Warren, Corowa Monday previews: Country Champs winner chasing a treble
First of the Wagga-housed visitors to race is Dantains Prize, which sports the same predominantly bottle green colours of Gorrel's Country Championships heroine, Asgarda.
Like her, Dantains Prize was born and raised at the historic Lamont family farm, Kooringal Stud, which is also home to her sire Prized Icon.
Dantains Prize's Melbourne Cup connection dates back 80 years to her eighth dam, Rainbird.
As for Gorrel's filly, she is still searching for her first medal of any kind after half a dozen starts.
That said, she did manage to hand in her current personal best at her most recent outing when clocking in fourth in an Albury 1400m Country Maiden.
'She's not a bad little pony in trackwork but she's yet to produce it on race day so it was good to see her run that race the other day,'' Gorrel said.
'We've taken the shades (blinkers) off to see if that helps, but she's going well, and if she wants to do it, she has certainly got some wins in her.
'It just concerns me she hasn't put one away yet but she's only had the six starts so here's hoping Monday is the day
'It's really up to her, she's cherry ripe and she's ready to win.'
Gorrel meanwhile is rightfully more bullish about the winning prospects of stablemate Tycoon Artie which just happens to claim the aforementioned 1945 Melbourne Cup winner Rainbird as his ninth dam.
Tycoon Artie's four white feet have carried him to four wins in his 18 starts including two of his last four appearances.
His most recent victory was a comfortable win at the very same venue over the very same trip as Monday's Carlton & United Breweries Benchmark 58 Handicap (1200m).
'He's in top form and probably deserves the paddock but we're going to give him one more and then he can go and have a break,'' Gorrel said.
'He is creeping up in the weights, but I think he'll be pretty hard to beat with John Kissick on.
'He hasn't got enormous ability, but he does try.'
All three of Gorrel's Corowa bound trio will be ridden by Kissick, rounded out aboard Sorry Sunshine in the final race on the card.
Sorry Sunshine was bred by Gorrel, using a stallion that he says 'no one has ever heard off'.
That stallion is Apologia which won once in 11 starts: an 800m maiden at Wingatui, ironically on Melbourne Cup Day in 2006.
But that's not Apologia's only connection with the race that stops a nation.
His fourth dam is the celebrated broodmare Taiona whose four stakes-winning offspring include Gurner's Lane which famously ran down the immortal Kingston Town in the 1982 renewal.
As for Sorry Sunshine, he tackles the eminently suitable Balldale Hotel Benchmark 58 Handicap (1600m) with a solid, recent, fourth still fresh in his trainer's mind.
'I normally space his runs back he can back-up,'' Gorrel said.
'He's done it before. He backed up and won at the Wagga carnival ten days after a non-TAB meeting at Deniliquin so he can do it.
'He probably deserves the paddock too but I think there's one more in him.
'He's just starting to winter up a bit in the coat but his work has been good and it looks a good race for him.'
â– â– â– â– â–
DUBBO master Michael 'Mick' Mulholland aims to maintain his current hot streak when Warren hosts its first winter meeting of 2025 on Monday.
Mulholland is closing in on 200 winners, nine of which have come at the track widely accepted to be the 'Randwick of the West' thanks to its long straights and sweeping bends.
Two of Mulholland's last four runners are winners and while his last runner – Jasper's Way – was officially 10th of 13 at Gunnedah, it could and should have been so much different.
'He had no luck at all actually,'' Mulholland said. 'I thought he could have run in the first three if he could have kept going up the fence.
'He was running into it nicely and the 1600m will suit him right down to the ground on Monday.
'He hasn't got a real lot of gate-speed, so he'll sit back a little bit and work into it.
'He's just a big three-year-old that is still learning more than anything.'
Jasper's Way is sure to start considerably shorter than his $61 Gunnedah starting price when he fronts-up on Monday for the Warren Showgrounds Class 1 & Maiden Plate (1600m).
Jasper's Way is a son of the former crack two-year-old Pariah and member of one of the most notable families in the Australian Stud Book.
His fourth dam is Stage Hit whose seven wins include the now Group 1 features; the Coolmore Classic and Canterbury Stakes.
There is sure to be a great deal of interest centred on Mulholland-trained gelding The Impeckable which will partner Jasper's Way on the hour-long drive, west from Dubbo.
A striking brown/black coloured gelding, The Impeckable hasn't raced since winning at Orange on November 22 last year but has put in the groundwork for his return with a couple of trials at Narromine and Mudgee respectively.
'I was getting him ready for a TAB Highway but a few little niggly things came into play and the weather and things like that,'' Mulholland said.
'This will be his first run back. He's fit enough but I'm just not a hundred per cent if he's a hundred per cent there though, that's all.
'Even though he has trialled good both times, I'm just not convinced myself.
'He has been against some pretty handy horses, and he's hasn't been far away all his runs, he has been very honest right through.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
9 minutes ago
- ABC News
Multi-million-dollar deal struck for Wises Farm in heart of Maroochydore
One of the last working farms in the heart of the Sunshine Coast has been sold for $93.5 million. The 39-hectare block is just an eight-minute drive to the beach at Mooloolaba, and is bordered by Wises Road and the Sunshine Motorway. The land was purchased by privately owned property development company QM Properties. It was owned by Maroochydore's pioneering farmer Peter Wise. Mr Wise did not live to see the day his family would be forever financially secure. He died suddenly after being taken to hospital in January last year. His family made the decision to place the land on the market following his passing. The site had prior approval in place to build up to 570 dwellings, including retirement living, traditional homes on residential blocks, townhouses, and apartments. A proud eighth-generation farmer, Mr Wise had for decades rebuffed approaches from dozens of developers. Speaking with the ABC last year, town planner and close friend James Brownsworth said the work of the late farmer showed he "had a big-picture view of the highest and best use of the land". Mr Brownsworth said Mr Wise was passionate about properly planning for growth on the Sunshine Coast. "Beyond farming and his family, it was probably his primary passion, and you should see the paperwork he left behind around documenting and recording this and the milestones that he was involved in," he said. "The primary focus that he and I had was to work out what the development footprint looked like on his land versus the bits that weren't to be developed." Mr Brownsworth said they had nominated key items including roads, open space, and green linkages. Mr Wise once ran a pick-your-own-fruit agritourism attraction on land where the Maroochy Boulevard and Harvey Norman Homemaker Centre were built. Mr Brownsworth said Mr Wise had influenced much of the development of Maroochydore's CBD. "Maroochy Boulevard absolutely, but earlier than that, Sunshine Plaza before it was Sunshine Plaza, road network planning, open space planning, defending his land from the unwanted impacts of urban development so he could continue to farm it," he said. "It was his absolute passion, and his heart was always in the right place." The Wise family is continuing the tradition of growing Buderim gold coffee on another property on the mountain using trees passed down by their ancestors. Earlier this year, the family honoured Mr Wise with one final fig harvest using instructions scribbled in three notebooks left by Mr Wise. Speaking with the ABC earlier this year, his wife of 59 years, Ivy, said her family's support had helped her adapt to life without her husband. "I have a lot of family helping out. Without their support, we wouldn't be able to do the figs this year." Mr Wise and Mr Brownsworth's families have declined to talk today, still taking in the enormity of the sale without him.
News.com.au
20 minutes ago
- News.com.au
Who's getting sacked in Australia?
ANALYSIS The ABS just dropped some new data on jobs in Australia and one of my favourite things to do is look in it to see who is getting fired, getting sacked, getting the old heave-ho. The ABS calls it getting 'dismissed'. Being dismissed in Australia is kind of rare. It's not like the American TV shows where the boss shows up at your desk and shouts at you and that's it. Lol, if that happens in Australia you take your employer to court and stroll home with a tidy payout of up to six months pay. Even if they think they have a strong case against you, and you're racked up thousands on your corporate card, you can still win. To get sacked in Australia you have to do something pretty damn bad. Which is what makes the statistics so intriguing. I'd love to see how many sackings are in December, right after the Christmas party, but the ABS only has annual statistics. Here we can see that the number of Aussies who got sacked last year, and it is up slightly on the year before. In the last year, people have bee running amok and getting fired at quite high levels. Unsurprisingly it is us menfolk getting dismissed more often than women. But are we getting fired disproportionately? When you consider that men still make up more of the workforce than women the difference disappears a bit. Women are up to no good at work too! The young are also more likely to be sacked, as the next chart shows. Is that because of skylarking and pranks, or is it just because bosses get rid of the least skilled workers when things go bad, it's not clear. While firing the youth is the general trend, shout out to the Gen Xers who got themselves fired last year – in large numbers! The 45-64 year bracket was actually second-most likely to get fired last year. One more chart: Here we can see which states have the highest rate of sackings, and in this particular State of Origin showdown the Maroons have the edge. Shout out to Victoria which despite a lower population than NSW is ahead on sackings in 2024-25. In Australia we have labour laws and one of the things they do is make sacking rare. (Even if you sexually harass the customers, you can still win in court if you are not sacked in the exact right way). These strict laws are awesome 99 per cent of the time because it means an angry boss can't boot you if they're having a bad day. But it also means we've all worked with someone who desperately needed to be sacked but instead carried on, doing stuff-all and making work life very, very painful for everyone else. Instead of sacking people, which is an administrative and legal nightmare, sometimes what an organisation will do to shuffle out a bad egg is totally restructure itself. With a new structure, some jobs can be made redundant. Problem solved. Of course that's not the main reason for redundancy. You also get redundancies when a company genuinely isn't doing very well and needs to cut costs. There's voluntary ones and involuntary. In the next chart we can see redundancies, which the ABS calls retrenchments. The most important thing to notice is there's way more of them than there were sackings. There were 25,000 people being sacked each year, but 250,000 retrenchments. Men are still leading here, but again, since men hold more jobs than women, it's not out of line. Getting sacked in Australia is rare, you're certainly not going to get the old heave-ho for reading the internet at work. So settle in, have a browse around. Maybe you'll like to read about this guy: a very senior police officer, who had '13 beers and eight spirit drinks' and was 'dancing drunk in a McDonald's' ('flossing', apparently) before he 'crashed [his] unmarked car into a concrete barrier in Sydney's NorthConnex tunnel' and then 'deliberately left the scene'. And he didn't even lose his job – he's reportedly on paid leave!
ABC News
39 minutes ago
- ABC News
Sharks searching for deep waters and their best selves at first ever NRLW Magic Round
As the NRLW heads to Newcastle for the competition's first-ever Magic Round, the battle for the premiership increasingly seems like a race between two teams. Through the first month of the premiership, the Roosters and Broncos have been the class of the league, and even though it is early days, a meeting between the two on grand final day is beginning to feel inevitable. But a longer season means there are more times for teams to rise and fall, and more time to prove themselves against the two giants. This week, it will be Cronulla's turn to ride the lightning as it faces Brisbane on Saturday afternoon in what shapes as the marquee fixture of the round. Along with Newcastle and North Queensland, which are yet to play either of the top two, Cronulla is one of the teams more likely to break up the duopoly at the top of the ladder. Tony Herman's side has been a little shaky through four games, alternating wins and losses, and is yet to play to its full talents, but as last year's runners-up, has as good a pedigree as any to trouble the free-wheeling Queenslanders. In their last meeting in the 2024 finals series, the Broncos entered as heavy favourites only to lose 14-0 to the physical Sharks, and it's a performance the NSW team are chasing again as they look to solidify their season. "We're excited for the challenge — they're second on the ladder, flying high and playing some incredible footy," said Sharks captain Tiana Penitani Gray. "We know who the key playmakers and key threats are, and we want to play the long game, and drag them into some deep water. "When you look at our competition, the most exciting thing about it is anyone can win on a good day. "Last year, we were able to execute our game plan nearly perfectly, we have to do it again, but we know we can win, we can beat any team in this competition on our day, but we're still finding that at the moment. "We're nowhere near as good as we can be, we haven't hit our best, or got anywhere near our best this season — we're still building, but we have the blueprint." The Broncos are a different beast from last year, due mainly to the return of fullback Tamika Upton. They've scored the most points in the league and conceded the fewest, and while the Knights and Cowboys boast similar 3-1 records, Brisbane's only loss came in the blockbuster clash with the Roosters two weeks ago. It will take a vast improvement from Cronulla if it is to trouble Brisbane, let alone win. The Sharks' two wins in 2025 have come against the Raiders and Tigers, which are currently anchored at the bottom of the ladder. But the extended length of the season gives teams like the Sharks a chance to evolve through the campaign. With three players departing from last year's grand final side, including halfback Tayla Preston, cohesion has been an issue for Cronulla, but it is a problem time can solve. "We like the long game, we like the grinding footy, we have to earn the right to play, but we can't do that if we give away yardage penalties and cheap errors," Penitani Gray said. "It's simple, it's not some complex secret, but some of the girls come from systems where it's a bit different. "With the longer season, you have more time to find your feet, but in saying that, we don't want any more early losses. "It'll put us under too much pressure late in the season when we've got some really tough matches, we have to get runs on the board." The Broncos-Sharks match will be the final game of Saturday's triple-header at Hunter Stadium, with another to follow on Sunday. With Magic Round growing each year in the men's competition since it was introduced in 2019, the NRLW equivalent gives the women's game the kind of standalone, marquee event that can boost both its profile and prestige. "The last two men's Magic Rounds have opened with the women's State of Origin, but having our own is really exciting," Penitani Gray said. "The NRLW didn't exist that long ago, and being where we are now in the game and having our own Magic Round on the calendar is a reflection of how much the game is growing. "With 12 teams now, we're in a position where we can stand on our own — we have our own genuine fanbase that's not just the diehard men's fans who follow their club teams in the women's game. "It's why we're in a position to do this."
