Fat, Fat Years

The year can only get better. The filly didn’t win at Randwick, didn’t even pay the petrol money. My future as a deck hand in the Mediterranean will have to wait a while yet.

It was a sweltering 35 degrees and the perspiration was embarrassing when I arrived at the Gold Coast on Thursday. But after a brilliant lightning display that evening and some downpours there was considerable relief on Friday. Remember the day Ha Ha won the Magic Millions 3YO Trophy? The mercury hit 41.

By Friday’s end, with just four clear days until the start of the sale, still many horses either not on the grounds, including the Coolmore draft, or still settling in and not being shown.

I’ve done a tally of the yearlings I’ve inspected and find the percentage to which I give a ‘pass mark’ is the same as at sales in the past. Either I employ a consistent standard or I’m being soft.

I haven't spoken to a great many people yet - because they haven't arrived! - but there doesn't seem to be an overbearing atmosphere of doom and gloom around the grounds. Not everyone's broke - give it 12 months - but I think all vendors know they are going to have to be realistic. As I said to one: a lot of you guys have had fat, fat years for a decade or more, and in what other business do you get rich rewards for producing a product which more often than not is going to fail badly?

Whilst driving the final stages of my journey to the Gold Coast on Thursday, I was pleased to listen to the successes of Tommifrancs (7g Real Quiet (USA)-Schwarzkoff (NZ), by Centaine) in the Tatts Cup at Randwick, and Anton Pillar in a maiden at Cheltenham.

Tommifrancs because he was bred and is raced by a fellow Kiwi, full-time part-time Aussie resident John Thompson with whom I’ve had working relationship in recent years. John’s black with silver fern colours are familiar particularly in NSW and Victoria. Until quite recently he had horses with up to 17 different trainers! John stopped going to the sales six or seven years ago when he found he had a couple of stallion prospects on his hands. He owned some interesting though fairly modest fillies and mares from which he started breeding with the intention of racing the progeny to prove the stallions, and even bought the farm to house them all.

A prominent Magic Millions vendor reminded me today that three percent (his figure) of commercial stallions can be classified as successful after five years. He said he’s not in the habit of backing 33 to 1 shots so will never get into the stallion business. John also knew the odds were long but he’s a sportsman at heart. Tommifrancs, ironically not by one of John’s own stallions, is one of those rare horses who pay for all the slow ones and now has earned $435,000. A slow-maturer originally with the Freedmans, he’s these days with Gerald Ryan. The horse has never been too predictable because he often doesn’t get the strong pace he needs in his races. And he’s gone from being a lover of damp tracks and unable to back-up to one happiest on good and winning on the back-up.

If the vicissitudes of breeding are evident from John Thompson’s experience, so are they in the Anton Pillar saga.

This very cleverly named horse (3c Flying Spur-Prove It, by Dehere (USA)) was bred in Victoria by Sean Buckley of Miss Andretti and Ultra Tune fame – horse power of another sort. Sean and I have compared notes off and on over many years while he’s quietly gathered together a fantastic broodmare band, the results of which are only starting to come on stream.

Anton Pillar’s sister Forensics, as we all know, won the Golden Slipper in 2007, nor did her winning stop there. Anyone owning her dam, coming as she does from one of Australia’s most popular families, would have reason to be pleased with themselves. But Sean could only look ruefully at the Slipper result because he had lost Prove It 18 months earlier, shortly after foaling a brother (only the second foal) to the top filly and 11 days after she’d been covered by Encosta de Lago. They say (wrongly if you ask me) that out of every catastrophe comes a positive: Sean consoled himself that he still had the young sibling which was then earmarked to be one of Ultra Thoroughbreds trail-blazers at the Easter sale of 2007.

Not to be. Murphy’s Law. The young colt developed problems the most significant of which was an abscess on the top of his rump which left a hole big enough to put your fist in, with some related muscle wastage. Time would fix these problems but there was no alternative but to abandon any thoughts of taking him to Easter even though the sale was nine months away. There’s no doubt the colt was a seven-figure proposition, perhaps even a sale-topper, a bitter pill for Sean to swallow after earlier losing the dam and being eager to state his breeding credentials to the market place. It would be hard to measure the loss of Prove It at only six years of age, her first foal a sensational filly, and the expected income-earning potential of her subsequent foals. So while you might think Sean is the luckiest man alive to have raced Miss Andretti through her glory days, he knows what downside feels like, in spades.

Anton Pillar started out with David Hayes but his New Year’s day’s win was first-out from the stable of David Balfour who has won a couple lately with another Buckley-bred Specialisor (NZ) (4m Don Eduardo (NZ)-Special Sal, by Alzao (USA)). Anton Pillar still has his tackle and if he’s able to develop his form someone will be putting their hand up to stand him.

Also on New Year’s day, Miss Andretti’s half-brother Danny Beau won his ninth from 14 in Perth and smashed the state 1000m record. There is not a single stakeswinner – not even in WA or SA - in their tail female descent for another four generations. What makes Peggie’s Bid such a great broodmare? I know she’s a grand-daughter of Mill Reef which carries plenty of weight with me, but so are plenty of others and they aren’t Peggie’s Bid! Fascinating.

P.S.: on the theme of "out of every catastrophe comes a positive" - what about those Russians? In a poll being held currently, one J. Stalin is amongst the top three in line for the mantle of the greatest Russian ever. Brainwashing must be alive and well. Are they SERIOUS? Tell that to the relatives and descendants of the 25 million. If this sort of distortion is possible in this day and age we must still be swinging from the trees.