A stylish victory by Shavasana (NZ) (Super Seth) at Cambridge on Wednesday provided a fitting end to a season that produced over 100 wins for Pencarrow graduates.

Wednesday’s Cambridge card was the final race meeting of the 2024-25 New Zealand season. Shavasana added her name to Pencarrow’s roll of honour with an impressive front-running performance in the $17,000 Marsh Racing (970m).

Shavasana was ridden by talented apprentice Jack Taplin and showed brilliant speed out of the gates to take up the lead within the first 100 metres of the race. The three-year-old filly rounded the home turn three lengths in front of her nearest chaser, and she kept going strongly all the way down the straight. Shavasana reached the finish line a length and a half in front of the fast-finishing Distinguished (NZ) (Iffraaj).

The Steven Ramsay and Julia Ritchie-trained Shavasana has now had nine starts for a win, three placings and $21,110 in stakes. She was bred by Pencarrow Thoroughbreds Ltd and is raced by Sir Peter Vela.

Shavasana is by Waikato Stud’s rising star stallion Super Seth, who has Pencarrow among his shareholders. Himself the winner of the Group One Caulfield Guineas (1600m), Super Seth was New Zealand’s leading first-season sire in 2023-24 and has finished the 2024-25 season at the top of the second-season standings. He is the sire of seven individual black-type winners, four of them at Group One level including the Pencarrow-bred Feroce (NZ) and Maison Louis (NZ).

The dam of Shavasana is Sweet Dreams Baby (NZ) (Van Nistelrooy), who has produced an incredible eight winners from eight foals to race. Among those are Shavasana’s stakes-winning half-sisters Windborne (NZ) (Darci Brahma) and Darci’s Dream (NZ) (Darci Brahma). Shavasana was her last foal before her death in 2022.

Shavasana’s win caps a season that began brightly with a Group Three Winter Cup (1600m) success by the Pencarrow-bred Jay Bee Gee (NZ) (Complacent) on the first Saturday of the season, then kept getting better and better from there.

Group One triumphs by Feroce in the Australian Guineas (1600m) and Maison Louis in the Queensland Derby (2400m) provided the main highlights, while Golden Century (NZ) (Pierro) placed in the Group One New Zealand Derby (2400m) and homebreds Tomodachi (NZ) (Tarzino) and Island Life (NZ) (Vadamos) carried Pencarrow’s blue and white hoops to Group Three victories.