11 Jan Tarcoola Diamond
Tarcoola Diamond (1999)
Tarcoola Diamond, by Last Tycoon out of Potent (by Bletchingly), burst onto the racing scene with 3 wins and a placing from her first 4 starts.
Her easy debut victory at Werribee saw her progress to metropolitan Sandown where she was equally impressive, starting a short-priced favourite and winning by a length and a half. In fact, her first campaign ended with 4 wins, including a 1.3 length victory in the Listed Great Western (1400 metres) at Flemington during the 2002 Flemington Spring Carnival.
Typically, from that time forward, Tarcoola Diamond found herself competing against the best of her sex in blacktype races. Although brilliant over the specialist 1400m distance, she would later place in the G2 Kewney Stakes (1600 metres) at Flemington – and fail by a nose to defeated the highly-regarded Yvonne in the Lakewood Stud Stakes (1800 metres) at Cheltenham.
Tarcoola Diamond retired with 5 wins and 6 placings from her 27 career starts. Prizemoney earnings were $205,000.
At stud Tarcoola Diamond has produced:
Diamond Jim (by Encosta de Lago), a winner of 8 races and prizemoney of $393,500 (to June 2014).
Novikov (by Flying Spur) (A-Spirit HK) – predicted by John Moore and Darren Beadman to be a Group horse in Hong Kong, before falling victim to a virus, and ultimately proving to be yet another horse who could not cope with the confines and restrictions of stable-life in Hong Kong. Since being transferred back to Australia trainer Bryan Guy has had success with Novikov at Doomben.
With much regret we parted with our mare, Tarcoola Diamond, at the 2010 Inglis Australian Easter Broodmare Sale. She was sold in foal with Cluster. Tarcoola Diamond was purchased by the very astute Moran family. Tarcoola Stud wishes them every succes with Cluster, and into the future with progeny of the mare who will always carry the Tarcoola name.
Subsequent to their initial success with Cluster, the Moran family put Tarcoola Diamond to Duporth and now have the exciting 2yo, Inkling, who was an emphatic 5.8 length winner on debut at Warwick Farm on the 18th of June 2014.
*Later in her career it was discovered that Tarcoola Diamond had been racing through much of her 4 year old campaign with hairline fractures (this injury ending her career) in both hind legs. Given that she was regularly within 3 lengths of the winner in stakes-races contested over this period, it is reasonable to assume that she may very well have have continued on her winning ways if not for suffering the behind-the-barrier mishap that was ultimately thought to be the cause of this injury.