Excellent result in New Zealand

As the world’s leading sire of two-year-olds by winners and Stakes horses since his first crop ran in 2008, Exceed And Excel achieved another juvenile Stakes winner on June 4, a day after he reached the top in Australia for individual two-year-old winners for the season.

Two-year-old gelding Excellent Reward was having just his fourth career start when he proved too good, taking the Listed Castletown Stakes over 1200m in New Zealand for Cambridge-based trainer Lauren Brennan.

Jumping away well from gate four, jockey Jason Waddell had the gelding travelling just behind the leaders until the field headed for home and he was pulled out to make his run. Although recording a narrow victory, the style of the win indicates plenty more is to come.

Bred by Darley in Australia, Excellent Reward is out of the unraced Viscount mare Lindisfarne, a half-sister to the G2-winning Commands gelding El Cambio and the Stakes-placed Cataclysm (dam of the Listed-winning Commands mare Palomares). Lindisfarne has a yearling colt by Commands named Medcaut, a weanling also by the same sire and was covered by the unbeaten Champion two-year-old Teofilo in the latest southern hemisphere breeding season.

The sire of 49 Stakes winners internationally including G1 winners Helmet, Excelebration and Margot Did, Exceed And Excel is standing at Dalham Hall for a fee of £22,500, SLF.