Lonhro added the finishing touches to an outstanding season when Pinwheel won the $130,000 Listed Ramornie Hcp at Grafton on Wednesday. The Darley sire has dominated Australia’s third-season sires’ premiership this season with 12 stakes winners among 97 individual winners to date. They have earned a total of $7.15 million.
Pinwheel (4g Lonhro – Quilt by Danehill) joins O’Lonhro, Beaded, Sainthood, Renaissance and Serenissima as part of Lonhro’s first-crop stakes winners this season.
Group 1 colt Denman led his three year-old black-type brigade ahead of Deer Valley, Demerit, Trim and Dissolved.
Lonhro’s lone stakes winner in the juvenile division has been Secession. He won the Listed Breakfast Stakes at Sandown beating subsequent G1 Blue Diamond Stakes second Shaaheq.
Pinwheel was runner-up to brilliant G3 Healy Stakes winner Hay List at Eagle Farm last month and he franked the form out that race yesterday. The Darley gelding surged to the front at the furlong under Dan Nikolic to score by a length
Pinwheel won his maiden as an October 3YO at Canterbury in 2008 and he came of age earlier this season with a winning hat-trick at Warwick Farm and Rosehill (2). “He’s an honest horse and deserved to win a Listed race,” trainer Peter Snowden said. “He’s not quite a Group horse but he’s better than Saturday company.”
Pinwheel’s dam Quilt is a three-quarter sister to G1 Hong Kong sprinter – miler Charming City (Chief’s Crown) and a full sister to G2 AJC Stan Fox Stakes winner West Point.
Quilt had thrown winners by Canny Lad, Octagonal (2) and Quest for Fame before her Ramornie winner. She was bred back to Lonhro the following year and produced the Sydney winner Counterpane. The mare has a yearling colt by Domesday and a weanling colt by Elusive Quality.
Lonhro is based at Darley’s Kelvinside nursery in NSW and his fee has risen to $88,000 in 2010.