Former Singapore Gold Cup-Singapore Derby double winner Better Life will be seen parading around a ring in Sydney, Australia on Thursday.
No, it won’t be before a race. Japanese trainer Hideyuki Takaoka’s champion mare has not come out of retirement – which she was surprisingly sent for shortly after her 2013 Singapore Derby triumph to start a new career as a broodmare, when many thought she was still at the peak of her powers.
It will be at a sale ring. The rising 10-year-old daughter of Smarty Jones has appeared in a sale catalogue as Lot 180 of the 2018 Inglis Chairman’s Sale Breeding Prospects at the Riverside Stables in Sydney. The sale, which will feature over 200 lots, comes off the just-concluded three-day Inglis 2018 Australian Easter Yearling Sale - hailed as “the second best Easter Sale ever” by Inglis - held at the same venue.
Believed to be in foal to Vancouver, Better Life, who will be offered by the Widden Stud, is already the mother of three foals. Her first was Start All Over, a colt by Sebring, who raced once in Wyong for Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott last May, but bled after an unplaced run.
The second foal, Excellent Life (x Excelebration) has yet to race. She then had a filly by Your Song before missing to Pride Of Dubai at her next service.
Raced by the Suzuka Racing Stable, Better Life raced 14 times at Kranji for eight wins and three placings for prizemoney in excess of $2 million. English jockey Alan Munro was aboard the Australian-bred mare at all her 14 starts bar one when Barend Vorster won on her at her second start in a Novice race in November 2011.
Besides her two highest accolades in the 2012 Longines Singapore Gold Cup (2200m) and the 2013 Emirates Singapore Derby (2000m), Better Life also claimed the 2012 Group 1 Panasonic Kranji Mile (1600m) and the 2013 Group 2 Queen Elizabeth II Cup (2000m).