Taking on Stakes company for the first time, Rain Affair, who turned four last week, won the G3 Missile Stakes at Randwick over 1200m on August 6, the same race his sire Commands won as a two-year-old. After always racing up on the speed and leading the field around the home turn, Rain Affair showed true fighting qualities in the straight to hold on by a short-half-head in a time of 1:10.71, with Lonhro gelding Pinwheel fighting on gamely for third, only one length in arrears.
The winner of six of his seven previous starts and runner-up in the other, Rain Affair had already bankrolled over $277,000 for his owner breeder Don Storey and today added a further $75,000 and some well deserved Black type after climbing impressively through the grades.
The four-year-old gelding is the second foal of the Sydney-winning Octagonal mare I Believe, who chalked up an impressive record in her own right with four wins from five starts.
Commands is coming off a highly successful 2010-11 season which saw him earn honours as the leading sire of individual winners setting an unprecendented benchmark of 155 winners. The sire of ten Australian Stakes winners last season, highlighted by the G1-winning Erewhon and G2 winner Soul, as well as juvenile Stakes winners Altar and Atomic, Commands is the sire of 39 individual Stakes winners.
Standing the forthcoming season at Darley Kelvinside at a fee of $66,000 (inc GST), Commands has achieved G1 winners in each of his last three seasons and is right up there with the best stallion-sons of the immortal Danehill to stand in Australia.
