Super Saturday!

Light Fantastic’s rise has been meteoric. His ability to race on the speed won him the day in the G1 Cadbury Guineas at Flemington. It’s an overdue result for his sire Danehill Dancer (Ire) who, despite a whopping great service fee, has been living off the deeds of his second-crop champions Choisir and Private Steer for the past seven years.

In four crops of 349 live foals produced from 2000 to 2003, Danehill Dancer did not produce a single G1 winner. The first to get him back up there officially was Arapaho Miss in last spring’s VRC Oaks, but that was a very shallow race indeed, as it has been frequently in the past. In contrast, Light Fantastic looks more like the real deal. (And if you hold his name up to a mirror you get the sire of the Guineas third placegetter, Playwright).

Light Fantastic was bred by Bob and Rosemary Scarborough’s Wood Nook Stud, Nagambie, who experienced a difficult yearling sale in Melbourne, being able to sell only two of their five lots. I wonder if they, as prominent owners, suffer from the suspicion that “the best ones are at home”? Light Fantastic was not offered at auction. His outstanding third dam Leica Show was second in the G1 Newmarket Handicap on this day in 1976.

Danehill Dancer’s barnmate at Coolmore, Encosta de Lago, has been the best all-round sire in Australia for some seasons and Saturday’s racing reminded us why: the quinella in an admittedly substandard G1 Australian Cup, the emergence of Von Costa de Hero in the G2 Sires’ Produce Stakes and the welcome return of his best racehorse, Racing To Win, in the Apollo Stakes at Rosehill.

Encosta de Lago’s black-type stats are much better than Danehill Dancer’s and he deserves to stand for double the fee although given the unremitting number of mares pumped into Encosta de Lago each year – an average of 213 over the last six seasons – he’s over the odds.

Right at the other end of the scale is Greig (NZ) whose six-year-old mare Coniston Gem is now a dual G3 winner with an impressive eight victories in 12 starts. At the turn of the century, Greig got a very good horse, Landsighting, who won a Stradbroke and a George Ryder.

Greig (by Grosvenor) was sold as a yearling at Karaka on behalf of the Moore family during my time at Haunui Farm. I recall him well, he was a good sort and I was disappointed he sold for only about NZ$50,000 to Trevor McKee. Trevor had trained his dam for the Moores, the triple G1 winner Solveig, and I always believed there was an assumption by buyers that he would buy everything related to her, so Trevor was seldom taken on. In his pre-Sunline days, Trevor sneaked Greig across to Sydney as a spring three-year-old and won the G3 Stan Fox Stakes with him at 50-to-1.

The Moores have developed this family, descended from the Gabador mare Gabardine, into one of Australasia’s most consistent sources of good winners. Another good one we sold on behalf of the Moores, to the Inghams, was Sydney Cup winner Cross Swords, a three-quarter brother to Greig. The Moores have nurtured the family for the best part of 50 years – how many young breeders today will be so determined and single-minded? Precious few, I'm picking, in this ‘now’ era of SMS, email and Internet.

But back to Greig at stud. He served 80 mares in his first season, 1994, then it was a rapid downhill slide from there, 48 being the most he ever saw in a single season thereafter. In the eight seasons since 2000, he has covered a total of 99 mares. He was actually sold for $5,000 in a Melbourne sale in 2004.


Another stallion beating the odds is King Of Roses (Fairy King-Stellar Spirit), sire of Saturday’s G3 two-year-old winner Oval Affair.

Another of his daughters, Rose Ceremony, won the same race last year before running creditably in the Golden Slipper.

Oval Affair comes from King Of Roses’s fourth ‘crop’ – the four ‘crops’ totaling no more than 48 live foals! He’s had 20 to the races, 11 have won, two are Group winners, Amerryking won a quarter of a million and is stakes-placed, and Mr Scribble was threatening black-type company until his sale overseas.

King Of Roses was used as a private act of faith by his breeder David Hains at his Kingston Park Stud. On the back of these encouraging early results, from such a miniscule sample, the one-time winner (beat Fields Of Omagh by six lengths in a maiden) transferred last season to Independent Stallion Station where he covered 76 mares – two thirds as many as he had covered in the previous six years combined.