Victorian based sire Gonski has travelled south from Seymour to join the Oxford Park roster at Bunyip this year.

The former Darley resident has sired 27 individual winners in his first crop.  They have won 38 races and that puts him well inside the Top 10 on the Australian second-season sires’ premiership for 2011-12.

Sheikh Mohammed’s entry into the industry is helping lift the standard of stallions based at mid-range studs in the Super VOBIS State.

Darley’s Seymour line-up this year is headed by 2008 English Derby winner New Approach while a stallion the calibre of Reset is only fourth in the pecking order.  And he’s sired a G1 Cox Plate winner (Pinker Pinker) and last week’s Listed VRC St Leger winner (Vatuvei).

Gonski (Danehill) defeated no fewer than nine Group 1 winners in his career.  He was rated within four points of champion colt Stratum after a wide-margin Rosehill juvenile victory.

At three, he won the VRC Listed Concept Sports Stakes at Flemington before retiring to Darley’s Northwood Park base in 2007.

Oxford Park studmaster Michael Howard will stand Gonski alongside Volitant (Flying Spur) at Oxford Park.  He was a G3 winner of the Moonga Stakes and Victoria Hcp at Caulfield beating top-class sprinters Yell and Titanic Jack.

Volitant retired to a NSW stud in 2007 only to have his first season cruelled by the E.I. crisis.  Then his second book was hampered by an ownership dispute.

The Flying Spur branch of the Danehill sireline is up and running with Jet Spur (Glenlogan Pk), Casino Prince (Patinack) and Magnus (Eliza Park) who is making a late season move with his first-crop two year-olds.