3 minute read
The win by the Darren Weir-trained Our Voodoo Prince in the $100,000 Pakenham Cup on November 29 could encourage more Chinese involvement in Australian breeding and racing.
He runs for Yu Long Investments, a Chinese owned organisation headed by Ms ‘Anabelle’ Yu Long.
With an office in Melbourne Yu Long is emerging as a major player in Australian breeding and racing, including paying the two highest prices at the Australian Broodmare Sale in Sydney in May when going to $605,000 for Flame Of Sydney, a stakes winning Encosta de Lago mare in foal to Snitzel, and $500,000 for the Fastnet Rock filly Neena Rock.Our Voodoo Prince, winner of nine races in the UK and Australia including the G3 Easter Cup at Caulfield, is a gelding and has no residual breeding value, a pity as he is a fashionably bred half-brother to Australia, the champion Galileo colt who won the English and Irish Derbys in 2014.
Australia and Our Voodoo Prince, a son of the distinguished Mr. Prospector sire Kingmambo, are from one of Europe’s greatest modern racemares Ouija Board.A daughter of Cape Cross (Green Desert) she won seven G1 races including the English Oaks, Irish Oaks, Goodwood Nassau Stakes, Royal Ascot Prince of Wales’s Stakes, Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf twice and the Hong Kong Vase and was placed in the Epsom Coronation Cup, Irish Champion Stakes, Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Japan Cup and Hong Kong QE II Cup.
Her mother Selection Board did not win a race and none of her ten other foals (eight ran, six won) succeeded at stakes level but she was a sister by the Tudor Melody sire Welsh Pageant to Teleprompter (11 wins, G1 Arlington Million) and half-sister to G3 winner Chatoyant and Rosia Bay, dam of triple G1 winner Ibn Bey and Roseate Tern (Yorkshire Oaks).