Friday, 10 June 2011: Australian-bred two-year-olds Delago Deluxe and Gimmethegreenlight have shut out their local rivals by dividing up South Africa's major juvenile races in the lead-up to the nation's equivalent of the Golden Slipper run on July 3.
 | James Bester
Photo by Bronwen Healy | |
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Encosta de Lago colt
Delago Deluxe - out of Staging's daughter Succeeding - - is unbeaten in four starts but has a serious challenger for SA champion two-year-old honours in the shape of undefeated stakes winning More Than Ready colt Gimmethegreenlight.
The Scone-bred youngster was bought for $155,000 as a weanling on the Gold Coast by South African expat James Bester for prominent local owner Haseen Adams.
Kia Ora stud owner Ananda Krishnan subsequently bought a 50 percent stake in the colt on Bester's advice.
'Gimmethegreenlight is an unbeaten stakeswinner who has won four out of four,' Bester said.
'Chris Snape told me that he is not only the best two-year-old he has ever trained, he's the best two-year-old he has ever seen.
'He tells me that the horse is absolutely extraordinary.'
Gimmethegreenlight was bred by David Bentata from his Canny Lad mare, Yes Can She Cancan, a
relative of the 1974 Golden Slipper winner Hartshill.
'Subsequent to our purchase of him, his half-sister Ofcourseican (Mossman) has become a stakeswinner and is a quite a useful filly, so his pedigree has improved again,' Bester noted.
'There is no doubt that Gimmethegreelight is a stallion prospect.'
Astute buyers are opting to secure their racehorses as weanlings, a practice which requires an expert eye when dealing with such immature animals.
'To be honest, he was only a weanling and I wouldn't like to boast that I could see him as a two-year-old but of course he was by More Than Ready,” Bester said.
'With any More Than Ready one kind of expects them to be two-year-olds and there was no reason he couldn't be.'
Bester is hoping that his success with Gimmethegreenlight will be repeated next season via another future export by More Than Ready.
Bester paid $85,000 for the More Than Ready- Storm Front colt offered by Yarraman Park Stud at this week's Magic Million National Yearling sale on the Gold Coast.
'The colt is from the family of More Joyous and looked a like Gimmethegreenlight,' Bester said.
'We only paid $85,000 for him, he was a late foal, but in my view it was as nice a More Than Ready that I have seen at any yearling sale this year.'
