After a stellar 2009/2010 racing season for Darley first-season sire Domesday, it was capped off on the evening of August 14 at the NSW Horse Of The Year Awards when his multiple Stakes-winning son Pressday took the top honour of NSW Two-Year-Old of the Year.
Making his debut early during the season, Pressday showed talent from his very first start when he won by a length-and-three-quarters. After a further two starts and a G3 placing, the colt was put away with the Brisbane winter carnival in mind.
Resuming in the G2 Champagne Stakes, Pressday dominated his rivals, winning with absolute ease. Another G2 victory in the Sires’ Produce Stakes a fortnight later saw the colt start a clear favourite in the G1 TJ Smith Stakes over the Eagle Farm mile. Ridden back for the first time in his short career, the Chris Waller-trainee came home to take the event by a one-and-a-quarter lengths.
Bred by Mr R D See, Pressday is out of the Kaaptive Edition mare Kaaptive Empress, a winner of nine races and a half-sister to the dam of G1 winner The Mighty Lions. Kaaptive Empress has a yearling by Danzig’s G1 winner Librettist and will visit Domesday again in the upcoming breeding season.
Having sired four Stakes horses from his initial crop of runners, his Stakes performers strike rate sits at an impressive 17.4%, significantly higher than any of those that finished ahead of him on the first-season sire table. Leading the way for the young sire is the G1-performed filly Divorces and the Stakes-placed duo of Exchanges and Domesky.
The winner of the G2 Silver Slipper Stakes as a two-year-old, Domesday’s pedigree indicated that he would always be better at three and with many of his progeny nominated for the leading three-year-old races such as the G1 Caulfield Guineas and G1 Thousand Guineas during the spring carnival, it would be no surprise to see his stock continue to perform extremely well.
Domesday will cover his fifth book of mares this season, standing at Darley’s Northwood Park at a fee of $11,000 including GST.
