Supreme Best 25/04/09

BEL ESPRIT HITS TON
No-one, and I mean no-one, keeps more up to date with Bel Esprit statistics than Brian Donohoe.
A part owner of Bel Esprit, Brian has kept tabs on every single performance by progeny and maintains a website: the Bel Esprit Owners Club, which contains a whole range of bits and bobs about the stallion.
Brian was in touch through the week to announce that win # 100 for the season was looming for Bel Esprit and it came yesterday in the shape of classy 4YO Supreme Best.
And he did it in style too: the Robert Wilson trained Supreme Best – racing in the XXXX Plate (1600m) at the Sunshine Coast – cruised to a comfortable 2.5 length victory in class record time (1:37.04), recording his third win from his last five starts (and finishing 2nd and 3rd in the other two).
It’s been an amazing turnabout in form: on debut in September ’07, Supreme Best finished eighth of 12 at Eagle Farm … spelled for 19 weeks … ran seventh of seven at Doomben … was out for 55 weeks … and now this run of five!
Out of the Canny Lad mare, Ultima Vita, Supreme Best is closely related to Group Two winners Full at Last and Catnipped and hails from the immediate family of 2009 Blue Diamond Stakes-G1 winner Reward For Effort.
According to Brian, Supreme Best’s victory is also Bel Esprit’s 16th for the month, which beats his previous best of 13 – and that’s with five racing days remaining in April.
Ranked high on all the relevant national sires’ premierships, perhaps the most telling is Bel Esprit’s position on the ‘by winners’ chart.
Bel Esprit’s 61 winners in Australia this season place him 16th overall, but with less runners than those stallions ahead of him and 6th in terms of strike rate. It should be remembered that Bel Esprit still only has three crops of racing age.
Pretty good strike rate overseas too: Hong Kong (2 winners, 3 runners), Singapore (3 winners, 4 runners), New Zealand (1 winner, 2 runners) and South Africa (1 winner, 1 runner).