Australian Authorized colt claims Spring Champion Stakes

After victory in the G3 Gloaming Stakes over 9f two weeks back, three-year-old Authorized colt Complacent became the second G1 winner for his sire, and first in Australia, when winning the G1 Spring Champion Stakes over 10f at Randwick on October 12.

In pretty much an identical run to his last start victory, the Peter Snowden-trained colt jumped away from the inside barrier and settled on the fence just off the leaders back, and as the field fanned on the home turn, he surged clear to defeat Criterion by one-and-a-quarter lengths.

Having never finished out of the top two in his five starts to date, Complacent becomes the third winner in the last four years of the Spring Champion Stakes for progeny of the Darley stallions after the earlier victories of Erewhon (Commands) and Doctor Doom (Domesday).

With a possible chance of heading to Melbourne now to contest the G1 Victorian Derby, Complacent was bred by Darley in Australia and is out of the Quest For Fame mare Insouciance, a sister to the three-time G1 winner Dracula, a half-sister to the Listed winners Sash and The Oscars, as well as to the dam of Screen, a daughter of Darley Australia stallion Lonhro.

Also from the family of G1 winners Masked Party, Festal and Inspiration, Insouciance foaled a colt by Darley’s first-season sire Helmet, the triple G1-winning son of Exceed And Excel, just over a month ago at Darley Australia's Victorian property Northwood Park.

The sire of 19 Stakes performers worldwide, Authorized was represented in June this year by his first G1 winner when his daughter Ambivalent won the G1 Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh.