Shocking Luck (NZ) Stakes Derby Claim in Rough Habit Plate

The tangerine colours of Te Akau and trainers Stephen Autridge and Jamie Richards have already won the New Zealand Derby this year with low-priced Weanling Sale and Ready to Run Sale graduate Gingernuts (NZ) (Iffraaj), and now the Queensland Derby looms large on the horizon for another three-year-old with strong Karaka connections.

Shocking Luck (NZ) (Shocking), whose dam Shamardal Luck (Shamardal) was bought for $5,000 at the 2010 National Weanling, Broodmare and Mixed Bloodstock Sale, staked his claim for the A$600,000 classic in June with a dominant victory in Saturday’s A$125,000 Group 3 Mitty’s Rough Habit Plate (2000m) at Doomben.

Ridden by star Kiwi jockey Opie Bosson, the gelding took a big step forward in the traditional Derby lead-up event following a close-up placing in his Australian debut at Ipswich just under two weeks earlier. He burst clear of the field in the straight, powering to victory by two and three-quarter lengths.

Shocking Luck has now had seven starts for two wins and two placings, earning more than $110,000 in prize-money – around 22 times the purchase price of the broodmare. While this was his first stakes win, Shocking Luck also finished second in the Group 2 Waikato Guineas (2000m) in February.

“We’ve always thought he was a real Queensland Derby sort of horse,” Richards said. “He ran very well in the Waikato Guineas and was subsequently sold to a Hong Kong owner, who we think has got a very exciting horse on his hands. He’ll go to Hong Kong after the Queensland Derby.”

The Rough Habit Plate continues an outstanding series of results in major Australian three-year-old features for New Zealand-breds, following the Group 1 victories by Karaka graduates Gingernuts, Jon Snow (NZ) (Iffraaj) and Bonneval (NZ) (Makfi).

Shocking Luck was bred by Whangarei’s Terry Archer and Grant Currie, and it was Archer who bought Shamardal Luck at Karaka in 2010. Shocking Luck is her first foal.

A younger full-brother to Shocking Luck went through the ring in the 2017 Select Sale, bought by Victorian trainer Patrick Payne for $32,000.