Eliza Park shuttler Statue Of Liberty received a timely fillip for the 2010 season when Perth flyer Hay List scored an electrifying win in the G3 Healy Stakes at Eagle Farm on Saturday.
Hay List (4g Statue Of Liberty – Sing Hallelujah by Is It True) won by five lengths and clocked a new race record of 1.08.69s for 1200m. “He could have won by eight,” jockey Chris Munce claimed. “I’ll go anywhere to ride him.”
The strapping 600kg gelding will run in the Missile Stakes in Sydney before being put aside for the Lightning Stakes, Oakleigh Plate and Newmarket Hcp treble in the autumn. “I’ve won Group 1 sprints on Spark Of Life and Dance Hero,” Munce explained. “This bloke has the potential to do the same.”
Hay List began his career in Perth winning 8 from 8 before pulling up lame in the G3 Colonel Reeves at Ascot in November. Transferred to Gosford trainer John McNair, the Statue Of Liberty gelding was runner-up to Love Conquers All in the Listed June Stakes at Randwick prior to the hit-and-run raid in Brisbane.
His sire Statue Of Liberty originally shuttled to Blue Gum Farm between 2004 and 2006 but did not return the following year due to the E.I. crisis. Coolmore Stud subsequently sold him to East Stud in Japan but, after an absence of two years and an avalanche of winners, he was hot property in Australia.
Instead of returning to Blue Gum, Statue Of Liberty was re-routed to Eliza Park and covered a book of 156 mares at the Kerrie property in 2009. “We’re very excited to be standing a stallion of Statue of Liberty’s calibre,” Eliza Park’s CEO Cameron Croucher said this time last year. “He was a genuine speed horse although his progeny are also competitive up to a mile.”
Statue Of Liberty is a Storm Cat half-brother to Lemon Drop Kid and was a US$1.3 million buy for Coolmore at the 2001 Keeneland yearling sale. He was a G2 winner of the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot and returned as a three year-old to be beaten a head in the G1 Sussex Stakes at Goodwood.
The Eliza Park resident sired Hay List from Perth winner Sing Hallelujah and he’s definitely upgraded the bottom half of her pedigree which was completely free of black-type before the Healy Stakes.
Hay List is a homebred for WA breeder Terry Davenport and his wife Liz who owns a well-known brand of Australia-wide fashion stores. They also sent his unraced three year-old sister Golden Statue to McNair after she won a Belmont trial earlier this season.
Sing Hallelujah has a 2yo colt and a filly foal by former Eliza Park sire Delzao and, not surprisingly, the mare was bred back to Statue Of Liberty last year.
Statue Of Liberty has sired 52 winners in Australia at a 58% strike-rate. The best of them to date has been class galloper Mic Mac who was beaten a nose and a long head by Black Piranha and Melito in the G1 Stradbroke Hcp on June 12.
Statue Of Liberty will stand at Eliza Park for $17,600 (inc gst) fee in 2010.