KEY POINTS:
The birth of a thoroughbred is exciting.
It brings with it all the hopes and expectations that will carry through to the sale ring or the racetrack.
It's also a stressful time.
The legs have to be straight and facing the front and every aspect of the youngster has to be close to perfect if the horse is to be commercially viable.
Four years ago Cambridge's famous Trelawney Stud was rearing two well-bred fillies that did not conform to those standards. They were unable to be offered for sale.
So stud principal Brent Taylor decided to race them with partners and hope the pair could overcome their obvious disadvantages.
Today the two mares, Ruud Van Slaats and Martini Red, are highly-fancied runners in the $1 million First Sovereign Trust Telegraph at Trentham.
In one of those remarkable stories of the turf, they have so far won between them $438,837 - and they're a long way from finished.
Brent Taylor explains away his good fortune with: "It's [racing] not a beauty contest."
The only place physical perfection is required is in the auction ring.
Stand in the winner's unsaddling stall on raceday and those horses will be all shapes and sizes.
Martini Red is, frankly, too small to be a racehorse. Yet her $243,350 bankroll puts the lie to that.
Ruud Van Slaats has a strapping body, but legs that, as the old line goes, make Charlie Chaplin's pins look good.
Yet both mares have strong winning chances to pick up the $600,000 first prize late this afternoon.
Ruud Van Slaats has won her last three races, the two most recent in stakes company, leading throughout.
She can apply brutal pressure to the opposition through the race yet still keep going. She literally burns off the opposition.
But it will be a truly magnificent performance if she can do that today because the Telegraph is a different type of race.
There is ample speed in the contest and it will not be easy to pinch the break Ruud Van Slaats has been able to do in recent winning performances.
Martini Red finished ninth in Ellerslie's equivalent of the Telegraph, the Railway, but she was only 1.5 lengths from the winner Jacowils after having to work for a good percentage of the race.
From the No 7 barrier today she should be able to be put to sleep with cover from the outset.
If she can achieve that then she can be running hard at the leaders from the 200m. She has a devastating sprint with the right run and the drop from 55kg to 53kg is perfect for the little mare.
"She needs to be out in the open, she doesn't like being cluttered up," explains Brent Taylor.
There is only one element Taylor and his wife Cherry would change - they would have liked to have seen Jason Waddell riding Ruud Van Slaats as he has in her last two victories.
"They're a great pair - Jason loves the mare and the mare loves Jason," said Cherry Taylor.
Waddell simply can't ride as light as the 53.5kg allotted Ruud Van Slaats.
"We're fortunate to have someone as accomplished as Leith Innes on the mare, but it would have been perfect if Jason had been able to stay with her."
Waddell will ride Canterbury sprinter O'Cartier.
There is only one thing Cherry Taylor is hoping for in running in today's big sprint.
"I hope Martini Red is not racing on the inside of Ruud Van Slaats - if she is you won't see her."
