Shuriken off to Hong Kong

These are the stories we love in racing.

Matt Sellick, founder and owner of Toward Reward Thoroughbreds, is a new syndication company in the competitive Victorian Thoroughbred Industry.

Bluegrass was commissioned by Toward Reward to buy their first horse for syndication during covid. Matt Sellick requested that I buy a weanling. With the Inglis Great Southern sale going online, I travelled around Victoria with a limited budget to find a runner for Matt and Toward Reward.

What happens next brings a smile to my face, Matt and his wife Cynden are just quality people and so passionate about our great industry, their start couldn’t happen to better people.

Bluegrass purchased a Tosen Stardom weanling colt whom I thought was very athletic, a great mover and above all, thought he would make a successful racehorse.

Managed and trained beautifully by Symon Wilde and team, Shuriken went on to win his first start as a 3yo at Casterton, and wow, he just progressed from there.

A few weeks later he contested a 3yo stakes race at Flemington on the new revamped Champions day for a very good 6th placing in a field of 15 beaten only 3.3 lengths.Shuriken continued his first racing prep a few weeks later at Ballarat in the 175k Eureka Stockade for 3yo’s, and he won convincingly by 0.75 lengths, amazing.Having his final run of the prep, the bar was raised and he went to Group 2 level in the Sandown Guineas, unlucky for Shuriken it was run at Caulfield this year, else if it was the spacious Sandown track, in my modest opinion he could have won.Shuriken ran a huge 4th in the Sandown Guineas, coming from 12th at the 400m mark to be beaten only 1.95 lengths, no horse was finishing harder. He caught the eye of the very astute Hong Kong agent Juzzy Bahen, and the rest is history. Shurikens owners were well rewarded on the track and in the pocket and can now watch Shuriken race in Hong Kong with his new owner, we all wish him the very best of luck, a horse with huge potential.Toward Reward now have some very promising youngsters in their team and I couldn’t recommend them enough for aspiring owners to get involved and race with them.