104 not out in Australia

NO, this is not a cricket score, but rather the fact that Gilltown Stud’s standard-bearer Sea The Stars (Cape Cross) sired his 104th stakes winners this week, and what an apt one it was in many respects.

On the country’s national day, the five-year-old Chalk Stream won the Listed Australia Day Cup, carrying the colours of King Charles III. The gelding was bred by his late mother, and was stakes-placed when trained in England by William Haggas. Chris Waller now has charge of the own-brother to the Group 3-winning juvenile Reach For The Moon (Sea The Stars).

The stakes winners’ unraced half-sister Thames Pageant (Dansili) is dam of the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes runner-up Twilight Gleaming (National Defense), and she then went to Del Mar and won the Grade 2 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint.