Swettenham Stud

In the early hours of Monday champion 5 year old Sacred Kingdom arrived at Swettenham UK‘s prestigious 2300 acre Manton Estate. After a long flight from Hong Kong to Paris and then being floated to Manton. The horse travelled extremely well and has been stretching his legs since in readiness for his first serious gallop tomorrow as jockey Brett Prebble and trainer Ricky Yui are due in today.

Sacred Kingdom’s assistant trainer has seen and worked on these gallops before as he accompanied Hong Kong’s champion Indigenous trained by Ivan Allen when they took on the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1999.

Sacred Kingdom will work on the same grass gallops as the legendary Gainsborough (Triple Crown hero of 1918), as well as over 1200 winners that Manton has produced since it was bought by Swettenham Stud in 1984. Manton’s resident trainer Brian Meehan’s has availed the Hong Kong visitors with full access to all his facilities. Sacred Kingdom will have no shortage of galloping partners regardless of the work his trainer Ricky Yui wishes to do. There are over 140 horses presently in work for Brian including recent headline grabbers Delegator, Crowded House and City Leader.

Sacred Kingdom, the Australian bred bay gelding by Encosta De Lago was bought by Sin Kang Yuk for $200,000 from the draft of Kornong Stud Farm at the 2005 Inglis Premier Yearling Sale in Melbourne and was taken to Hong Kong. Sacred Kingdom Champion Sprinter in Hong Kong in 2008 is said to be the fastest horse ever to run in the Far East. His current rating is 129 after recently winning the Cathay Pacific HK Sprint, the HKJC Sprint Prize and over $5.5M in prize money this season alone.

There’s a real Swettenham and Victorian flavour to this year’s Golden Jubilee race as Takeover Target is by Celtic Swing who stood at Swettenham Stud in Nagambie. Takeover Target is well remembered for his stirring struggle in the 2007 edition where he ran second beaten a head by Soldier’s Tale who now resides at Swettenham Stud and is about to enter his second season at stud in 2009. The third entrant Scenic Blast is by Scenic who was owned by Robert Sangster before standing the bulk of his career at Swettenham Victoria.

So it is very pleasing for the Victorian breeding industry that hot on the heels of the previous world champion sprinter Silent Witness (by Victorian stallion El Moxie)  comes another two world champions. Once again both are by Victorian based stallions at the time of conception and now the focus on Royal Ascot and Australia’s three runners seems to have a very strong Victorian bias.