Read About It (Craig Grylls) boosts the stocks of his sire Wrote Back-to-back wins in the Central Districts’ final two-year-old stakes race of the old season and the region’s first three-year-old stakes race of 2024-25 have thrust Read About It into the headlines, but connections aren’t rushing their plans.
The Wrote gelding’s trainer Robbie Patterson said before Saturday’s HS Dyke Wanganui Guineas that the long-term target was the Trackside New Zealand Derby, and that didn’t change even after he had completely overshadowed his rivals in the 1200m feature.
Read About does hold a nomination for the season’s first classic, the Al Basti Equiworld NZ 2000 Guineas, but the minimal odds trim from $21 to $18 on the TAB’s fixed odds tells its own story as to whether he will be at Riccarton on November 9.
“We threw in a nom, but I doubt very much he’ll be going south,” Patterson told RaceForm earlier this week. “He’s already made the trip down to Christchurch – we had to go there during the winter to find a race for him to kick off in – but if we want to have a crack at the Derby he’s going to need a break at some time.
“I’m convinced he’s got what it takes to win the Derby, and so is Craig (Grylls), just the way he switches off and relaxes. And even though all his races have been on heavy tracks, he won his trials on better ground, so I don’t think that’s a problem.”
The prerogative leading into the Derby involves gaining experience of the Ellerslie track, which also just happens to follow a lucrative path that Patterson hopes will help secure his new star’s place in the stable.
From a $5,000 Karaka weanling purchase in mid-2022, Read About It is now a highly sought-after commodity that to date his Victorian owner Kirk Devers has not been tempted to profit from.
“I got a call out of the blue from Kirk asking if I would take this horse and another one he’d bought,” Patterson recalled. “The other horse wasn’t much good but this bloke sure is. He’s a good type with a great attitude, loves his tucker, he’s the complete package.
“There’s such good money to be won in New Zealand now – on the way to the Derby he could run at Ellerslie in the Karaka Million Mile and then the Avondale Guineas – so being eligible for those races worth a lot of good money, Kirk still wants a bit more than what’s being offered.”
All of which is good news for Highview Stud stallion Wrote, whose stocks had already been on an upward plane through last season’s New Zealand Derby winner Pulchritudinous, now owned by Yu Long Investments and a member of the Waterhouse/Bott stable.
Wrote, the winner of the Gr. 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Stakes, belongs to an impressive list of successful sire sons of High Chaparral that in this part of the world also includes So You Think, Dundeel, Toronado, Redwood, Ace High and Contributer.
Wrote went to stud in the United States in 2014 before being secured three years later to take up duties at Highview. His first New Zealand crop produced Wrote To Arataki, the winner in Melbourne of the Gr. 2 Tristarc Stakes and Gr. 3 Geoffrey Bellmaine Stakes, while from the next crop Best Seller won the Gr. 3 Gold Trail Stakes and finished second in the Gr. 1 New Zealand 1000 Guineas.
All up, Wrote has sired 92 winners from 166 starters and after a slump in his books after a high of 95 mares in 2020, Highview principal Brent Gillovic is anticipating a return to those numbers this spring, boosted by the achievements last season of Pulchritudinous and just lately Read About It.
