A Young Gun?

IMPRESSIVE two-year-old qualifier Mucho Macho Man could be heading for the Young Guns series in Auckland at the end of the year.

The son of Mach Three and the unraced Bettor’s Delight mare Alisa is another horse in the Macca Lodge stable owned by Kenny Baynes. She’s out of the Ferndale Star breed of his late father Colin.

Ferndale Star was one of the Hokonui Stud’s cornerstone mares and Colin named some of her progeny after his son back in the 1960s and 70s — Kenny Charles, Young Kenny and later on Sir Kenny, who all went on to race in the United States. She also left the good winners Moonshiner and Sly Brewer as well as fillies in Hokonui Star, Gentle Miss and Taxi Dancer.

Taxi Dancer was the dam of NZ Free-For-All winner Tax Credit back in 1988 but the family hasn’t been prominent in the past couple of decades. Mucho Macho Man, who is from the Taxi Dancer line, could be about to change all that.

FOOTNOTE: Kenneth Charles Baynes was himself named after a horse — Young Charles, the sire his father stood at stud, who left none other than the mighty Young Quinn.