MACCA LODGE’S Caine McIntyre has a good one in The Honey Badger who is down to start in this weekend’s Group III $25,000 Alabar Kindergarten Stakes at Wyndham after an impressive debut on the same track earlier in the month.
Caine races the Somebeachsomewhere gelding with his brother-in-law Paul Hailes, of Balfour. The Honey Badger smashed the track record for two-year-old colts and geldings over 2400 metres (mobile) by more than six seconds when he posted 2:59.5 in downing a maiden field on 08 February.
THB provided Macca Lodge trainer Tony Stratford with his 11th win of the season. He has also entered Mach Three filly Jody Direen for the Kindergarten. Tony has won the race previously with Le Sol in 2010. The competition will be tough, though, with the Purdon and Rasmussen team entering three runners, including the Sapling Stakes winner Pacing Major.
(It was in the Kindergarten last year that another son of Somebeachsomewhere kicked off his racing campaign for the All Stars Stable. That was Waikiki Beach, who has gone on to win all 14 starts in Australia and New Zealand.)
Paul’s having a wonderful trot as a breeder this season. On the same day that The Honey Badger won, his half-sister Glenburn Joy (by American Ideal) also won very impressively on debut in track record time for a three-year-old filly.
They’re out of the Live Or Die mare Glenburn Jewel, who’s a half-sister to the Hailes family’s big winner Chesterton and Novena Rose, another American Ideal filly that Paul and wife Lauren sold for big money to Australia this season.