Starman On Song With Group One Win

Owned and bred by David Ward, the hugely impressive colt, Starman, won the Darley July Cup at Newmarket, claiming victory in the Group One sprint by a length and a quarter.

The Saracen Horse Feeds powered colt showed his class with jockey Tom Marquand on board, finishing ahead of favourite, Dragon Symbol, and defending champion, Oxted. After the race, Marquand aptly commented that Starman is ‘as close to a race car as you can get’.

This elite Group 1 win comes as a relief for trainer Ed Walker, having taken a brave decision not to run the relatively inexperienced four-year-old in the Diamond Jubilee at Ascot, following a downpour which resulted in soft ground. Walker has always shown huge belief in the horse and has only had one bump in the road at Ascot last season on Champions Day when running on the soft, so the decision to withdraw this year was proved right.

With a working relationship that spans nearly ten years, Ed Walker and Saracen Horse Feeds Director of Thoroughbred Nutrition, Polly Bonnor, first helped Ed when he was travelling a horse to race in Australia. With strict import regulations into Australia, Ed was keen to ensure that the horse would benefit from consistent feeding from the UK as well as on arrival overseas and throughout the build up to raceday. With this in mind, the horse was introduced to Saracen Horse Feeds’ internationally available Race 13 mix in quarantine with the view that Saracen’s KER (Kentucky Equine Research) nutrition partner in Australia, Peter Huntington B.V.Sc., M.A.C.V.Sc, would ensure that Race 13 would be available on arrival and throughout the trip. With results that speak for themselves, the horse (named Ruscello) flourished in quarantine, travelled well and won the first Group race of Ed’s career, all fuelled by Race 13 - and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to 2021, and Starman has become Ed’s first Group 1 winner, much to the mutual satisfaction of everyone involved. Ed Walker isn’t the only ‘Ed’ to have played a pivotal role in Starman’s life so far. It seems that the name Ed has been a running theme throughout the life of this special horse. Ed Sackville, with his uncanny ability to spot an elite equine athlete, was the bloodstock agent responsible for sourcing Starman’s dam on behalf of David Ward. Whilst Ed Player of Whatton Manor Stud was thanked by Ward for ‘bringing his hero into the world’. Bred, born and fed by Saracen Horse Feeds from his early days, this magnificent colt “really has made the grade”.

Saracen Horse Feeds is dedicated to offering the very best research-led range of breeding and performance feeds, with an accessible and very personal level of customer service, supporting owners and breeders, sales consignors, and trainers. We produce nutritionally sound, innovative rations within our range of specialist thoroughbred feeds, which have been developed through exclusive equine nutrition partnerships made with Hallway Feeds and Kentucky Equine Research, both based in Lexington, Kentucky, since April 2000.

Here at Saracen Horse Feeds, we are incredibly proud to be part of Starman’s journey, fuelling this extraordinary horse since the very beginning. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for him and all of his hard-working connections. Congratulations to all of the team.