All the stars aligned for the Te Akau Racing team when Amarelinha recorded her Al Basti Equiworld Dubai New Zealand Oaks victory at Trentham last weekend.

It was the 100^th win for the Jamie Richards-Opie Bosson combination, took the stable’s domestic earnings for the season to over $5 million and gave Bosson his fifth win in the Oaks.

March has been another month of milestones for Te Akau, with the operation continuing to raise the bar to new heights.

More than half of the stable’s 13 wins to date this month have been in black type races, comprising three at Group I level, a Group II win, two Group III victories and a listed race.

That has brought the total of black-type wins for the season to 36, including four in Australia, a record tally for a New Zealand stable. Thirteen of those wins have been a Group I level – another record – with 18 wins at either Group II or Group III level.

To give these achievements some perspective, Richards is going to win more than half of the 21 Group races in New Zealand this season and has won more feature races to date this term than leading Australian trainer Chris Waller.

The last Group I of the New Zealand season will be the Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes at Te Aroha, on April 10. It will attract a good field, but Richards will still have a strong hand, with Avantage and three-year-old Cornflower Blue expected to run.

Chris Waller, as usual, has won more races and earned more stake money than any other stable in Australia. He has won 152 metropolitan races this term – no one else has reached 75 - with eight Group I wins and a total of 32 black-type victories.

Richards will not get close to matching Waller in terms of prize money but has become the first New Zealand trainer to top $5 million in domestic stake earnings.

The previous best was the $4.48 million earned by the Murray Baker-Andrew Forsman stable in the 2017-18 season, the first time the $4 million mark had been reached. Mark Walker, who also led the Te Akau team, was the first top $3 million, in the 2008-09 season.

Jim Gibbs, who was based at Matamata, was the first to reach $1 million in stakes in New Zealand, in the 1986-87 season, with Roger James as his training partner, and Gibbs reached $2 million two years later.

The champion filly Tidal Light, who won 10 of her 13 starts that term, including the New Zealand Derby, was the main contributor to the Gibbs stable reaching $1 million, while an outstanding squad of open handicappers underpinned the $2 million season.

Remarkably, Gibbs won only 36 races in 1988-89, but more than a third of those wins came in black-type races. However, the $2 million mark was not reached till the final day of the season, at Te Rapa, where Mickey’s Town won the Taumarunui Cup and Regal City the open sprint.

The major wins for the stable that season included the Auckland Cup, Avondale Cup, Waikato International (Herbie Dyke), Easter Handicap, Letz Trophy (Rich Hill Mile), Waikato Cup, Dulcie Stakes (Travis Stakes), Counties Cup, Clifford Plate, Auckland Plate and Great Northern Challenge Stakes.

Gibbs produced three of the first four placegetters in the Auckland Cup, four of the first five in the Avondale Cup and three of the first five in the weight-for-age DB Classic, the first $1 million race to be staged in New Zealand.

The Te Akau team has earned A$1.47 in Australia this term, with the prospect of more to come, and ensuring that the total earnings for the stable will be well over $6.5 million.

That will be another record, though the Baker-Forsman team topped $6 million in total earnings in 2017-18 and the Matamata partnership of Dave and Paul O’Sullivan earned close to $5 million as long ago as the 1989-90 season. The O’Sullivan team won four races worth at least $1 million that term, including the Japan Cup, with domestic earnings of $2.6 million. The Reserve Bank inflation calculator estimates that $5m in 1990 would have been the equivalent of more than $9m in 2020.

Trevor and Stephen McKee had a spectacular season in 2000-01, when their champion mare Sunline earned $4.4 million - mostly overseas – to take the stable’s total earnings to around $5.2 million.

Opie Bosson has won 100 races for Te Akau, from 333 mounts, with 20 at Group I level, since Richards began his solo training career in the 2018-19 season. The Oaks win meant that Bosson has equaled Chris Johnson’s record of five wins in the Trentham classic.

Bosson is not going to match the 11 Group I wins he recorded last season but has still won seven Group I races this season, all for Te Akau, and from just 15 mounts.

Rather overlooked, on a day when Melody Belle and Ocean Billy hogged the headlines, was that Bosson’s Group I Sistema Stakes victory on Sword Of State was his ninth win in the juvenile feature.

His first win came on Zola, who gave trainer Dave O’Sullivan his last Group I winner in New Zealand, when successful in 1998. It was also so the first leg of a memorable two-year-old Group I double for the O’Sullivan stable, with Alf winning the AJC Sires’ Produce in Sydney later in the day.

Bosson did not win the Sistema again till 2011 but has hardly been beaten since. He has won the race for four successive years and in eight of the last 11 years. He did not have a mount in 2017, ran fourth in 2014 and was unplaced in 2016.

Bosson’s other wins came on Anabandana, Warhorse, Ruud Awakening, Dal Cielo, Sword Of Osman, Yourdeel and Cool Aza Beel.

Bosson has also recorded seven wins in the Two Thousand Guineas but it is unusual, anywhere in the world, for a rider to win a Group I race nine times.

Lester Piggott, who is the exception to almost every rule, won the Ascot Gold Cup 11 times and had 10 wins in the July Cup and Dewhurst Stakes, with his July Cup wins spread over 35 years.