Nine years to the day of his victory in the King’s
Stand S. (Eng-G2) at Royal Ascot, Australian sprinting hero Takeover Target (Celtic Swing) has died at the age of 15. The gelding broke
his leg in a paddock accident Saturday.
Purchased by owner/trainer and former taxi driver Joe Janiak for just A$1,250, Takeover Target would go on to earn more than A$6 million in prize
money and win top-level sprints in four countries. The bay gelding did not make his
racecourse debut until four due to injury, but made up for lost time by winning his first
seven starts culminating in his first Group 1, Flemington’s Salinger S., at five.
Takeover Target added the Lightning S. (Aus-G1) and Newmarket H. (Aus-G1) the following season, resulting in an invite to
the 2006 Royal Ascot meeting where he won the then-Group 2 King’s Stand four days before finishing third in the Golden Jubilee S.
(Aus-G1).
From England Takeover Target traveled to Japan, where he won Nakayama’s Sprinters S.
(Jpn-G1), giving him the most points for that year’s Global Sprint Challenge.
Takeover Target again traveled to Royal Ascot after winning the following
year’s Doomben 10,000 (Aus-G1), this time finishing fourth in the King’s Stand behind fellow
Australian Miss Andretti (Ihtrahim) and second in the Golden Jubilee of 2007. The following May he added another successful stamp to his passport when taking
the KrisFlyer International Sprint in Singapore — not yet a Group 1 — before yet again
jumping on the plane to Ascot, where he was second in the King’s Stand and fourth in the
Golden Jubilee.
In his final season on the track as a nine-year-old in 2008/09, Takeover
Target won four straight races, including the TJ Smith S. (Aus-G1) and Goodwood S.
(Aus-G1) Down Under.
He returned to Kranji to finish eighth in the KrisFlyer, and once again headed to
England for Royal Ascot. A temperature kept him out of that meeting, however, and the
gelding rerouted to Newmarket’s July Cup (Aus-G1), where he finished seventh, but
fractured a hind cannon bone in the process, an injury that required surgery and forced his
retirement.
Takeover Target went to the paddock with 21 wins from 41 starts, and was
inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2012.
“He must have been trying to get up and his foot went from underneath him,” Janiak told racing.com
Saturday. “I’d
say that the break was where the screws were (from his surgery after the July Cup) and
there was a bit of wear and tear and I think that it just came apart.
“Thankfully he’s had six years of a good life in the
paddock,” Janiak added. “He made a lot of people very happy, he made a lot of people rich and
sent a few bookmakers broke.”