Owner of the Month for October saw two excellent nominations and after a very tight vote the award went to
David Ward for Sweet Schilly.

The nomination by David’s wife Bernadette follows: I would like to nominate David Ward, he is a proud owner of four racehorses with Ryan Balfour Racing, of which Sweet Schilly is the third.

Ryan and the owner s have had to be extremely patient with Sweet Schilly as she is now a 4 year old. Having previously raced another successful Artie Schiller horse (El Prado Gold) we weren’t really sure how she would perform. We always hope for a top 5 performance from our horses on race day.

Unfortunately we missed Sweet Schilly’s run at Gawler on Sunday 9th October when she ran second by a nostril due to our commitments with the Ryan Balfour Racing owner’s open day. So we were very keen to be there to support her at her next race on Sunday 23rd October at Gawler. On Thursday 20th October we set off to travel to Melbourne at 12:00 midnight to watch El Prado Gold race at Moonee Valley on the night of Friday 21st October, then we stayed on for the Cox Plate on Saturday the 22nd October, to watch the great mare Winx win easily. It was a once in a lifetime experience for us.

We decided, after leaving the Moonee Valley races on Saturday afternoon that we would attempt to get back to Gawler to watch Sweet Schilly run the next day at 12:55pm.

So we got to bed early that night and we couldn’t sleep, so we thought ‘bugger it’, got up Sunday morning and packed the 4WD and drove back to Adelaide. We did take a quick detour via Ballarat to visit El Prado Gold around 4:00 am as Mark Lewis had left the stable door open for us to give him a pat and a handful of feed (we couldn’t find a petrol station with carrots). We left behind a couple of small winning tickets for Mark, thanks to a reward given to us from four Sydneysiders after I gave them a tip for Randwick Race 9 – Mr Giuliano, helping them to a big win. Then we headed back to Adelaide with cruise control set at 100 km per hour to make sure we got to Gawler on time. Everything was meticulously calculated, even down to the quick clothing change and pommy shower at Tailem Bend and by gee we made it with 25 minutes to spare prior to the race.

Thankfully we were able to see Sweet Schilly claim her maiden victory against all the boys at Gawler, what a win, we knew she was special then and today (9 November 2016) she did it again. In doing so, she has provided us with our first ever two wins in a row and we hope for more to come.

We have been truly blessed by our association with David Balfour, who looks over us each day and we remember him telling us what to look for when taking a share in a racehorse.

He had chosen El Prado Gold because he liked the Artie Schiller’s and now we are hooked and look forward to racing another 2 year old Artie Schiller colt in the future, we hope he may have to live up to Sweet Schilly, particularly if she continues her winning streak. As we were told today, it’s a rarity for a maiden to win two in a row.

We enjoy seeing how each one of the horses have varied conformation, ability, racing technique and temperament. This little girl Sweet Schilly is David’s little girl (after the retirement of Typhoon Rose), which can be clearly seen when they are together. As mentioned Sweet Schilly is by Artie Schiller, she is out of Humble Opinion (by
Bluebird).

With her win at Balaklava in November she took her record to 9 starts for 2 wins and a second for stakes of $22,040. Humble Opinion has left 8 moderately performed progeny with at this point only Black Bart being better performed than Sweet Schilly.

The third dame Hula Bend (Never Bend) left two top class Group I winners, namely Doncaster winner Hula Chief (a three-time stake winner) and George Ryder stakes winner Hula Drum. Hopefully the combination of these distinguished predecessors with Artie Schiller’s middle distance race record will lead to further success for
Sweet Schilly now she has found her way to middle distance races.