Date posted August 29, 2010 | Posted by Brian Russell | Filed under
Feature Stallion,
Premium Updates,
Racing and Breeding,
StrategicILLUMINATES, a tough 6-year-old race mare who made it 10 wins from 55 outings and pushed her earnings $890,000 when successful under top weight in the Listed Toy Show Quality at Warwick Farm on August 21, is by the former first class Zeditave sprinter Strategic (now on $16,500 at Darley, Seymour,Vic) and from an unraced Danzero mare, Dazzle Light, who has only managed two winners from nine foals.
They are the Gerry Harvey bred and raced Illuminates, a mare whose record includes three Listed wins and a second in the Group 1 STC Queen of the Turf Stakes, and her two years older half-sister Earla Margaret, a Grand Lodge mare. Now represented by a yearling filly by Strategic as her first foal, the latter won one race, a maiden at Eagle Farm, but also placed in Brisbane and Adelaide.
Illuminates success means that each of her first four dams has produced one or more stakes winners. To start with Dazzle Light is a half-sister to Stoway (by Geiger Counter; 12 wins, AJC Summer Cup, Hawkesbury Cup) and to London Lights, Sydney winning dam of Only a Lady (Sir Tristram; won AJC Flight Stakes, second Victoria Oaks) and Lisson Grove (Dehere; Listed winner Adelaide). Only a Lady has gone on to produce Redwood Falls (Woodman), a winner of ten races to Group 1 level in Macau.
Bred in New Zealand, Illuminates grandam Travel Light (by the Petingo sire Bellisimo) was a first class performer, winning six races, including the Queensland Oaks and two Group 3s, finishing second in the AJC Surround Stakes and third in two Group1s, the AJC Queen Elizabeth Stakes and STC Orlando Wines Classic.
Travel Light was one of two stakes winners from Otalight, a three-quarter sister to Tudor Light (All A’Light; 16 wins) and a half-sister to Elabama (Tudor Court; 10 wins). Raced only in New Zealand both Tudor Light and Elabama included in their successes the Group1 Auckland Railway Handicap.
Also successful in two Group 2s, including the Avondale Guineas, and third in another renrewal of the Railway, Elanabama flew the flag for Australian breeding. He was bred by the Bowcocks, owners of the Alabama stud in the Segenhoe valley near Scone for sixty years, and sold to New Zealand as a yearling in Sydney.
Elabama included three stakes winners among five successful offspring. One of them was Tudor Light, a winner of two Group1s, second in another and producer to Sir Tristram of Our Tristalight, winner of the SAJC Australasian Oaks and South Australian Oaks.
Our Tristalight is the dam of Danske, a Danehill who won the New Zealand Guineas and Auckland Guineas and who from use in New Zealand has sired over 200 winners, including 11 stakes winners and 19 other stakes placegetters.
One of Danske’s daughters, Quite Astute, is the dam of Smart, a winner at Doomben on August 14 and runner up on the same track on August 28. He is a 3-year-old in the first crop of Glenlogan Park’s very promising Flying Spur sire Jet Spur.
Illuminates is one of over 400 winners of 1300 races got by 18-year-old Strategic so far. Contributors have included 21 stakes winners, 26 others stakes placed and earners of $31.7million.
