Max Delight’s breeding background

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The Bettor’s Delight gelding Max Delight achieved yet another moment of glory in a brilliant harness racing career when he captured the $1,250,000 The Nullarbor at Gloucester Park to become only the 27th horse to earn $2 million in Australasia.

His superlative success in the Group 1 WA feature boosted his earnings to $2,009,599, the result of 38 wins and 52 placings from 161 starts.

He has won at Group or Listed level in every one of his nine seasons on the racetrack including five Group 1’s, one Group 2, three Group 3’s and eight Listed races and has emerged successful in four different States.

A record priced yearling at $245,000 at the Australian Pacing Gold Sydney Sale in 2017, Max Delight looks every inch the blood he represents and it is of interest that his pedigree contains double crosses of the blood of Abercrombie, Most Happy Fella and Albatross.

Apart from being by Bettor’s Delight, Max Delight is out of the grand Art Major mare Lady Euthenia whose dam, Reggae Miss, was by Maple Lanes Strike from the What’s Next mare Girl Next Door, whose family today is one of the best in the Australian stud book.

It was founded by a mare named Flee Step, a mare foaled in NSW in the 1930’s which has been bred from successfully over six generations by the Lewis family.

Lady Euthenia won 21 races including five Group 1’s and $461,285 in stakes and took a mile mark of 1:53.3. At the stud she became the dam of six individual winners – all inside 1:58 – headed up by Max Delight and his full sister Major Delight, a dual Breeders Crown champion, the 2YO and 3YO Filly of the Year and the winner of $729,122.

The next dam, Reggae Miss, a NSW Breeders Challenge champion like Lady Euthenia, left nine winners including the exported San Domino 1:49.2 ($865,306) and the NSW Sapling Stakes winner Reggae Cowboy and is the second dam of the Bathurst Gold Crown victor Castalong Shadow and the NSW Breeders Challenge Regional winner Gracie Taljuice.

Interestingly, Max Delight is bred on the identical cross to the mighty Leap To Fame, the USA Horse of the Year Tall Dark Stranger, the NZ Derby winner We Walk By Faith and the Inter Dominion runner-up Speak The Truth.

by Peter Wharton for Harnesslink

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