A son of British mare Kesara will forever be one of the most special horses Annabel Archibald has trained and the Sydney trainer strengthened her connection with the family on Tuesday.
Archibald won the opening race on the Bairnsdale card in Victoria with Kaazi, who is by Study Of Man out of the Sadler’s Wells mare Kesara, which makes him a half-brother to Zaaki.
That grey gelding, a son of Leroidesaniaux, proved an early horse of a lifetime for Archibald, when she was known as Annabel Neasham, prior to her recent marriage to training partner Rob Archibald, early in her training career.
Zaaki won 15 of 48 starts, most of them in Australia, including a pair of Group 1 Champions Stakes and All-Star Mile at Flemington, and a Doomben Cup and Underwood Stakes at Group 1 level.
Kaazi has a long way to go to scale those heights, but he broke through at just his second start, after a debut last over 1300m at Sandown, and winning jockey Daniel Moor was full of praise for the $5.50 chance’s three-quarters-of-a-length win over Blanche Bass ($2.70 fav).
“The strongest part of his race was his last 100m,” Moor said.
“With all due respect to the other runners, he’s probably the horse in the race with the most upside – he’s lightly raced and relatively inexperienced.
“He’s got the win out of the way today and we can program a preparation from here with the prizemoney under our belt to get a run.”
Zaaki and Kaazi, who cost Archibald and her English agent Stuart Boman 100,000 guineas ($217,000) at the 2023 October Yearling Sale at Tattersalls, are the only two from Kesara to race in Australia but seven others have raced in other jurisdictions for five winners.