Our winners for December are David and Kath Hornhardt for their horse Tangier Sun. In response to my nomination Kath wrote:

The moment we clapped eyes on the Desert Sun / Myxaar colt (Tangier Sun) at the 2012 Adelaide Magic Millions sale we were intent on having a go at buying him.  First we asked Richard (Stafford) to have a look at him and offer an opinion – which was that he was a ‘nice colt’ – Then we had our trainer, Jon O’Connor, make an inspection – he also liked the look of him.

As luck would have it Lot 241 was knocked down to us as the purchasers for $12,000 and Jon indicated he would be interested in taking a 10% share.

Having been broken in he was sent to Jon for his first preparation.  Part way through this preparation Jon, not being completely happy with his progress, decided to have x-rays taken.  The result of the x-rays was given to us at the MM sales in March 2013 – bone chips in both knees.  We decided to go ahead and have him operated on.  Following the operation he was sent to convalesce for six months.

He was again sent to Jon and not long into his second prep he showed signs of fluid on his knees.  It was decided to give him an extended break at our property for around 12 months where he had the company of a couple of weanlings.

Following discussions with Jon it was decided to send him to Len Jarvis at Murray Bridge for pretraining, where, according to Jon, Lenny did a magnificent job.  

So now at 4 years of age, Tangier Sun (Thorpey) was again sent to Jon’s stables at Morphettville for another go.  Following a successful trial, he finally has his chance at the real thing – 1000m at Balaklava on 3 December 2014; which he won in a close call.  He then fronted up at the Twilight Meeting at Morphettville on 19 December and won convincingly.  Tears of joy flowed.  He has since had a second at Morphettville over 1250m on 3 January 2015.

We have always had a special connection with Thorpey and thanks to the dedication of true horse loving individuals (Len Jarvis and Jon O’Connor) not only have we been able to get him to the races, but we now have a horse with ongoing potential.

Thorpey is again back at our property at Rosedale having a well-deserved spell.

Dave and Kath have a number of horses spread around the country including the promising Duckworth who also won at Morphettville in December  and Jumbo Prince in Queensland – Jumbo has won twice this preparation and had two seconds.