A Man True To His Word

The win of four-year-old Imananabaa in New Year’s day’s G1 Railway Handicap ($200,000, 1200m) at Ellerslie makes her one of the most valuable racemares in New Zealand, not that her trio of owners Sir Patrick Hogan, Peter Walker and Alister Sutherland are likely to be wanting to cash her.

The Australian-foaled but New Zealand-sold (NZ$310,000, Karaka) daughter of Anabaa finished third in the race last year. She belongs to the prodigious Western Australian family descended from Miss Holborn.

It's cute the way the names of her dam, Iman, and sire, Anabaa, have been combined to make a perfectly sensible name, and a lasting advertisement for her sire!

Iman is a Western Australian-bred mare, by a stallion named Zemindar (NZ) which I sold as a yearling at Trentham – where? – in 1985, price NZ$200,000. Yesterday’s win made me recall the circumstances of his sale.

Debbie Evans, in those days running Belmont Bloodstock Agency in Perth, was bringing clients to Trentham and like many others who came was touring through the North Island en route to the sale.

She called me up and arranged for her group to see Waikato Stud's yearlings. They duly arrived in a mini van. I’m embarrassed to say that with the passage of more than 20 years, a case of Eastern Creek Syndrome means I can’t recall the name of her principal client who was later to buy Zemindar. Anyway, he was accompanied by a van load of people including, as I remember, his accountant, lawyer and doctor!

One by one the yearlings were taken out of their boxes and paraded on the lawn. When it was the turn of the Zephyr Bay-Pre Empt colt, and I can still remember the box he came out of, the moment he came out Debbie’s client exclaimed, “I’ll buy that colt”. The hulking chestnut colt was something to behold and blew the socks off most people who saw him. However, I thought it was the combination of a hot day, a liquid lunch and some Aussie bravado talking, and thought no more of it. But true to his word, a couple of weeks later, the West Australian was there bidding away and signing the chit at Trentham.

I remember Gai Waterhouse doing something very similar when she saw a Marscay colt at Magic Millions in 2000. He fell over himself coming out of the box but picked himself up so deftly he struck a chord with Gai who announced she intended to buy him. He was named Excellerator, cost $50,000, earned $2,228,495, and was the unluckiest superior horse during my years at Tulloch Lodge – should have won double.

Zemindar won four of his first five starts in Perth and was touted to be ‘anything’. Instead, he ended up ‘something’, a dual Listed winner of eight races. Stud Book returns were made for 11 seasons with 171 named foals resulting. Only 51 were winners and he never sired a stakeswinner, dying in 2003. Imananabaa is the only stakeswinner to date out of a Zemindar mare.

The year after selling Zemindar as a yearling at Trentham, I sold his equally impressive full-sister Heavenly View, a steel grey. She was a stakeswinner in both New Zealand and Australia and was second in the G1 Gadsden at Flemington, known these days as the Salinger. She was a big loss to breeding when she died without issue.