Whogeldedyou

Darley were all over the Caulfield Guineas result like a rash.

Their two colour-bearers Time Thief (Redoute’s Choice-Procrastinate) and Von Costa de Hero (Encosta de Lago-Piavonic) who cost something like $7 million between them were trounced by Whobegotyou. But Darley will still be the big winners out of the race as their two colts will eventually take their imposing physiques, pedigrees and race records to stud and return the investment many times over.

But, ironically, Darley is also 100% responsible for Whobegotyou, the unwanted yearling who, now gelded, is the Weekend Hussler of the 2008 three-year-olds and next-door-to-a-certainty for the G1 VRC Derby.

Way back on June 22 in this blog (It’s All Over Folks – Resume Normal Sleep Pattern) I looked at the intricate pedigree of Whobegotyou and wondered out loud whether he might be the horse everyone has been waiting for to give antipodean cred to his otherwise outstanding sire, the former shuttler Street Cry (Ire). (pictured). He sure is. Simultaneous with his emergence has been the rise of another Street Cry in Sydney, Predatory Pricer, Takeover Target’s good-looking and very capable half-brother.

Sheikh Mohammed/Godolphin/Darley – call it what you like – did the mating which produced Whobegotyou. They owned his sire and his dam Temple Of Peace, the Japanese-bred, French stakes-placed daughter of Carnegie (Ire), a horse Sheikh Moh won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe with then sent to stud in Japan, shuttling him initially to New Zealand then to Australia when he ‘got good’.

For some reason, Darley decided to ditch Temple Of Peace after she produced two foals, by the failures Fantastic Light (USA) and King’s Best (USA), but before either of them were old enough to have proven themselves. They must have been skunks. In the autumn of 2005, the mare went up to auction carrying Whobegotyou and changed hands for $36,000 on the bid of Louis Mihalyka’s Laurel Oak Bloodstock acting for Canberra clients.

Whatever qualities Mark Kavanagh saw in Whobegotyou as a yearling he was in a minority of one, as bidding at the Classic Sale stopped at $17,500, shy of the $25,000 reserve. Mark negotiated a sale afterwards at a point between the two figures.

The next foal out of the mare is a now two-year-old colt by Octagonal and the mare’s new owners fared no better with him – they got $16,000 at the Classic Sale this year. So they weren’t even close to square after marketing two of her progeny. The next foal died. The folks in Canberra must have thrown their hands up in surrender, made some bad jokes about the Japanese, cursed the day they ever bought her and proceeded to get rid of this good-for-nothing ten-year-old mare at the Gold Coast sale back on 2 June. The price: a paltry $5,250, rotten to the end. However, there was a produce record update – the mare’s two-year-old named Whobegotyou had won his debut at Geelong on the ThoroughTrack just 12 days previously, on 21 May. The lucky purchaser: Bill Benson of Emerald Thoroughbreds who has been known to sweep through a broodmare sale like a vacuum cleaner and come up with some real bargains. He’s done it again.

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Alamosa (NZ) (4h O’Reilly (NZ)-Lodore Mystic, by Centaine) got the required Australian Group 1 result with a strong win in the G1 Toorak Handicap at Caulfield, Saturday. The Kiwi syndicate who will put him to stud at Wellfield next year will be chuffed. He’s a very good horse, it’s just important that Australians know that.

Watching Alamosa come up through the ranks, in 2007 I bought, pretty cheaply, a maiden three-quarter sister to his dam in a Melbourne sale. My client decided to do the obvious thing and send her to New Zealand, to O’Reilly who was standing at the ludicrous fee of NZ$20,000 (stallions half as good were standing for three times as much in the Hunter Valley) and has been rewarded with a colt foal, a three-quarter brother in blood to Alamosa.

Second in the Toorak to Alamosa was the baby of the field, Rockwood (4g Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire)-Foxwood (NZ), by Centaine), a horse I tipped my clients into after Gai had bought him as a yearling, one of the nicest yearlings at Sydney Easter that year. People were already starting to bag his dam who was a brilliant filly in New Zealand but never brought the same form to Australia where she had the last six starts of her career, including a 12th placing behind Sunline in the G1 Doncaster. But Rockwood was only her fourth foal and as the Toorak showed yet again, you dismiss a Centaine mare at your peril.

I recall visiting Garry Chittick in Palmerston North (his Thornton Park Stud was at Longburn on the outskirts of town) on the night he tied up the deal to buy Centaine. The races had been at nearby Awapuni that day. It was a life-changing moment for him as a breeder, acquiring this son of Century who Australians thought had missed the big time and, patronisingly as usual, “would be ideal for New Zealand”. When you look back on his form and translate it to today with our heightened appreciation of the Group race system and all it stands for, he was a most competitive colt. As a three-year-old, with wins behind him at 1000m and 1200m, he was taken all the way through to the VRC Derby (2500m, 5th behind Bounty Hawk) via the Caulfield Guineas (5th to Beechcraft) and The Herald Vase (1st). Yet when he came back after a brief layoff, he was kept exclusively to sprints, winning the Autumn Stakes at Sandown and placing or racing with credit in such races as the Futurity (3rd), Newmarket (8th of 24), George Ryder (3rd), Manikato (2nd), Bobbie Lewis (2nd) and Marlboro Cup (4th), his last start.

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Oratorio. He’s at stud in Western Australia and sired Gold Rocks, winner of the two-year-old race at Belmont Park, Perth, on Saturday.

Oratorio. She produced a pretty smart horse named Agamemnon who won the Listed Matamata Cup in New Zealand on Saturday.

Oratorio. He stands at Coolmore.

Say a prayer for pedigree nuts.

NB: When G1 winner Crest Of The Wave (USA)(born 1976) was imported for stud duty in New Zealand, there had already been a Crest Of The Wave (GB) (born 1961) before him. The much later arrival was required to change his name to Crested Wave (USA). Somehow I don't think we'll see that happen in Australia, because you-know-who owns you-know-who. But it probably should.

NBB: Ironically, the Oratorio standing in WA, the son of Stravinsky (USA), wears the big C brand of Coolmore.
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Movie’s win in the two-year-old event at Rosehill, Saturday, brings to mind her dam, Strawberry Storm (Thunder Gulch (USA)-Wheatland Lady (USA), by Strawberry Road).

This Singo-bred and owned filly started her career in Gai’s stable and raced twice for a seventh and second placing in the days leading up to the start of the Magic Millions Sale.

Just after the sale she was pulled from the stable. The school of thought was, shall we say, that Singo was unimpressed which vendors had either been, or not been, favoured with Gai’s buying power at the sale.

Strawberry Storm crossed the road to Rogie from whose stable after a short let up the filly won at Canterbury then the Listed Keith MacKay Quality at Randwick. Singo later sold Strawberry Storm to John Cornish’s Torrryburn Stud, for $180,000. Movie (by Red Ransom (USA)) is her first foal but unfortunately she died last year almost two months after producing a full brother.

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I was underbidder on upset Caulfield winner Bonded (Danewin-Betta Fortune, by Luskin Star) at the 2006 Magic Millions Yearling Sale. I’d been trying to buy a filly for a Melbourne client. Late in the sale, Bonded was my last throw of the dice. I had been outbid on the earlier two I had selected which turned out to be Diana’s Secret (stakes-placed winner of two) and Mimi Lebrock (winner of $911,095)! But the $175,000 given by Melbourne’s Shannon brothers for Bonded was one bid too many for me.

After the Magic Millions I went on to Karaka and managed finally to buy a filly for the client. It’s four years old, and still unraced, but there’s hope yet it will make the track. Sometime next year.

This can be an unkind business at times! Like watching the fillies in Melbourne since Ortensia went out with her injury. I've little doubt she would have handled them.