Possibly for first time in its history the juvenile jewel of Canberra racing the Black Opal Stakes has been taken out by a youngster whose breeder resides in the region. Sold through Woodlands Stud to a bid of $38,000 from one of his part owners, bloodstock agent Vin Cox, at the Sydney Classic sale, the winner Down the Wicket was bred by J.R. Pead of Canberra and is trained at Warwick Farm by Gary Portelli.

  Surprisingly he was a roughie in the Black Opal field as his three previous starts had included a 1.5 lengths win at Gosford on March March 2 and earlier a third and a fourth at Randwick.

  Bred to be a tough performer who could race well for a number of seasons, Down the Wicket has a sporting flavour about his breeding. He is by the Dr Grace Doncaster Handicap winner Over, a Woodlands Stud, Cootamundra sire, and from Golf Circuit, a mare who, bred and raced by Pead, ran 50 times and won15 sprint races including half a dozen in Sydney where she also finished third in the NSW Tattersall's Tramway Handicap.

  Down the Wicket is the fourth foal and winner for Gold Circuit but the first stakes winner in four generations for the family. All the first four dams were winners but all were by sires lower down the scale in fashion. In order of ascension, those sires are Groucho (grandson of Biscay), Red Diver (by Red Gauntlet), Prince Max (by Renegade) and the imported Immortal (by Dante).

  Down the Wicket is in the second crop of Over, a sire who also had a youngster in his first lot which won a feature race. He is The Jonker, winner at two of the VRC Inglis 2YO Championship and an event at Canberra and runnner up at Randwick in the Inglis 2YO Classic.

  At Down the Wicket's rump in second place at the finish of this year's Black Opal Stakes was yet another smart two-year-old bred and raised on Fred Peisah's Lomar Park Stud at Werombi on the outskirts of Sydney. A brown gelding sold through the Hunter Valley Breeders' Scone yearling sale to his trainer, Gratz Vella of Canberra, for $28,000, he is One Time and his three previous starts had all been on the home track and included a win on debut in the spring.

  One Time is one of 254 individual winners got at Lomar Park by the now deceased Danzig sire Mister C and has as his first three dams mares bred on the stud by Peisah and descending from foundation matriarch Alliteration.The dam De La Rose is a Sydney winner by Archregent (CAN) and from Rebellious Lady, a daughter of Without Fear (FR) and Steal My Thunder, an unraced half-sister by Steel Pulse (GB) to the Lomar Park bred AJC Sires' Produce Stakes winner and Golden Slipper third Sovereign Slipper. Archregent, Steel Pulse and Le Cordonnier (FR), the sire of Sovereign Slipper, were all good sources of winners at Lomar Park, now the home of the Danehill sire Arena.

By Brian Russell