At the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale on April 7 and 8 it will be wall to wall bluebloods, but the most interesting horse in the Ciaron Maher stable is one whose pedigree would not have made the grade at Australia’s premier yearling sale.
A lightly raced four year-old gelding by Anamoe’s sire Street Boss (USA), Another Wil has been flying under the radar in terms of Doncaster contenders but a meteoric rise through the grades in Melbourne this year has seen him climb from Benchmark 64 to 84 with three brilliant wins for a combined total of more than 11 lengths.
Jamie Kah has ridden him on each occasion and will be in the saddle again when he runs in the Group III ATC Doncaster Prelude (1500m) at Rosehill on Saturday and victory will give him exemption from ballot for the Doncaster in which he has just 50kg.
Another Wil runs in the colours of long time stable clients Col and Janice McKenna and was raised on their farm.
Retained to race and not offered at auction he runs for a big group of owners with his six starts to date yielding four wins and two placings with prizemoney in excess of $200,000.
He is a half-brother to stakes-placed Wahine Toa and is one of four winners from two time winning Bianconi (USA) mare Arohanui, who died in 2021. She was actually bought as a yearling at Inglis Premier by Ciaron Maher way back in 2010 for $30,000.
Stakes-winners are hard to come by in this family and you need to go back to the fourth dam to find Alf, the Champion NZ 2YO of his year, who came to Sydney and won the Group I AJC Sires Produce Stakes in 1998.