EGO Race Record

Foote chasing a boost for his Ego

Ego will attempt to significantly boost his stallion profile with a fresh-up bid for Group One honours in the Railway Stakes on New Year’s Day.

Byerley Park trainer Ben Foote will head to Ellerslie with the six-year-old off a trials preparation and the son of E Dubai took a winning step on the course this week.

Ego, who returned from Sydney early last month, won his open 1000 metre heat in the hands of Leith Innes.

“He really thrives back here and needed that trial and he’ll have one more at Te Aroha on the 20^th,” Foote said. “He needs it like concrete and with a hard track and a good draw he’s nearly been unbeatable.”

Raced by Daniel and Elias Nakhle, Ego has won six races including the Gr.2 Concorde Handicap at Ellerslie before he was unplaced in the 2011 Railway. “He drew the outside and the track was a bit rough,” Foote said.

Ego has ventured to Australia twice and last year weighed in at all of his five starts in Sydney but most recently his three-start campaign wasn’t helped by rain-affected tracks.

“It does him good though to race against the class of horse over there,” Foote said. “This will be his last season and the Nakhles will be sending a few of their mares to him.”

Ego is the first foal of the Redoute’s Choice mare Buckling who has also produced the multiple winner Sans Souci and the promising Ready Steady. A debut winner at two and placed in the Gr.2 Wakefield Challenge Stakes, this term she has finished runner-up against the older horses in the Listed Lion Red Plate and was most recently fourth to the Gr.1 performer Randall at Tauranga.

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http://www.theinformant.co.nz/racing/archive/2011/12/MK1961/Foote-chasing-a-boost-for-his-Ego

Ego wins the Group 2 Concord Handicap

The Group Two victory of Ego (E Dubai-Buckling) in the Concorde Handicap has come at a great time for the Henderson’s at Bluegables Farm who will be selling his half sister at the 2011 Karaka Select Sale.

According to Monty Henderson, who owns Bluegables with his wife Judy, Ego’s half sister by No Excuse Needed is a lovely tall athletic filly, and a bit lighter in bone than her siblings.

“We are delighted that Ego is finally showing the potential he always threatened to show, and it’s great for the family. It’s a family that has had no luck in the breeding barn and both his mother and grandmother have very patchy breeding records.

“They all went to top stallions, but either had dead foals or missed. Buckling (Redoute’s Choice – Miss) bowed at tendon at two, and when you look at the size of her it’s hard to understand why she was even tried at two.

“Her mother, Miss Wutika (Marscay), was a winner at two and stakes placed twice, and she has left three winners, while the third dam Miss Lazarus (Sir Tristram – Winning Hit) was placed on several occasions,” he said.

Winning Hit is a half sister to Christmas Tree, Euphoria and Jewel In The Crown, and there is a lot of Australian black type in this part of the pedigree, which is where Henderson purchased Buckling from. The bloodlines are certainly there and now much to the delight of Daniel Nakhle, who has kept Ego a stallion, the black type is starting to return close up in the pedigree.

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http://www.nzthoroughbred.co.nz/Latest-News.aspx?c=9159&print=1

When his trainers began relaying glowing reports about a speedy young colt in the stable, Auckland owner Daniel Nakhle knew he had the perfect name for him.

He had been driven mad by his daughter Angelina, who hadn’t then learned to talk, racing around the house, babbling what sounded like ”ego, ego, ego”.

”I thought ‘if I can find a horse who can go as fast you I’ll be doing all right’,” Nakhle revealed after E Dubai colt Ego held off the late-finishing Amaryllis to win Saturday’s Gr II $85,000 Concorde Handicap (1200m) at Ellerslie.

The win completed a memorable double for Nakhle and his father Elias, who had last year celebrated winning the Concorde with the Stephen McKee-trained Irish Colleen when the race was run at Avondale.

But the journey to Group success had been anything but plain sailing.

The $62,000 Karaka yearling sale buy, Ego nearly died of colic as a two-year-old and it was only through the quick response from his then trainer Leanne Bertling that he was saved

read more…

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/sport/racing/4427770/Nakhles-Ego-gets-welcome-boost-with-win

THE PATH which trainer Ben Foote plotted with Ego from the stabling barn to the birdcage at Ellerslie yesterday almost certainly won him the $85,000 New Zealand Bloodstock Concorde Handicap.

All he had to do was not copy most other red-blooded males on course yesterday and avoid noticing any females along the way.

Foote became strapper for the first time in longer than he could remember, determined not to have a repeat of the previous start at Pukekohe, when the randy stallion spotted a couple of fillies and became so wound up he couldn’t perform up to his best.

Yesterday his sole job was to sight where the four mares in the race were heading, and to go in the opposite direction.

And, after getting the horse on to the track very relaxed and focused, Ego did the rest, leading virtually throughout to give owners Daniel and Elias Nakhle back-to-back Concorde wins, after Irish Colleen won the feature last year.

Read More..

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/sport/racing/4424168/All-Ego-needs-is-no-girls