Leading New Zealand thoroughbred nursery Rich Hill Stud and co-sponsor The Proisir Syndicate hold a strong three-way interest in Saturday’s $400,000 opening Group One feature of the domestic season, the Proisir Plate (1400m) at Ellerslie.
Decorated resident sire Proisir will be represented by three-time top-flight winner Waitak, associate stallion Ace High by Rich Hill’s homebred elite level-heroine She’s A Dealer while Satono Aladdin’s son Lupo Solitario is a multiple Group Three-winning graduate bred and sold by Rich Hill.
“To have three horses by three different stallions in a Group One race named in honour of Proisir, now a two-time New Zealand Champion Sire, is a really proud moment for everyone at Rich Hill and each gives us something to cheer for,” Managing Director John Thompson said.
“Waitak has fronted up at the highest-level season after season, She’s A Dealer is especially close to us because we bred her and race her with a great group of friends, and Lupo Solitario is a horse we bred and sold who has forged a remarkable road back home.”
Waitak is one of New Zealand’s most accomplished and versatile weight-for-age performers, the Lance O’Sullivan and Andrew Scott-trained gelding won the Gr.1 Sistema Railway over 1200m in 2024 before triumphing in last season’s Gr.1 Howden Insurance Mile and Gr.1 Livamol Classic over 2040 metres to his record.
Luck deserted Waitak in the inaugural Proisir Plate at Ellerslie last September, but he rebounded emphatically to win the next two legs of the Triple Crown.
Those performances have made him the only horse named as a finalist in both the Champion Sprinter-Miler and Champion Middle Distance Horse categories in this Sunday’s 2025/26 New Zealand Thoroughbred Horse of the Year Awards.
Bred by the late Colin Devine and raced by Jill Devine, Waitak has an additional Rich Hill link on the dam side of his pedigree with his mother Repo Bay a daughter of fellow Rich Hill stallion Shocking.
She’s A Dealer brings an even more personal connection for the farm as she was bred by proprietors John and Colleen Thompson under the Rich Hill Thoroughbreds banner.
She is raced by them with Mark Neill, Richard Kidd, Ian Hart and Peter Merton and is trained at Cambridge by Roger James and Robert Wellwood’s Kingsclere Stables operation.
She’s A Dealer announced herself at the highest level when victorious in the Gr.1 New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes in March this year.
That victory not only presented Thompson with his first Group One winner as an owner but earned a special piece in the history of the race with She’s A Dealer and her Pentire dam Say No More becoming the first mother-and-daughter pair to win the event.
Lupo Solitario completes the trio and brings one of the most compelling comeback stories in the field.
By Satono Aladdin out of the Pentire mare She’s Aloof, he was bred by Rich Hill and sold from the farm’s Karaka 2022 Book 2 draft for $82,500.
The Danica Guy-trained gelding won three of his first six starts, including the Gr.3 Bonecrusher Stakes, where he defeated subsequent multiple Group One winner Orchestral, before his sale to Hong Kong.
However, a fall and ongoing foot issues interrupted his time there and he returned to Guy, who has patiently nursed him back to his best to win the Gr.3 Manco Easter Handicap in the autumn.
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