Last weekend on a marquee day at Ellerslie, New Zealand’s racing headquarters, Windsor Park Stud stallions sired five winners on the card including winning both Group One races with daughters of Turn Me Loose and ShamExpress.

For Windsor Park’s exciting triple Gr.1 winning stallion Turn Me Loose (Iffraaj), the Gr.1 Sistema Stakes for 2YO’s provided a watershed moment in the young stallions blossoming career when his unbeaten, second-crop daughter Lickety Split, displayed all the resolute racing qualities of her sire to clinch a narrow but impressive win against the best 2YO’s on offer.

Licketysplit, a first Gr.1 winner for Turn Me Loose

Lickety Split is the third 2YO stakes winner and first Group One winner sired by Turn Me Loose, crowned Champion Sprinter/Miler in 2016 and whose oldest progeny are just 3YO’s.

The progeny of Turn Me Loose have enjoyed a purple patch of form in recent weeks and the following day in Adelaide his exciting 3YO and only filly in the field, Ancient Girl, proved much too good for her rivals in the Listed Morphettville Guineas to provide her sire with his first Australian stakes winner.

Ancient Girl gives Turn Me Loose his first Australian stakes winner in the Morphettville Guineas

With another second crop 2YO, Alabama Gold, recently winning the Listed Slipper Stakes at Matamata together with the success of Lickety Split and Ancient Girl, the young son of Iffraaj now has seven individual stakes performers from just fifty four runners to date, giving him an impressive 13% stakes performers to runners ratio.

Ellerslie's other Gr.1 race on the day, the Bonecrusher New Zealand Stakes, provided the platform for Turn Me Loose’s barnmate ShamExpress (O’Reilly) to shine, with his highclass daughter Coventina Bay destroying her opposition with an electric turn of foot to secure back to back Gr.1 victories and take her prizemoney earnings to A$650,000.

Coventina Bay roars to her second Gr.1 success in Ellerslie's Bonecrusher Stakes

Coventina Bay will now look to add further Gr.1 lustre to her glittering CV with the NZ Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes on her agenda next month.

ShamExpress has also enjoyed an outstanding season with leading 3YO Shamus and quality racemare Zola Express providing further stakes winners among a raft of excellent racehorses for their sire who is responsible for 11 stakes performers from 156 runners (7%) to date.

On the Ellerslie undercard, Windsor Park stallions Rip Van Winkle (Galileo), Mongolian Khan (Holy Roman Emperor) and Charm Spirit (Invincible Spirit) also sired respective winners - Super Sid, Withallmyheart and Ruach, who all scoring impressively while the same day in Victoria further success came the way of Charm Spirit when his promising European bred son Vardani won his fifth race from just fourteen starts in the A$85,000 Stony Creek Cup.