Ian Wilkes, a horseman raised on a dairy farm between Muswellbrook and Denman in the Hunter Valley, was responsible for the preparation and presentation of Street Sense, the son of the Darley Stud shuttle sire Street Cry who romped to a 2.2 and 5.8 lengths victory in America's greatest race, the Kentucky Derby conducted over 2000m, at Churchill Downs at the weekend.

Although he is not the official trainer, that distinction belonging to veteran mentor Carl Nafzger, Wilkes runs the powerful 60 horse racing stables and is poised to take complete control on Nafzger's impending retirement. It is a move that could see Wilkes become one of America's leading trainers.

The stable has now been represented by two Kentucky Derby winners, the first being back in1990, a year it was taken out by Unbridled, a horse who like Street Sense's sire Street Cry is by a son of Mr. Prospector. At the time Ian Wilkes was on his first visit to America and was used by Nafzher as Unbridled's track worker. He had gained considerable experience earlier in Australia, working with Paul Sutherland and Vic Thompson Jr. in Sydney and spending two years with the Hayes family at Lindsay Park in South Australia.

Ian is a son of Ray Wilkes, a former Muswellbrook district dairyfarmer with a love of racing and breeding who now resides in Sydney and who has a small number of mares making their home at Di Hill's Foxes Hollow Stud at Oakdale near Camden.

The Wilkes, mum and dad, Ian and his brother Craig, a successful trainer at Port Macquarie, had a lot of fun in the early 1990s with a son of Zoffany they purchased out of a Sydney Summer yearling sale for $4,000. Named Native Dawn and trained by Jack Gallagher, then at Coonabababran, he won 14 races including the Queensland Cup and Lord Mayor's Cup in Brisbane and the Lismore, Coonabarabran, Moree and Orange Cups.

This year's Kentucky Derby winning Street Sense is the first performer to take the double of this Classic and what is now considered America's greatest event for two-year-olds, the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. He is one of five stakes winners to date in the first crop of Street Cry, a son of Danehill's relation Machiavellian who was a winner of five races including two Group 1s, the Dubai World Cup and in America the Stephen Foster Handicap. He ran third in the American Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Street Cry stands the 2007 season at Darley in Kentucky on US$50,000, but is to be available in Australia next season at their Victorian stud on $16,500. His first crop here are two-year-olds and his second includes nine lots in the catalogue for the Hunter Valley Breeders yearling sale at Scone on May 20 and seven listed for the Magic Millions National Yearling sale to he held at the Gold Coast on June 12, 13 and 14,

Street Sense, the American star who has put him on the map in that country as a sire, is the first foal of Bedazzle, a handy non-stakes winning filly by the Northern Dancer sire Dixieland Band and from Majestic Legend, an His Majesty Listed winner out of Long Legend, a half-sister to the grandam of one of the most successful dual hemisphere sires, Coolmore's Danehill Dancer, and also a close relation to Mr. Greeley, a high class American sprinter and sire who was neglected by Australian breeders when he visited Victoria in 1996, being used over only 26 mares.

Since then Mr Greeley has risen in America to a fee of US$75,000 and to have ten Group1 winners to his credit. One of these is Finsceal Beo, last year's champion Eurpean two-year-old filly and the winner on Sunday of the English One Thousand Guineas, in the process becoming the first of their Guineas winners of either sex to break one minute 35 seconds for the mile (1600m).

Street Sense is the second Kentucky Derby winner in four years by a Darley shuttle sire made available for use by Australian breeders. The other winner is Smarty Jones, a half-brother to Sippin' Bourbon, a son of Hennessy starting his career as a sire at George Fraser's Ilala Stud, Scone.

Smarty Jones is by Elusive Quality, a setter of new world record time for a mile listed to visit Darley's Hunter Valley complex for the fifth successive year in the coming season. His fee is $137,500.