This wonderful mare captured the hearts of the public at the beginning of the new millennium like few other horses in post-War years. Tough-minded if not bloody-minded, she had a physique to match and was able to race competitively at top level from two to seven years. Sunline raced 45 times for 32 wins, eight seconds and two thirds and an Australasian record $11 million in stakes. She raced in four countries and won in three; she twice won the Southern Hemisphere’s weight-for-age championship, the Cox Plate (on the second occasion by a stunning seven lengths) and was narrowly beaten by Northerly going for a third. She twice won Sydney’s toughest “metric mile,” the Doncaster Handicap, and was second on another occasion when conceding 6kg to her conqueror, Over. Her optimum distance was probably 1400m, at which she was unbeaten, yet she was able to stretch her high cruising speed to the 2040m of the Cox Plate, and to hold out the redoubtable Fairy King Prawn in the tough Hong Kong International Mile. At home, where her races were usually in preparation for another overseas campaign, she was unbeaten in seven starts. Sunline was twice elected Australian Racehorse of the Year and three times New Zealand Horse of the Year. In 1999 the authoritative Timeform publication named her the best turf mare in the world.

Race Record:
48 starts, 32 wins, 8 seconds, 2 thirds
Prizemoney:
$13million, a record for her time.

Sunline is proudly sponsored by Dunstan Horse Feed - New Zealand's leading horse feed suppliers. Dunstan is a major sponsor of horse sports and racing events and we appreciate their involvement in our event. For further information please call Dave Smith at 0274-931-580.

During his hay day, John Wheeler was more successful in Australia than any other New Zealand trainer of modern times.

In Australia John trained three near-champions – Poetic Prince, Rough Habit, and Veandercross and won many major Australian races (including a dozen Group Ones) with all three horses.

John has dominated the Australia's jumping scene for many years (winning seven Great Eastern Steeplechases at Oakbank) and won what is arguable the greatest jumping race in the world – the  Nakayama Grand Jump in Tokyo with outstanding jumper St Steven.

A leading trainer at home John continues to be a great ambassador for his country.

David Peake first appeared on winning jockeys' list 1962-63, retired 40 years later as the winner of 2,085 races in New Zealand, the third biggest-winning jockey in New Zealand history.

David won six NZ Jockey Premierships, rode the most winners of any jockey in the 1970s (794) and held the course record for winners at Ellerslie (392) until topped by champion jockey Lance O'Sullivan.

Renowned as a rider of stayers David regularly rode track work over the years – every bit the professional.

At the end of the 2002-03 season, Lance O’Sullivan retired from race riding at the top (three winners at Tauranga from his last three rides) and with every record in New Zealand flat racing safely in his saddle bags. With a New Zealand tally of 2358 he held the record of wins by a New Zealand jockey – and that was without adding the wins in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Singapore and, yep, one in Turkey which brought his lifetime tally to 2479. In 2001-02 he rode 193 winners to reclaim the New Zealand record for wins in a season which a young Michael Walker had briefly taken from him the season before. O’Sullivan retired with 12 New Zealand premierships to his credit, having broken Bill Broughton’s long-standing record of 11 premierships. All of these records placed O’Sullivan firmly at the head of his profession at the time of his retirement. What makes them a testament to character, professionalism and determination as much to innate ability is that they were achieved – or at least completed – after a horrendous race fall at Moonee Valley in which O’Sullivan’s left leg was so badly smashed that it took three years, three operations and unguessable grinding pain before he could return to race riding in 1998-99. O’Sullivan was born on August 28 1963 into a racing family. His father Dave, a good journeyman jockey who became a champion trainer, was followed into a training partnership by Lance’s brother Paul; Lance rode 181 winners while apprenticed to his father. Over two decades the O’Sullivan trio – trainers and jockey – became the most formidable team in New Zealand’s racing history. Lance won 50 Group One races, perhaps his most memorable being the 1989 Japan Cup on Horlicks, the W.S.Cox Plate on Surfers Paradise and that remarkable third ARC Railway Handicap win on Mr Tiz, on whom he won six Group Ones. Since his retirement from the saddle, Lance O’Sullivan has seamlessly turned his talents to training.

Lance O'Sullivan is sponsored by Highview Stud. Highview Stud stands an excellent line up of stallions including exciting young sires - Johar, Align and Danbird, and well established sire - Kashani. Highview welcomes your enquiries. Please phone Brent Gillovic on 07-825-2649.

At the forefront of the thoroughbred industry as proprietor of Cambridge Stud for the past three decades, Patrick Hogan was recognised for his services to racing with a knighthood shortly before that title was removed from the New Zealand honours list. Born in Auckland in 1939, the young Patrick Hogan became involved in the breeding industry in the 1960s with his father Tom and brother John at the relatively low-key Fencourt Stud near Cambridge, where Blueskin II was a successful sire.
Wanting to operate on a bigger and more commercial scale, Patrick set up Cambridge Stud on his own in 1972. His entrepreneurial and marketing/promotional skills quickly brought him prominence. With the National Yearling Sales his focus, his “Melbourne Cup,” he moved staff and yearlings to Trentham (then the home of the sales) on a previously unknown scale, was a pioneer in the hospitality tents which became a sales feature, and became a renowned presenter of yearlings. Leading his own yearlings into the ring in those days, as brisk and well presented as the young thoroughbreds, he knew where the buyers were positioned (the Australian market was his target from the outset) and made sure the main players got a good look at the youngsters he led.
Sir Tristram, the stallion who was to build Cambridge Stud into a showplace and an unquestioned market leader, arrived in 1975 and, though greeted with lukewarm enthusiasm at first by the market and by some of Hogan’s established clients, made sensational progress from the time his oldest progeny turned three and included the likes of multiple Group One winner Sovereign Red. When he died, 22 years after coming to Cambridge Stud, Sir Tristram had been Australian champion sire six times (only once at home, where relatively few of his best-bred progeny raced) and had won five Dewar Awards (for combined Australian-New Zealand progeny earnings). He was second in the world for individual Group One winners (45). Sir Tristram founded a sire son dynasty (Grosvenor, Kaapstad, Marauding and Military Plume notable among them) but it was not until late in the great stallion’s life that Sir Patrick acquired a Sir Tristram son, the well-performed and well-bred Zabeel, to stand alongside his ageing father and take up the mantle. Zabeel was to outshine the other sons of Sir Tristram and rival his father (as at October 2005, two Australian championships and always in the top two or three; three New Zealand championships; a remarkable nine Dewar Awards; 33 individual Group One winners) and keep Cambridge Stud in a pre-eminent position. With his wife Justine Lady Hogan, Sir Patrick has been four times Mercedes Breeder of the Year and in 1991 received the Mercedes Award for Outstanding Contribution to Racing. A past president of the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders Association and a major racing sponsor (especially at Te Rapa), he has been a large-scale racing owner in recent years. Going into the 2005-06 season, he had an interest in 46 racehorses, including a dozen two-year-olds.

Sir Patrick Hogan is sponsored by the internationally acclaimed hospitality lodge - Huka Lodge of Taupo. Huka Lodge is a NZ business icon and we are delighted to have this association. For further information on Huka Lodge and its facilities please call 07-378-5791.