In a week when her sister won in Sydney, three-time Melbourne Cup winner Makybe Diva’s six-year-old brother Shadowofexcellence has ended a two-year losing sequence in less fashionable surrounds.
But while La Amistad was being acclaimed as a stayer of some promise with her Warwick Farm win on Wednesday, Shadowofexcellence had to make do with a hard-fought victory on a NSW country track on Friday.
The racetrack fortunes of Shadowofexcellence have mirrored those of his first owner, the embattled businessman Nathan Tinkler.
As part of Tinkler’s massive spending spree on thoroughbred bloodstock in 2009, Shadowofexcellence cost $1.2 million at the Australian Easter Yearling Sale.
Under the care of John Hawkes and his sons, Shadowofexcellence could only manage to win a maiden race at Newcastle for the training partnership and it’s been mostly downhill ever since.
In 2011 he was transferred to Tinkler’s then private trainer John Thompson who coaxed a Toowoomba win out of the blue blood.
Shadowofexcellence’s days as member of Tinkler’s Patinack Farm team ended not long afterwards and his bush win came at his second start for Dubbo trainer Myron Cooper.
While Makybe Diva is Australia’s highest stakes earning racehorse with more than $14.5 million in prize money, Shadowofexcellence’s $8200 cheque for his Dubbo win took his tally just past the $60,000 mark.
