4 Sep 2008
The Keeper filly,
Keeper Special, once again showed her class and picked up her second black-type win when she easily accounted for her rivals in the Listed $60,000 Wanganui Race Horse Owners Fillies Stakes (1200m) at Saturday's Wanganui Jockey Club race-meeting.
The three-year-old bounded away from her rivals in the finishing stages to score a commanding win and in doing so she completed a hat-trick of victories.
The winning sequence began at Avondale in June where she won a two-year-old event. She then went on to record her first black-type success when taking out the Listed Ryder Stakes at Otaki last month in which she beat Jasminka.
She was ridden by Darryl Bradley who had the race in safe keeping a long way from home.
Keeper Special is trained at Pukekohe by Gareth McRae and Garry Newham, a partnership formed on July 1. McRae trained in partnership for 1 1/2 years with Russell Cameron until he returned to Australia this year while Newham was in partnership with Graeme Rogerson.
Keeper Special's dam, Jasben, won three races and was a handy racehorse herself. This is the family of a number of top-class gallopers including the four-time Group 1 winner Vite Cheval, along with Wellington Derby winner Lord Cheval and the Group 3 winners, Nat The Brat and Congrats.
Keeper Special was bred and is owned by Margaret Watson of Silverdale, north of Auckland.
Watson said Keeper Special and her dam, Jasben, were lucky to be alive after Keeper Special's birth looked like being breeched. "She (Keeper Special) was trying to come out the wrong way all the time," Watson said.
A veterinary surgeon arrived after the birth and told Watson she was fortunate both the foal, by Keeper, and mother survived.
"That's why I called the foal Keeper Special."
Keeper, who stands at Cambridge Stud, was the leading sire of three-year-olds in New Zealand last season. The Group 1 winning son of Danehill has already sired 80 individual winners - including 11 individual stakes performed horses.