If one thinks of Cape Cross, Newmarket and a seven-time G1-winning mare, naturally the name Ouija Board springs to mind. But while Lord Derby’s great dual Oaks winner nurtures her Kingmambo colt foal in the paddocks of Stanley House Stud, Newmarket is also currently home, albeit temporarily, to another daughter of Cape Cross boasting similarly impressive credentials.
Seachange, winner of seven Group One races in her native New Zealand has spent the last few weeks in the UK ahead of her assault on some of the country’s top summer sprinting prizes, with likely targets being the G1 Golden Jubilee on the final day of Royal Ascot and the G1 Darley July Cup on 11 July.
The solidly-built mare has become a celebrity in her home country and, after watching her work on Newmarket’s July Course on Wednesday morning, it’s easy to see why. Thoroughly professional in her gallop under jockey Ted Durcan and wonderfully laidback afterwards, she faced the gaggle of journalists and photographers present at a press conference for the Global Sprint Challenge series as if such attention was a routine occurrence.
Bred and owned by Dick Karreman, the New Zealand-bred five-year-old (who counts as a six-year-old in the northern hemisphere) has been a great flagbearer for The Oaks Stud near Cambridge, where she was born. Seachange will no doubt receive a heroine’s welcome when she returns to her birthplace on 7 September after racing for the last time in England and completing a spell in quarantine from the end of July. She is booked to visit Zabeel with hopes high that she will provide her breeder with yet more glory from the paddocks.
