Second Season Sire Exceedance pulled out an impressive debutant on Friday night at Canterbury with Stagnum outclassing a maiden field and then Dance to the Boom made it two from two.
Ridden by Tyler Schiller, the Team Hawkes trained three-year-old gelding defeated Vetwelve (Grunt) by 1.4 lengths with Piccaderro (Pierro) third.
Stagnum had gone into the race having had four barrier trials, none of which appeared particularly impressive, however blinkers weren’t on board in the trials but were on board on race day.
The market was solid enough to suggest it might be a game changer and so it proved, settling at the tail before circling the field and, after responding to riding, hit the line seemingly with something in reserve and better wins in store.
Stagnum was an $80,000 purchase for Trilogy Racing from breeders Kia Ora Stud at the Inglis Australian Weanling Sale then made $130,000 to Hawkes Racing from the Blue Gum Farm draft at Inglis Premier Yearling Sale.
He i
s out of All Too Hard mare, All Too Free, a half-sister to Group III winner Ravi and Listed winner Elzaam.
It’s the 10th season winner for Exceedance which includes the highly promising stakes winning three-year-old Swiftfalcon, a horse in the same ownership as Stagnum, and also Team Hawkes trained.
The Bjorn Baker trained filly Dance to the Boom won the Benchmark 64 even over 1200m beating another Exceedance in Apex to make it two wins in as many starts.
