We had several candidates for Owner of the Month for August We settled on well-known owner and Yankalilla based agistment provider Craig Fitzgerald for his winners Hazy Lane and Bitter Twist. Hazy Lane is owned by Craig in partnership with several other SAROA members including Marilyn Shephard, Jenny Dewar, Don Lehman, David Donald and Ralph and Linda Satchell. Hazy Lane, as the name and ownership suggests, was bred by Ralph and Linda and is by their up and coming sire Mint Lane out of the Encosta De Lago mare De Lago Haze who is out of a Stargazer mare. The dam raced only three times but has also left a six times winner Costly Argument, most of those wins being on the Eyre Peninsula circuit. Hazy Lane (a $9000 purchase), has now won 4 times with 2 seconds and 6 thirds, placing in better than 50% of her 22 starts and earning nearly $130,000. Trained at Morphettville by Richard Jolly, she has been ridden in most of her wins and placings by Eran Boyd. In fact, Hazy Lane helped add to Eran’s recent successes after her promising comeback from a badly broken collar bone. Bitter Twist is a five year old mare by California Dane out of Inspect, an Integra mare. She started her career with Wayne Francis but more recently transferred to Dennis O’Leary who has trained a number of good winners for Craig. Probably the highlight of these was the 2011 Balaklava Cup win of Magical Pearl, who won over $420,000 in his career. The Cup win topped of a pretty good day for Craig with the David Jolly trained Basil Da Man winning the feature sprint in the race immediately prior to the Cup. Bitter Twist is yet to reach these lofty heights, notching her first win after six starts in a Naracoorte maiden over 1000m. Bitter Twist’s dam Inspect has left one stakes winner, Hoegaarden, who won the listed Fairetha Stakes in WA before being exported to Singapore. Her other winners include Red First and Inspector and her dam, the American bred Tempergaze, left 11 times stakes winner and 8 times Group One winner Intergaze, a full brother to Inspect. Inspect was also a very capable race mare with earnings of a little over $115,000 to her name. Craig owns a number of other horses trained by Richard Jolly and Dennis O’Leary and we look forward to many more successes for him.