(NZ) bred gallopers Ocean Park (Thorn Park) and Norzita (Thorn Park) were honoured at the Australian Racehorse of the Year Awards on Thursday evening.
Ocean Park took out the Australian Champion Middle Distance Award and Norzita the NZ Bloodstock Champion 3YO Filly award.
The pair have common traits, both being bred and raised in New Zealand by Windsor Park Stud’s sire Thorn Park and both sold at NZ Bloodstock’s National Yearling Sale Series.
The premature loss of Thorn Park in 2012 is continuing to be felt by the New Zealand racing industry with the sire leaving a big impression in his short stud career. With 18 Group 1 wins from just 7 crops to race, he was the only sire on Thursday night’s honour-roll to sire two individual Award winners.
Ocean Park was a comprehensive winner of the Champion Middle Distance Award, gaining 226 votes. He earned the accolade following a spring campaign that saw him win G1 Makfi Challenge, G1 Underwood Stakes, G1 Caulfield Stakes and G1 W S Cox Plate.
Ocean Park was trained in Matamata by part-owner Gary Hennessy and earned over $2.60 million last season. He was bred by Trelawney Stud who sold him at the 2010 Karaka Select Sale for $150,000.
Already crowned New Zealand’s Horse of the Year for last season, Ocean Park is currently serving his first crop of mares in New Zealand where he stands at Waikato Stud.
The NZ Bloodstock Champion 3YO Filly award was fittingly won by a graduate of the sponsor’s Karaka Premier Sale with Norzita completing a notable double for her sire Thorn Park.
The Bart Cummings trained filly picked up 163 votes on the back of G1 wins in the Flight Stakes and Storm Queen Stakes. She then took on all-comers in the G1 Doncaster Handicap, finishing a valiant third behind fellow NZ-bred galloper Sacred Falls.
Norzita was bought at the 2011 Karaka Premier Sale for $200,000 by Duncan Ramage’s DGR Thoroughbred Services from Windsor Park Stud and earned over $900,000 in her three-year-old campaign for part-owners Dato Tan Chin Nam.
Thorn Park’s stakes success is still flowing, adding a new black-type winner last weekend through Sacred Park. Four lots from his penultimate crop have been catalogued at the upcoming NZB Ready to Run Sale and his last crop of yearlings will be offered at the National Yearling Sales Series at Karaka in January 2014.
OCEAN PARK
(NZ) galloper wins Australian Champion Middle Distance Award