Thoroughbredvillagefeed

Most weeks you’ll find me buried in pedigree charts and stud books long before I get anywhere near a form guide. Barrier draws and speed maps have their place, but for me the real story of Australian racing has always been written further up the family tree. The crosses, the nicks, the family lines that keep resurfacing generation after generation. It’s less about finding the...

Every breeder chasing a fast horse eventually runs into the same question: why do some stallions reliably throw out sprinters, while others seem to stamp their stock with staying power, regardless of which mares they’re paired with? For generations the answer was assumed to live somewhere in conformation, in pedigree pattern, or simply in mystique. In more recent years, some ...

Saturday marks the true kick-off of the new Australian racing season, and the sport is delivering in style. A Group 1 superstar showdown at Randwick and a newly elevated Group 3 sprint at Sandown Hillside, standing in for a Moonee Valley still deep in redevelopment.

The headline act of the day, and arguably of the whole spring...

Caulfield stages a nine-race Saturday program today, and while the spring carnival remains a little over three weeks away, the meeting carries an unmistakable feel of the season ahead. The Group 2 P.B. Lawrence Stakes (1400m), worth $300,000, is the clear centrepiece – a race whose lineage traces back to the old J.J. Liston Stakes at Sandown, long regarded as a traditional la...

Picture a Saturday morning in late August. Somewhere in Melbourne’s south-east, a small group gathers around a laptop before breakfast, scrolling through Caulfield form guides and swapping opinions about which of the weight-for-age brigade looks primed for a first-up run. The kettle’s on, the paper’s open to the racing pages, and the conversation drifts, as it always does thi...