Promising three year old gelding, HIGHLY LIKELY (High Chaparral-Starrinka), produced a gutsy effort in very testing conditions at Te Aroha today, when taking out a Maiden 2200 metre event at just his second race day start. Fortuna boss, John Galvin, was well pleased with his charge’s effort. ” Let’s put this in persecutive,” he said, ” this horse is just having his his second race day start, the trip is 2200 metres, the track is a Heavy 11 and he is just a three year old racing against older horses and lugging 68.5kgs, because it was an amateur riders race – that is a big effort under the circumstances and aided by a lovely ride by Jamie Richards.” Click HERE to watch race replay – HIGHLY LIKELY goes from barrier three and is in the Fortuna colours of Tangerine/Blue with White Sash.
HIGHLY LIKELY, acquired for Fortuna by David Ellis at the 2012 South Island Yearling Sale, has a lovely pedigree, by the Champion Race Horse and now successful Stallion, High Chaparral, out of the Volksraad mare, Starrinka, herself a half sister to the well performed The Meista. Trainer Jason Bridgman and Syndicate Manager, John Galvin, have always had a lot of time for the horse, but have handled him patiently as he is still developing and maturing. “HIGHLY LIKELY is still very much a work in progress” says Bridgman, “a year from now he will be more mature and a lot stronger as a result; he has the potential to be a really top line winter galloper in the years ahead.”
HIGHLY LIKELY is raced by the Fortuna Highly Likely Syndicate, an ownership group of twenty five individuals. He was ridden in today’s event by amateur rider, Jamie Richards, whose day job is racing manager for Te Akau Racing Stables. Jamie has now had seven race day rides for four wins and two seconds, a great record in Amateur riding events. Jamie has a great pedigree himself, being the son of former South Island jockey and now successful Wingatui trainer, Paul Richards.