Juice's Blood Worth Bottling

Tang, Lucozade, Seagers, Schenley, Schnapps, Gordon’s – to this liquid line of related thoroughbreds now add Juice, winner of Saturday’s G3 Gold Trail Stakes for three-year-old fillies at Hastings.

It was fitting that Juice (Bertolini-Call Minder) should annex this early-season feature, the first race in the NZ Bloodstock Filly Of The Year Series, as her family is steeped in Hawkes Bay tradition. Her fourth dam, Tang, actually ran second in the Gold Trail Stakes of 1978 when it was 1400m rather than the 1200m of today. The winner that year, Springtide (by Karayar (Ire)) was another brilliant filly who was later exported to the United States but became a failed producer there.

Before going any further, credit to Hawkes Bay Racing, and the sponsor, for reinstating the traditional name of this event. For the past 10 years it has become very well known as the Highview Stakes, and compliments to Brent Gillovic for maintaining the sponsorship for so long. The new sponsor has allowed his name to be tacked on to the race’s traditional name and it was run as the Gold Trail Stakes, in association with Hutchinsons.

Gold Trail perpetuates the 1929 grand-daughter of Desert Gold, bred by T H Lowry. A son, T C Lowry, bred Lapse, the seventh dam of Juice. The Lowrys are, of course, Hawkes Bay’s Okawa Stud clan who gave short, elegant, one-word names to many of their good horses. How times have changed since the glory era of the great Hawkes Bay breeders who along with the First Four Shippers of Canterbury were the closest thing New Zealand had to transplanted English squatocracy.

Juice’s fourth dam, Tang (Taipan II (USA)-Agricolet, by Agricola (GB)), was an exceptional filly bred in Hawkes Bay, by the Curtis brothers of Clear View Stud, Otane. Champion filly at two and three, she raced 30 times for 10 wins and 13 placings, her wins including the Thousand Guineas, NZ Oaks, Royal Stakes, Ladies Mile, Lowland Stakes, Great Britain-New Zealand Stakes and the Wakefield Stakes. Taipan II stood in Auckland and was probably the first sire to successfully overcome the anti-USA-bred stigma.

Tang had a tragic stud career, producing just two filly foals, and her blood survives through just one of them, Dash (by Sovereign Edition), the third dam of Juice. The other daughter, a full sister named Thrive, had atrocious luck. In 11 years at stud she produced one live foal, an unraced filly Juniper (by Star Way (GB)) who has produced just one named filly in 13 years at stud and that filly, Fairjet (by Jetball), had no progeny - the end of the line.

The foaling season is happening all around us but if we ever needed a reminder that it isn’t all beer and skittles, there it is.