4 Sep 2022Honours for quality fillies Maven Belle and Belle En Rouge have further emphasised the sad loss of our late stallion Burgundy.
His Te Akau home-bred daughters featured in the New Zealand Thoroughbred Horse of the Year Awards with the former named the Champion Two-Year-Old and Belle En Rouge a co-winner of the New Zealand Bloodstock Filly of the Year title.
Maven Belle was victorious in last season’s G1 Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes, the G2 Matamata Breeders’ Stakes and the G3 Platinum Homes 2YO Classic.
Her lone defeat in five appearances came when an unlucky third in the G1 Sistema Stakes, in which she missed the jump and powered home after an interrupted run in the straight.
Belle En Rouge claimed the G1 New Zealand Oaks following victories in the G2 Eight Carat Classic and the G3 Eulogy Stakes. She was also third in the G1 New Zealand 1000 Guineas.
Burgundy was a $1.3 million Karaka yearling buy for Te Akau’s David Ellis and the blueblood was a multiple stakes winner and finished third in the G1 Telegraph Handicap.
The half-brother by Redoute’s Choice to Group 1 winner and producer Darci Brahma retired to Cambridge Stud, but was sadly euthanised in 2019 after contracting acute laminitis when just 11.