Stakes Success for Select Sale Graduate Hard Merchandize (NZ)

Hard Merchandize (NZ) (Burgundy), who cost just $38,000 at the 2016 Select Sale at Karaka, capped a highly successful two-year-old season with his first stakes success in Saturday’s $50,000 John Turkington Forestry Castletown Stakes (1200m) at Wanganui.

The Awapuni gelding came out on top at the end of an epic struggle with fellow Karaka graduate Bombard (NZ) (Dalghar) down the home straight, edging out that game rival by a nose with the rest of the field almost seven lengths behind.

Hard Merchandize has now had five starts for three wins and a third, with his only unplaced finish a fifth placing in the Group 1 Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400m) won by Melody Belle (NZ) (Commands).

Trained by Gary Vile, who shares ownership with A R Osborne, D M Gilshnan, S Whitehead, M Evans, M Osborne, J Aldrich, J King, G Towers, and A J Vincent, Hard Merchandize has earned $56,375 in prize-money to date. Vile now intends to send him for a winter spell before targeting three-year-old features in the spring.

Hard Merchandize was the first winner for Cambridge Stud stallion Burgundy when he made a winning debut in November, and Saturday’s Castletown Stakes victory saw him become his first stakes winner.

Bred by Christopher Grace, Hard Merchandize is out of a daughter of the Golden Slipper winner Calaway Gal. Vile paid $38,000 to buy Hard Merchandize from Little Avondale Stud’s draft at the 2016 Select Sale at Karaka.

Runner-up Bombard was a $6000 purchase as a weanling in 2015, then fetched $55,000 at the Festival Sale the following year.