Cup. While Filante would go on to win the Epsom Handicap in record time.
Octagonal’s seven three-year-old victories started with the weight-for-age championship of Australia, the W S Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in his most dominant season. He went on to take out the 3yo Triple Crown consisting of the Canterbury Guineas , Rosehill Guineas and the Australian Derby in record time, and he is still the last horse to have done so. Add to this a victory in the WFA Mercedes Classic marking his fourth Group 1 race win in five weeks. Already the earner of close to $A4 million, Octagonal was voted the 1996 Australian Champion Three Year Old as well as the Australian Horse of the Year title.
Octagonal continued to perform well in 1997 when as a four-year-old he collected his second Mercedes Classic plus further Group I wins in the Australian Cup , Underwood Stakes and Chipping Norton Stakes . Octagonal retired to stud after 28 starts with a record of 14 wins (10xGroup1), 7 seconds (6 in GI or GII races) and a third. He ended his racing career with a stakes tally of $A5,892,231, the highest of any galloper in Australasia to that point.
Octagonal stands at Woodlands Stud, NSW. He is the Sire of Australian Group 1 winning brothers Lonhro and Niello, the South African Group 1 winner, Suntagonal. In 1998 he stood at Haras du Quesnay in France where his most prominent offspring was Laverock whose wins include two Group 1 races: the Prix d’Ispahan at Longchamp Racecourse in Paris and the Gran Premio del Jockey Club at Milan , Italy’s , San Siro Racecourse .
On the ASBO front following previous posts re; Obama portraits I managed to locate a website in which you can create your own versions, this is good linking and bringing subjects together, I’m impressing myself here! so I had a go…..

Paul Talbot Art » ASBO

Horsing around