11 Crown champions for renowned Ballarat breeder

The victories by Valtino (Love You) and Enchauffour (Volstead) at last weekend’s Breeders Crown meeting at Melton Entertainment Park raised the total of Pat Driscoll’s Yabby Dam Farms’ Crown winners to 11 and he is clearly the most successful breeder in the time-honoured harness racing series.

Bill and Anne Anderson of Lauriston Bloodstock are second on the list having brought out seven Breeders Crown pacing champions.

Not only did Driscoll breed a pair of Crown champions on Saturday night but he produced the trifecta in the $50,000 decider for two-year-old trotting colts and geldings in Enchauffour, Rey Bailando and Commodus.

The cavalcade of stars bred and raised at his Ballarat property are headed up by Im Ready Jet, who made a clean sweep of the series winning as a two, three and four-year-old.

Other Yabby Dam Farms’ bred Breeders Crown champions are the two-year-olds The Locomotive and Val Thorens, the three-year-old Dance Craze, the four-year-olds Keayang Chucky, Always Ready, Majestic Player and Val Gardena, and the great Just Believe, who captured the Open Trot last year.

Bettor’s Delight is the leading sire of Breeders Crown winners with 18, followed by Art Major and Mach Three (14), Somebeachsomewhere (11), Christian Cullen (10), Captaintreacherous (7) and Rock N Roll Heaven (6).

Majestic Son continues to lead all trotting sires with 10 Crown winners.

Volstead, who left three Crown winners last Saturday in Enchauffour, Prohibited Grace and Violet Stanford, has jumped into equal second place on the trotting sires’ list with five, joining Love You, the sire of Valtino.

Victorian breeders produced the winners of six of this year’s eight Breeders Crown Championship winners.

Besides the double put up by Yabby Dam Farms, other Victorian breeders to taste Group glory were Warren Stewart (Some American), Bruce and Craig Cameron (Let Her Roll), Dean and Blanche Poole (Prohibited Grace) and Bruce Phillips and Kerrie Lee (Violet Stanford).

Mac Bon and Valtino are graduates of the Nutrien Equine yearling sales, the former being knocked down for $15,000 at the 2023 Sydney sale and the latter realising $20,000 at the 2022 Melbourne auction.

Kiss, the three-year-old fillies’ champion, was sold for $20,000 at the NZ National Weanling Sale at Karaka in 2021.

Let Her Roll, the winner of the two-year-old fillies’ Breeders Crown, and Perfect Class, who took out the Caduceus Classic, both trace to the noted matron Larrakeyah Lady.

Promising youngster Sinbad Sassy, a winner at Geelong at her second start, is a grandson of the crack racemare of the early 2000’s in Sassy Sarah.

Miners Rest breeder-owner Verna El-Khisin has brought out a handy sort in the two-year-old McWizard (by McWicked), a winner at the Shepparton mid-week meeting.

by Peter Wharton, for Harness Racing Victoria