Street Cry has a monumental week ahead in Victoria and Kentucky.
The Darley headliner sired an unprecedented international double this time last year with Shocking in the Melbourne Cup and Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Fast forward 12 months and there’s only one change this year. Shocking will be back Flemington on Tuesday to defend his Cup crown but the venue for Zenyatta’s finale this Sunday has moved from Santa Anita to Churchill Downs.
Street Cry is a son of Machiavellian and he has built up a phenomenal record since Zenyatta and the rest of his first-crop foals arrived in 2004. He has sired 305 winners of 835 races in 23 countries. His black-type count is 41 and another statistic that stacks up is a 61% winners-to-runners strike-rate.
Street Cry added another notch to his Singapore total when promising sprinter Mr Timely won the JRA Trophy over 1200m on Friday night. The Michael Freedman-trained galloper had been off the boil since a running double four months ago but capitalised on a return to his pet Polytrack surface at Kranji.
Jockey Danny Beasley has built up a formidable partnership with Mr Timely having ridden him to all his four wins. “We went with a change of plan and decided to go forward instead of settling at the rear,” Beasley said. “He’s such a versatile horse that he is able to adapt to any speed. He always had half-a-length on Maple Star and to out-tough him goes to show how good he is.”
Mr Timely is the last foal of Canterbury winner Snowcisco (Snow Vain). She also threw winners Brackenbury, Marquetry and Strands before dropping off ASB records in 2008.