Eurostyle retired

Quality trotting mare Eurostyle (Orlando Vici) has been retired.

“We’re gutted. I brought her into her box one morning and her hind joint was swollen and she couldn’t put her leg on the ground. It’s turned out that she’s torn some ligaments. She’s sound now and at the stud, but she could easily damage it again,” said Derek Jones, who co-trains Eurostyle with his wife Adele.

The seven year old mare won thirteen races including feature races the G3 The Dark Horse, the Listed NZB Standardbred Uncut Gems, the G3 Heather Williams Memorial (twice) and the G3 Lamb and Haywood Trotters’ Classic.

“She did a fantastic job and she was just coming to her peak. Most of those European bred horses come right when they’re seven or eight.”

Kimberly Butt drove in all of her wins, ten of which were at Addington.

“She’s brilliant and my first choice driver all the time. She gives you great feedback and she’s not afraid to tell you what she thinks, which I really appreciate.”

Eurostyle is booked in to visit Yabby Dam Farms new stallion In Range whose progeny are creating plenty of buzz in America at present.

“He’s an absolute sensation over there and he’s booked out here now and booked out over there already for next season. He’s leaving all the good two year olds over there. She’s a big scopey mare so I thought it would be good to get something that could go a bit earlier. If it’s a colt, we’ll put it through the Sales but if it’s a filly we’ll keep it.”

Eurostyle’s dam Sunny Kash has done a sterling job at stud, also leaving Eurokash (10), Kashanova (2) and Miss Moneypenny (1).

Eurostyle’s unraced older full-sister Clicquot hasn’t been bred from to date, but David and Stacey White are considering borrowing her this breeding season.

“They’re great friends of ours so we’re happy for them to breed a foal out of her if they want.”

Derek singled out Eurostyle’s run for second to Muscle Mountain in the Group One Fred Shaw Memorial New Zealand Trotting Championship in February at Addington as her career highlight.

“She’d missed a lot of work as she’d been crook and was probably about eighty percent right. He trailed her the whole way and it took him the whole length of the straight to get to her. He beat her by half a length. That was the Group One she should have won I reckon. That was my highlight run.”

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink