This Racing Game

Fat, Fat Years

2009-01-03T00:46:00.004+11:00

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.

I've Learned Not To Rely On The Fillies

2008-12-31T19:19:00.007+11:00

I’m penning this New Year’s Eve epistle from the bright lights of downtown Tenterfield, ‘the Birthplace of the Nation’, where I’m overnighting on my way to Magic Millions.

It’s been a wonderful day’s driving from Sydney: not a cloud in the sky, virtually deserted roads, the roof of the car folded away, me looking like the playboy of the Western world, and the warm wind blowing through where my hair’s meant to be.

I find few things better for the soul (if we have one) than driving the Australian bush. Thanks to all the rain along the eastern seabord the country’s still looking great in midsummer. The route I take going north is off the beaten track and I always put aside two days for my journeys. It’s peaceful and the vistas are grand.

Tenterfield is just a few kilometers south of the Queensland border but tomorrow I’ll take a right turn out of town, staying in NSW, and head due east through the Range again for 100 kms to Casino, then north to Kyogle and Murwillumbah. From there is one of the best bits of all, breaching the Queensland border and into the land of cheap petrol via the tropical rainforest of the Gold Coast hinterland, coming out at Currumbin. You can stick the Pacific Highway where the sun don’t shine.

Sir Henry Parkes gave his famous Federation speech to the people of Tenterfield at the Tenterfield School Of Arts on 24 October 1889. His catch-cry was: “One people, one destiny”. It was a good idea at the time, pity it took until 2008 to take on the appearance of reality. Hank was a Pom with little formal education who in 1836 married his teacher in Birmingham – obviously, his mind was on extra-curricular activities rather than his textbooks – and emigrated to Australia under assisted passage. Eventually, in 1872, he became Premier of NSW, which says to those of today who didn’t get their HSC, don’t worry, too much education’s a dangerous thing. Parkes had three wives, not all at the same time, which helped him reach the age of 81. Perhaps with no wives he might have reached 100.

The bushranger ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ (Frederic Ward) is another celebrity of the Tenterfield district. He made his last stand at Uralla, just south of Armidale. He ended up there after escaping from Cockatoo Island Prison in Sydney Harbour, his offence: horse stealing (where is he today when I need him?). The beautiful stretch of road through the cattle country from Walcha to Uralla is known as Thunderbolt’s Way.

Major J F Thomas, a local solicitor, was noted for his defence of Harry "The Breaker" Morant.

My literary hero A B ‘Banjo’ Paterson is also a Tenterfield luminary. On 8 April 1903 he took the hand in marriage of one Alice Walker of Tenterfield Station. They were married in St Stephen’s (nice touch) Presbyterian Church. The Walkers built Concord Hospital in Sydney. Paterson married well, a bit like Henry Parkes. Malcolm Ellis wrote: “If ever there was a natural son of the old squattocracy, a fit mate for a daughter of the Walkers of Concord, it was Banjo. He always looked sartorially like a colonel of the cavalry who had just left Tattersall’s Sale Ring with a field-marshal after having bought a steeplechaser.” Reminds me of Arnold House, Sydney's most sartorial racegoer.

The other Tenterfield legend appears to be the late song-and-dance man Peter Allen, after whom the motel I’m staying at is named. You don’t see many motels named after people. There’s one on the right hand side going north through Singleton (not named after John). I can see it now, the Steve Brem Motel, on the road to nowhere somewhere. Talking about John, that More Than Ready-Sunday Joy two-year-old filly of his which Gai trialled at Randwick on Tuesday looks an absolute natural and the Encosta de Lago yearling half-sister is a MM sale topper if ever I’ve seen one. I suppose Singo’s got enough fillies out of the mare he just might let this one go, but I’m not taking any bets as to who the buyer’s name might be.

I haven’t found out yet what public New Year’s Eve celebrations are held in Tenterfield but after a short kip I’ll wander down the main street (the only street) and see what’s up. Years ago I swore never to go and see those Sydney fireworks again, or even watch them on TV. Another exercise in proving to the world that we do it “bigger and better” than anyone else. Who cares? Up until Tuesday we said that about cricket. As far as the crowds are concerned, there’s nothing attractive about being stuck amongst a million intoxicated Aussies. Everyone whoops and hollers on the stroke of 12 as the harbour bridge catches fire, conveniently forgetting it’s actually only 11 p.m. Why spoil a good story with a fact?

2009 ushers in my 61st year which causes reflection about what happened to the last decade and what to make of the next. Suddenly, these matters take on an urgency. I get the feeling this might be the last year I do this sales business. I love the horses, and most times I can pick the good ones, but it’s the people who are the problem. (By the way, my top pick from Easter '08, Wanted, is no longer with J Hawkes but with J O'Shea, and on another matter stand by for a juicy court case involving two of racing's headline-grabbers from 2008). I’m thinking I should be getting on a yacht and sailing round the world for five years, or something of that ilk. Despite 2008 being a leap year, I have still to find the woman of my dreams – actually, she’s hiding out in Melbourne and doesn’t take my calls. Ten years ago, on the occasion of my 50th, she gave me a certificate, done by her own hand, on which it proclaims that having attained the half-century I was now officially a “stayer”. Sad to say with another 10 years under my belt I’m now just an old plodder.

To wind up the year on the blog, I was going to recap the last month’s racing and pat myself on the back as usual for all my shrewd choices, observations and missed opportunities, but I decided that’s as boring as bat droppings. (Yesterday's first-up Gosford winner Zuhoor (3f Lonhro-Nesnas) was a MM stunner of '07, 'bought' by Dean Watt's Dynamic Syndications for $200k. Straight afterwards I approached him to secure a big chunk of her but was told she was all spoken for. Correct. He was buying her in for 'The Boss', Emirates' Nasser Lootah. I was also underbidder on another Gosford winner Power To Surprise at Easter '06. By the then despised Viking Ruler, splashed all over with white and with only one stakeswinner on the page, in the fourth dam, I was confident of getting him within budget. I cried 'enough' at $180k and let Nick Moraitis have him). I have a runner in the first race at Randwick on New Year’s Day. It would be very obliging of her if she could win or place because (a) it would be a nice way to start my particular decade, and (b) with the proceeds I might be able to fund that trip on the yacht. Especially as most of my meagre savings are locked up in one of those investment vehicles which currently prohibit me from accessing them “for my own good”. As someone who lived through the oil shocks, then 1987 and now this catastrophe, excuse me if I have a jaundiced view of the world financial (dis)order and all its greedy foot-soldiers.

Anyhow, the weather man says it’s going to be 34 degrees in Sydney on New Year’s day, so I’m not relying on a filly in those circumstances, she’ll be off to the paddock afterwards. I only have 286 first-book yearlings to see at MM when I get there on Friday. Less scratchings of course, but MM are never kind enough to list them on their website, unlike the other crowd.

Happy New Year to you all, my loyal readers from Vietnam to the Maldives and all points north and south. Back a winner.

Pic above: the National Trust-listed Tenterfield Saddler, immortalised in song by Peter Allen. This town and surrounding region is steeped in history and if you're interested in things other than, or in addition to, what's winning the next race, it's well worth a visit.

Big Breasts In Scone

2008-12-23T01:20:00.004+11:00

I finished off my ramblings in the Hunter with visits to Amarina, Baerami, Brooklyn, Byerley, Edinglassie, Emirates, Glastonbury, Goodwood, Lomar Park, Reavill, Turangga and Vinery, so, all in all, I’ve managed to get a few hundred yearlings under my belt before facing the onslaught at the Coast. I begin my trek up there on New Year's Eve.

There’s one consignor in the Upper Hunter I can never get to see. I always seem to pick days when there’s something on at his place – x-raying, photos, Sirecam or all the staff having to dash up to Tamworth because suddenly the other farm’s got flooded. The same bloke is always the first to hassle me to see his horses when I arrive at the complex.

With no kids or missus to come home to, not for a lack of trying, I can take my time, and generally do. Breathe in the scenery. There are some fantastic vistas especially out in the Sandy Hollow/Baerami direction. Out in Patinack country as it soon will be. Does it mean anything that they’re setting up a pre-training facility in a place named Broke? I enjoy visiting the occasional vineyard on my journey with my trusty James Halliday under my arm. I’m trying to like Hunter region wines. The rivet-jolting roads around Pokolbin are still a disgrace. Perhaps under Kevin 737’s Infrastructure Australia crusade they might get around to it before my jalopy disintegrates.

Gai was also in the area and one night I was her guest for dinner at her Scone hideaway. Another night I visited Canter, the relatively new licensed restaurant in the space near the railway station where once lived Quince. Canter gets the thumbs up for a good feed in tasteful surroundings. The herb encrusted chicken breasts were the size of Maria Venutti’s. Both look like they were fed on growth hormone. On another night I was enticed by a billboard outside one of the pubs on Kelly Street proclaiming their “new summer menu”, so I thought, 'this looks promising, I’ll give it a go'. If you think there is no way you can completely bugger up something as simple as a Caesar salad, think again. It was so bad it was Seizure salad. Never again. I proclaimed last year that McDonald’s was going to be the culinary salvation of Scone but nothing appears to be happening on the building site, which also includes a servo, at the north end of the town just under the speed camera.

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Excuse me if I don’t read the newspapers much, particularly when I’m away in places like the Hunter, but what’s happened to John Messara? One day proclaimed a dictator-in-waiting, next day nowhere to be seen. Gone from Aushorse, gone from TBA, presumably in readiness for the board of RacingNSW? But he’s not one of the Gang Of Five, so what happened? Is it correct that he was appointed to the Board but couldn’t live with some of his would-be bedfellows and withdrew before the announcement? I missed all the excitement! I’m only acquainted to any degree with two members of the Board, Alan Bell and Arthur Inglis, so I have no opinion on the appointments overall. Bell is a hard man from way back and Inglis has come to light in latter times as a harder man than some might have thought. John has got much more to offer than just continuing to make Arrowfield the brilliant success it is, so how do we tap into him without all his jealous enemies out there getting up in arms about it?

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Greg Childs handled his exit from riding with pure class, the guy is an exemplar of his profession. He’s a Kiwi so he had a head start. He was actually born on New Zealand Day or Waitangi Day as it was then known, February 6. Seems like only yesterday he was a budding apprentice from Taranaki, a region famous not for its sheep but for its cows, its mountain and John Wheeler. The local joke is that if you can’t see Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont) because of the clouds, it’s raining, and if you can see it it’s going to rain. Childs had a marvelous career winning more than 40 Group 1s in Australia, throwing his leg over several of the epochal horses of the late 20th century. That group of NZ jockeys who filtered over to Australia from the mid-70s onwards had a major impact on racing here, guys like Garry Willetts, Midge Didham, Brent Thomson, Nigel Tiley, Bruce Compton, Greg Childs, Shane Dye, Jimmy and Larry Cassidy, Brian York and Grant Cooksley (I’ve probably missed a few, sorry) and even the women of that period like Maree Lyndon, Dianne Moseley and Linda Jones proved a point or two. It’s hard to fathom why those times, now more than 20 years ago, should have unearthed such a strong group of NZ jockeys capable of making cut-through in Australia where, up till then, it had been a national sport, cheer-led by those boorish, self-aggrandised old pressmen, to savage NZ jockeys at every opportunity. Since that intake which ended about the time of Childs's arrival, there have been more Kiwis who have tried their luck but none has made the same penetration.

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That's not a Hunter Valley scene, above. It's Heron Island at sun-up.

See you at church on the 25th. Outside.

On The Hunt In The Valley

2008-12-17T23:44:00.004+11:00

Five of the last seven days I've spent tootling around a very green and lush Hunter Valley looking at Magic Millions yearlings.

I've been to Strawberry Hill, Attunga, Yarraman, Kitchwin Hills, Bellerive, Holbrook, Kia Ora, Segenhoe, Darley, Riversdale, Ashleigh, Willow Park, Murrulla and Kulani Park.

I took the opportunity to go up to Willow Tree to see the new Kulani Park farm of Rhys Smith and Chloe Latif. I'm too much of a hardened old cynic to start pissing in peoples' pockets at my age, but this country blew me away. The property is on a magnificent stretch of virgin horse country lying to the north/east with rich soils, 1,000 acres or so, and whilst it's being set up with practicality a priority it is aesthetically very stimulating and will be a real showplace. Looks to me every bit as good as anything in the Valley proper. I used to say when I was running Waikato 20-odd years ago that a fool could breed good horses there (and I did, often) because the farm itself was superior. I can visualise Kulani Park breeding and rearing good horses at this new location; they have wide open spaces and fertile soils and have made a decision in principle never to overstock the place. Good luck to them. I also heard on the Hunter Valley grapevine that Coolmore have either bought or are acquiring land in this area as an insurance policy for the future.

I'll be up in the Valley for a further two days, look at about 100 more yearlings, then call it quits. At least that breaks the back of the main catalogue. I hit the Gold Coast on 1 January.

There's general nervousness, and rightly so, about what state the market will be in when MM opens. In times of economic uncertainty - and I'm sure the worst is still well ahead of us - people react primarily on emotion and are likely to approach this sale thinking conservatively. I believe vendors hold the key; if from the start they adopt a realistic approach to the value of their horses and allow them to get sold and create momentum at the sale, that will be an encouraging signal to the buying bench to roll their sleeves up and get stuck in. Let's face it, yearlings have been selling for far more than they're worth for several years now and many breeders have enjoyed massive profits. It's in breeders' best interests now to keep the stock moving, keep owners in the game and help keep the wheels of racing turning.

In the last recession, late '80s/early '90s, the damage was done when very high ingoing costs of production (notably service fees) were met by a rapid drop in the value of resultant progeny, as much as 60% over a couple of years. This imbalance put a lot of breeders out of business. Faced with the near-certainty of a declining market in the immediate future, upper-end service fees in 2008 are totally out of kilter with the reality. Major studs profess to have the interests of their breeder customers at heart (though savage increases in service fees, sometimes before stallions even have a runner, tend to belie that). If they truly did have those interests at heart they should be rebating 25 or 30% of the service fees charged in 2008 for breeders who are contracted at full freight and who pay on time. They can afford to do so. It would give their customers a better chance of trading profitably at the sales of 2011 and would be an appropriate gesture of goodwill as breeders head into uncertain times.

Oh look at the sky! Pigs flying!

Excellent News

2008-12-10T22:38:00.003+11:00

Hear ye, hear ye. William Inglis & Son are on the verge of unveiling a bells-and-whistles catalogue search engine on their website which will answer all our prayers!

Excellent news. MM will surely follow.

However, I have made the point to Wm Inglis that not everybody relies on the internet and that it would be advantageous and a positive service if both the indexes I mentioned - broodmare sires and grandams - appeared in hard copy in the catalogues.

An Old Whinge

2008-12-09T22:58:00.004+11:00

This is an old whinge of mine but it falls on deaf ears.

The indexes or, if you insist, indices, in Australian and NZ yearling sale catalogues are inadequate.

In addition to the sire and dam indexes, yearlings should be indexed by broodmare sire. An index of second dams should be provided, too. Both have been featured in Keeneland catalogues for decades. They are invaluable for finding your way around the offering. If I want to know which yearlings are out of O'Reilly (NZ) mares - to some buyers that's as relevant as knowing which yearlings are by Redoute's Choice - I shouldn't have to thumb through 900 pages to find them. Likewise, if I want to compare yearlings from a family, an index of second dams will help me locate them. (Remember how useful the Bruce Lowe numbers were?). These filters should also be incorporated into the sales companies' web-based catalogue searches.

Please MM and Inglis, it's only a few extra pages.

I thought I'd bore you with another Heron Island pic (above). The black noddy tern. There are about 70,000 of them up there at the moment. Ear plugs are provided in your rooms so you can get to sleep at night. In the cities we complain we never hear birdsong, up there it never stops and the faint scent of guano wafts on the Pacific breeze.

If I keep chipping away with these photos I reckon I'll do more for Australian tourism than the movie Australia. I haven't seen it and probably won't. Fair dinkum, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman??? Archetypal metrosexuals.

I Have Owned Some Turtles, These I Just Watched

2008-12-09T02:09:00.004+11:00

Thank you Mum, Dad and the kids for those ‘come back!’ ‘come back!’ messages of encouragement during the last couple of weeks.

I warned you kids, DO NOT to play with the computer!

My Blogpatrol widget tells me precisely how many people have read the blog, where they come from, what time of the day they log in, what search engine they use, the resolution of their computer screens, the operating system they use and the type of web browser. This is Big Brother! So I know how depressingly small is my constituency.

Which leads into the fact that the holiday I took recently was on account of my own big brother who, with his partner, was making just his second return to the southern hemisphere after leaving NZ 46 years ago. I have traveled north to spend time with them several times this decade but I managed to convince them they were well overdue for another look Down Under – 1982 was the last time.

The Heron Island trip was part of our time together. They were very keen to see the Great Barrier Reef before global warming stuffs it completely. I understand Heron is one of only three cays which has accommodation. If your vanity demands a five-star resort experience then Heron’s not for you; stick to Cairns or Townsville, Hayman, Lizard or Hamilton, even though they’re not actually on the reef, but if you want an inspiring experience with perfectly tolerable living conditions then Heron is the place. Give it a Google. Heron is only 18 hectares, much of it is forest and there’s almost 100,000 birds living there, including nesting under your room. The snorkeling and diving are tops. You can swim with the sharks and the rays here, they don’t bother you (it’s true!). If you do go, spend the extra money and take the helicopter rather than the launch from Gladstone, it’s fantastic flying over the reefs and the pilots are a fount of knowledge. We were lucky to be there during the turtle egg laying season, one of the best in recent years. Each night at high tide as many as 80 green turtles (and the occasional loggerhead) come up out of the sea to dig their nests where the vegetation meets the sand, laying up to 150 eggs each. If you get up at first light, you’ll also see many of them lurching back down the beach to the water having completed their tasks. They are fascinating to watch; nature in all her splendour.

Another compelling feature of Heron is that your mobile phone doesn’t work nor does your wireless broadband. Stuck out there, you don’t give a hoot in hell what’s happening in the outside world. Whatever is happening, it’s bound to be bad news anyway.

I can wean myself off racing almost instantaneously so being cut off never bothers me. If I had a single other skill I could drop racing and go do it without a moment’s hesitation. But I’m 60 next month and virtually unemployable, so that isn’t going to happen. When you get to 60 suddenly it hits you: shit, look at all the things I haven’t yet done in my life and to think I may have just a decade left to get my act together – if I’m lucky. You have a panic attack at the thought and for the first time in your life the meaning of the old saw “live each day like it’s the last” sheets home to you.

Such a day was the Saturday before Heron, when my guests and I were in Melbourne. Sydney is extraordinarily beautiful – take a week off like I did, just to appreciate its breathtaking vistas – but Melbourne is more humane and if it had Sydney’s climate perhaps everyone would live there. It's growing at a faster rate anyhow. This particular Saturday, not far off the official start of summer, it definitely did not have Sydney’s climate. I think it was the coldest Melbourne November weekend on record, the mercury managing to creep up to about 8 degrees celsius. My guests came from Toronto where 8 above can be interpreted as a heatwave at certain times of the year so they were disappointed about the weather but inured to it. As they were shopping for Chinese-made Australian souvenirs, I took refuge in the Elizabeth Street TAB and watched a filly I race in partnership win at Kembla Grange. Horses do that when you’re not there. Anyway, it lifted me out of my meteorological depression. I was just as pleased with the win of another filly in NZ, Tampiko (3f Lonhro-Ancient Song) as I had bought her for $500,000 at Easter ’07. She might be OK. They got stuck into her over there as an early two-year-old which amazed me as I thought she was a relatively immature but nevertheless stunning first foal but I’m pleased to see she has survived this far.

Doubtless lots of interesting and newsworthy things have happened in the racing and breeding worlds since I went bush and I don’t intend commenting on much of it, except for an extraordinary article I saw on the Racenet news service a short while back in which the writer, one Brad Waters, tore new Melburnian jockey Glen Boss to shreds after he had ridden a treble at Moonee Valley. I’ve tried finding this article on Racenet’s news archive but it’s either been removed or reworded on legal advice or appeared earlier than the archive cut off date and is no longer available, otherwise I would have reproduced it here. The standard of journalism on Racenet falls short of the Pulitzer Prize but that’s OK, it’s an umbrella website used by a lot of people for a lot of different reasons and it's here today, gone tomorrow. But this vitriolic piece by the shrill Waters (who’s he?) was an astonishing critique of possibly Australia’s number one money rider, right down to how he sits in the saddle and where he points his elbows. I’m not a member of any jockey’s fan club but even so, this guy Waters was clearly having a bad night. Did anyone happen to read it?

Resisting the necessity to return to normal working habits, I have been to my mail box only once since my holiday ended. At this point in time I have just one sale catalogue in front of me, Book 1 from Magic Millions (somebody read my blog earlier this year). I also have the Inglis Easter preview. Sales of a different colour. I will begin looking at yearlings on Wednesday. Why I’m not sure.

Off to Heron Island

2008-11-20T13:45:00.004+11:00

The blog is suspended. For the next fortnight. I'm going on holiday which will take me to such exotic places as Melbourne and Heron Island. For four days I'm not even going to be able to turn on a computer - fantastic! I expect to be hitting the road looking at yearlings when I get back (why I don't know, no one's asked me to) so whether I resume the blog or not is in the lap of the gods. I might start talking to real people instead of myself. That would make a change.

I Forgot To Take The All-Upper

2008-11-16T01:22:00.006+11:00

Horses I sell to Far North Queensland love the air up there.

At the Atherton meeting yesterday, their local, the three starters which I sold to Tom Hedley all won: Gaelic Lad (6g O'Reilly (NZ)-Swanette, by Danzero), his eighth win for Tom in 12 starts; In Absentia (5m Diatribe-Bolted (NZ), by Pentire (GB)), her fifth win in eight, and Vacillator (5m Diatribe-Bobbin Head (NZ), by Senor Pete (USA)), her fourth win in eight.

They're not racing for a fortune, but the bookies do operate!

Tom's trainer Roy Chillemi might have the best strike rate in Australia. Maybe even better than Gai's. It must be a bad situation fluking a really good horse up there. Placing them would have to be a fine art.

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The winner of Saturday's G2 New Zealand Cup, 3200m, at Riccarton Park, Hoorang, is unlikely to shake the living daylights out of next year's Melbourne Cup but as one of the few brave enough to run this journey these days she deserves her moment of fame. She clocked a pretty respectable 3:18.11 for the journey - not bad for a supposed mudder - compared with Viewed's Melbourne Cup which, for all the vaunted firmness of the track and breakneck Irish tactics, took 3:20.40.

She has no Sir Tristram (Ire) or Zabeel (NZ) in her pedigree but carries the next best thing, Mill Reef through the male line of Shirley Heights, Darshaan and Zerpour (Ire). The Aga Khan's Zerpour, a descendant of Petite Etoile, averaged just over 22 live foals per year in his seven NZ seasons from which he's had five stakeswinners including the hard-knocking Victorian Light Vision, winner of 10 and fifth in Saturday's G2 Sandown Classic.

Hoorang's pedigree is a large reservoir of stamina. Her unraced dam is by Rhythm (USA), the good USA Mr Prospector two-year-old who turned out more an influence for stamina during his largely forgettable southern hemisphere career. Her grandam is the G1 Queensland Oaks winner Triumphal Queen (NZ) by the temperamental Ribot-line horse Triumphal March (USA) who won a G2 Moonee Valley Cup over 2800m. Then the next dams are by champion sires Agricola (GB) and Faux Tirage (GB) until you come to the fifth dam Sunbride (GB), an epochal NZ import in the '40s whose descendants dominated classic and Cup racing in the late '50s and '60s. Her own foals included Melbourne and Sydney Cup winner Straight Draw, Caulfield Cup winner Ilumquh and Sydney Cup winner General Command. Brilliant performers like Dayana, Grand Cidium and Terrific were the next generation. Unquestionably, Hoorang is what she was bred to be.

The only Sir Tristram/Zabeel to be found in the result is per medium of third placed Vickezzchardonnay who is a daughter of Don Eduardo (NZ) whose sprinter-looking son Swift Alliance made it two from two at Rosehill on Saturday.

Sanbetdownfair Park

2008-11-14T21:42:00.003+11:00

Any truth in the rumour that the executives at Doomben have been burning the phone lines trying to flog Betfair some cheap naming rights to a racetrack?

I gagged on my muesli when I read about the‘re-naming’ of Sandown; had to reach for another big dollop of Greek-style yoghurt to make sure it slid down safely.

Composing myself, I came to realise it’s only a sponsorship, it’s not as if they’re going to tow the place out to sea. After about three years people will say “Betfair Park” although they will still think “Sandown” – the same mental process as translating into another language. Betfair obviously have good data which tells them such a spend will be rewarded by increased market share.

How are the form guides going to show it: BETPH for Hillside and BETPL for Lakeside? Or will they ignore it and stick to SANH and SANL? And Melways?

Think: when the proletariat overthrow the Germanic-Hellenic mob who live at the end of The Mall, naming rights will be up for grabs at Randwick, too. Crazy John's Randwick.

I wonder how The Family is going in the Global Financial Crisis? Any palaces up for grabs?

A Time Of Opportunity

2008-11-12T00:28:00.005+11:00

If you’ve got cash and are not in debt up to your eyeballs, the next couple of years are going to be good years to be buying yearlings and breeding stock.

There will be bargains out there.

Those of us old enough to remember what happened 20 years ago, when the last serious worldwide financial tidal wave occurred, see it happening all over again. This time, it looks like a full scale tsunami.

Though it took a couple of years to feed through, bloodstock prices in Australasia plummeted between 40 - 60%. Breeders who had been breeding at a high cost of production – big service fees in particular – took a pummeling when a shrinking buyers’ market eschewed over-matings. Weakly structured stud businesses went down the gurgler.

If you’re relatively new to this business you might think this is a fairytale. It’s not. The horse business, which relies on players at all levels not just the most wealthy, is very sensitive to the wider economy. It might take an extra year before the full impact is felt here, but felt it will be. Some studmasters who have been gouging breeders with service fees in the last few seasons will be begging for your custom (even though invariably they will oppose you in the yearling market). If you can still be bothered, that is. Not that they will lose much in having to chop their fees – many of their stallions have been mind-bogglingly profitable throughout their stud lives.

It was interesting to read in other media comments attributed to Garry Chittick, owner of Waikato Stud, probably NZ’s top performing stud this decade. He says he’s down 150 bookings on last year. It can’t be because his stallions are either over-priced, duds or unappealing in the NZ context – O’Reilly, Pins, Savabeel, No Excuse Needed, Fast ‘n’ Famous, Scaredee Cat. Though he speaks from a position of strength, he’s never been frightened to call a spade a bloody spade. In this game of smoke and mirrors and PR spin, few would have the balls to flesh out their argument publicly with “commercially sensitive” hard numbers, so Garry has shown leadership in drawing attention in this way to the malaise which is occurring.

The world’s biggest breeding stock sale, Keeneland November in Lexington, completed its eighth session on Tuesday, which means 60% of the catalogue has been offered. The gross is down 46.5%, the average down 36.9% and the median down 33.3%. There have been 284 fewer horses sold than at the same stage last year. Buyers are keen on the weanlings and are walking away from mares, especially those whose commercial prospects are questionable. Consignors have been withdrawing their entries in significant numbers to save themselves the bother/cost of having to buy them back in, unwilling to let such a weak market value them (what is their value other than what the market will pay for them on any given day?). It must be a frustrating sale to attend.

To get things in slightly better perspective, it was unquestionably a higher quality catalogue last year, so some of the deficit is due to that. The less attractive offering may well be due to owners of high-end fillies and mares deciding they did not want to have their horses valued on a declining market so they refrained from entering them. Last year, the Australian dollar was riding around 90 cents US, as against around 67 cents US this year. ANZ buyers, of whom I was one, bought about 25 mares; this year, up to Session 8, I’ve identified six in the names of ANZ buyers including Dean Fleming’s US$1.3 million Diamond Necklace, though perhaps there's more under other guises. Leaving her to one side, because Fleming is a northern hemisphere player, the other five have ranged from US$25,000 to US$270,000. Even with the dollar the way it is and the extra costs of shipment, individually they look value. With catalogue quality dropping away progressively, I don’t expect much more participation from ANZ interests.

The market will “correct” globally for some time yet. The well-situated breeder with long term aspirations who is prepared to do, or have done for him, the required homework, has a period of considerable opportunity opening up to him.

Incidentally, I love the term “correction” as it applies to price levels. Corrections only happen in hindsight. Which sellers were objecting, at the time, that the prices were ridiculously high in the first place?

More Than One Maldivian

2008-11-10T14:17:00.004+11:00

There might be more than one Maldivian in Australia before too long.

Reported today, the Republic of The Maldives has created a fund with which to purchase "a new homeland" in a foreign country for the relocation of its people in the event that rising water levels, as a result of climate change, submerge all or most of the archipelago. It is made up of 1,192 coral islets of which 193 are inhabited by about 300,000 people.

India and Sri Lanka are mentioned as possibilities, favoured because of cultural and climatic similarities, with the vast, empty, warm land of Australia next on the list.

The Maldives is the lowest-lying country above sea level on the planet with a maximum natural ground level of only 2.3 metres.

Have we seen the future?

Remember The Heavy 10 In The Middle Of July

2008-11-09T21:33:00.007+11:00

So what do you think of the VRC again treating the punters like second-class citizens throughout the Melbourne Cup carnival?

I’m referring of course to the exclusive live race telecast rights granted to and paid for by Channel 7.

Here we have the punters and addicts who watch the dedicated racing channels Sky and TVN, day in and day out, all year long, having to flick to Channel 7 if they want to see the race live or sit through the indignity of a call without vision waiting for delayed coverage. It’s a slap in the face for the people who fuel racing’s engine room 363 days a year.

TABCORP, which relies on profit from wagering and gaming, owns Sky. The VRC is part-owner of TVN, at much expense to the racing industry. Ironically, it contrives to deprive even its own flesh and blood of live broadcasts in the biggest week of the year.

Let me emphasise, it is wonderful that this magnificent racing festival is available free-to-air. It serves racing very well in that the coverage reaches, potentially, everyone, especially those who do not subscribe to pay-TV. Channel 7 presumably pays millions for these rights so I imagine they drive a hard bargain in nailing down the terms. But what's being gained by disenfranchising Sky and TVN pay-TV viewers?

Channel 7 aims to maximize its audience by inducing people to watch. Fair enough. It sells a suite of expensive advertising around the whole week, aimed right across the consumer base. It can claim to its advertisers, rightly, that it’s the only medium where the races can be seen live, except on-course, and it achieves ratings, especially on Cup Day itself, which justify the advertising rates.

Then there are the Sky and TVN viewers. I suppose some are happy to watch wall-to-wall Channel 7 on these four days, concentrating on just the one meeting, and do make the switch. Not too many I'm picking.

What’s left are we addicts who don’t give a rat’s what Simon Marshall’s kid is wearing to the races or which Channel 7 ‘celebrities’ or other products of indulgent parents are fart-arseing around in the marquees.

In our homes and in the pubs and clubs, we stay stuck to our Sky or TVN, two channels which between them, by the way, can barely sell a non-industry advertisement, such is the narrowness of their viewer base. We do anything to avoid the non-core fare served up on Channel 7 because, for the most part, we find it nauseating. At the death, as the last horses are loaded into the gates, we flick over to Channel 7 to watch the race live. As soon as John Letts has done his bit with the winning jockey we flick back again, hoping to get some insightful analysis from our trusted presenters.

Therefore, we haven’t seen a single Channel 7 advert or piece of self-promotion. Deliberately and happily. There’s not many of us anyway. If there were, Sky and TVN would be able to convince more of the commercial world to buy advertising space. We statistically insignificant people are the ones the VRC and Channel 7 punish for our intransigence. If we are statistically insignificant, what difference would it make if we were allowed to see the races live on the racing channels? It would hardly send Channel 7 out of business. Sky and TVN aren't Nine or Ten.

Melbourne Cup week is one of the world’s premier sporting occasions. It reaches deep into the social fabric of the Australasian community and enjoys an ever-expanding international awareness (witness the lead items on several overseas sports news services, for example).

The proprietors of this festival hold the whip hand. Possibly outside the Olympics once every four years, there’s not another sporting product to rival it. They ought to be doing that little bit better for the loyal customers who are still with them when it’s a Heavy 10 in the middle of July.

An American's Take On The Cup

2008-11-08T21:58:00.006+11:00

American racing journalist Dick Powell attended this year's Melbourne Cup. Here's his account, reprinted from Bloodstock Journal on Brisnet of 8 November.

By Dick Powell

In 148 years of running there has never been a dead heat for win in the Melbourne Cup (Aus-G1). On Tuesday, we almost had one but enough history was made to more than make up for it.

On a sunny, cool, windswept day, Bart Cummings won his record 12th Melbourne Cup and 250th Group 1 stakes when longshot VIEWED (Scenic [Ire]) held on by a desperate nose under a fantastic ride by 21-year-old Blake Shinn. Denied glory was European invader BAUER (Halling) who had every shot to go by in the final yards, looked like he did when his rider Corey Brown was ahead of Shinn at the wire, and then saw the result of the photo with Viewed holding on by what should be termed "anything closer would be a dead heat."

After the race, Brown was inconsolable. It's one thing to run second -- it's another to think that you have won and then find that you didn't. For trainer Luca Cumani, it was the second year in a row that one of his charges suffered a heartbreaking defeat. Last year, PURPLE MOON (Galileo [Ire]) had a clear lead in the stretch before being run down by EFFICIENT (Zabeel) in the final yards. This year, Cumani's Bauer was making up ground with every stride before falling a nose short. It was a cruel day for many but not for the man they call the "Cups King."

It's good to be the King and Cummings is all of that. Despite the presence of eight European invaders the Cup stayed in Australia even though many Melbourne newspapers were predicting that the home team might not ever win again.

Two years ago, Aidan O'Brien brought champion stayer YEATS (Ire) (Sadler's Wells) to the Melbourne Cup and he failed miserably. Last year, O'Brien brought SCORPION (Ire) (Montjeu [Ire]), who was scratched because of a career-ending injury, and MAHLER (Galileo [Ire]), who ran a good third while disputing the pace. The Melbourne Cup is a two-mile handicap and a great horse will have to not only carry high weight but concede to very capable distance specialists. It takes the right kind of horse to win the Melbourne Cup and O'Brien thought he had him with SEPTIMUS (Sadler's Wells) who won the Irish St. Leger (Ire-G1) by 13 lengths in his last start.

The Melbourne Cup is usually run with a strong pace out of the gate and down the home straightaway the first time. When the horses settle into position as they go around the first turn, the pace usually slows to a crawl and it's then a matter of biding time until the last three furlongs. The wide, sweeping nature of the second turn enables the horses running behind to get clear sailing and it's a mad scramble to the wire. O'Brien did not feel that this kind of pace scenario would suit Septimus and he brought along HONOLULU (Ire) (Montjeu [Ire]) and ALESSANDRO VOLTA (Montjeu [Ire]) to insure that the pace would be strong and even throughout.

All week O'Brien made no secret of what his tactics would be and when the gate opened and the field of 22 was sent on its way, everything went according to plan. However, all week O'Brien publicly worried about the condition of the turf and made it clear that his runners would not like it too firm as Flemington Racecourse had been. Southern Australia has been in a long-term drought and the turf courses have been very firm. Even with overnight watering, the course would start out with some give and then firm up as the sun and wind dried it out.

On Tuesday, the course started out rated as "Dead Four" which for comparison purposes would be between good to firm in America. During the day it was then changed to a much firmer "Good Three." Co-owners Derrick Smith and Tom Magnier made no secret of the fact that if the course were not watered enough and it played like it did on Saturday they would scratch Septimus. When the course rating was changed they had the opportunity to scratch any or all of their three entrants but they, along with O'Brien, decided to give it a shot.

As the field settled itself out and they went around the first turn, Johnny Murtagh had Septimus prominently placed and Wayne Lordan took over the lead aboard Alessandro Volta with Honolulu right off their flank. At the point of the race where the Melbourne Cup usually slows to a crawl, the O'Brien-trained trio separated themselves from the rest of the field and covered the first 1,600 meters (just under a mile) in 1:40.8.

At this point it looked like the O'Brien tactics were working like a charm but they continued on a relentless pace with no letup. They were going to take the late kick out of the closers by forcing them to use too much energy to keep up. Unfortunately, the rest of the field pretty much ignored them and ran the way they were most comfortable.

With more than a half-mile to go, the two pacemakers not only tired but dropped back suddenly leaving Septimus completely exposed. The field was catching up and at the top of the stretch they began to swoop by with Septimus offering little resistance as his stride shortened noticeably.

The first to strike was Viewed and for a while it looked like Shinn had attacked too soon. But what made Shinn's move so successful was that he did not hesitate for a moment. He didn't want the lead more than a quarter-mile from the wire but when the front runners stopped he seized the moment and the Cup itself. Viewed, one of two entrants trained by Cummings, opened a clear lead with a furlong to go and the only real threat was coming from Bauer.

Unlike O'Brien, Cumani has prepped his Melbourne Cup starters with a race in Australia. This year, he ran Mad Rush (Lemon Drop Kid) in the Caulfield Cup (Aus-G1) where he was a tough-trip fourth and Bauer in the Geelong Cup (Aus-G3) which he won. O'Brien has chosen to ship in later, go through quarantine and train them for the race off a layoff.

In America, we define a layoff of at least a month but many of Tuesday's starters not only raced in the Caulfield Cup on October 18 but some competed in the Cox Plate (Aus-G1) on October 25 and/or the Mackinnon Stakes (Aus-G1) which was run on Saturday. Some also ran on Saturday in the Saab Quality S. (Aus-G3) with only a three-day rest before a two-mile handicap.

Mad Rush was the more fancied of the Cumani pair but it was Bauer that was making the mad rush to the finish. It fell a nose short and Bart Cummings had a dozen Melbourne Cups in his possession. Immediately after the race, there was talk of a baker's dozen for Bart since Viewed is only five years old and he has MOATIZE (Danehill Dancer), who won the Saab Quality and finished sixth in the Melbourne Cup, and DANDAAD (Istidaad) who won the Long Black Handicap at 2,800 meters earlier on the card.

For Shinn it was vindication and reward for an aggressive move that looked premature but turned out to be prescient. Had he been caught, he would have had to live with being known as the rider that blew Bart's 12th Melbourne Cup by moving too soon. Instead, he won the photo and gets Melbourne Cup win number one out of the way.

As exciting as Melbourne Cup 148 was, the fireworks were just beginning. The stewards called in the riders from the O'Brien team after the race and questioned their tactics. Considering that Septimus finished 18th, Alessandro Volta finished 20th and Honolulu finished 21st, this seemed to be unnecessary but Australia does have a rule that each horse has to be ridden in a way that ensures the best possible place in the field. Obviously, a rabbit is in the race to ensure the best possible place of his stablemate but O'Brien had said all along that this was how these three horses run.

Both Septimus and Honolulu pulled up lame after the race and O'Brien now was second-guessing not only his strategy but even running them in the first place. He said the course was like concrete after being promised that it would be watered sufficiently. But his day was not over.

Ninety minutes after the race was over, O'Brien was summoned back to the track to answer the stewards' questions about riding tactics that the riders had already given them. O'Brien was rightfully upset that he and his riders' integrity were being challenged. The fact that all three went out, set the pace, and tired badly had O'Brien, tongue planted not-so-firmly in cheek, ask the stewards "Do you think we were running our horses for Bart Cummings?" Even chief steward Terry Bailey had to respond, "I wouldn't have thought so."

I can understand the stewards doing their job and enforcing the rules of Australian racing. The betting public needs to be protected and each horse should only be entered and ridden with the best possible placing in mind.

But what about all the horses in the race that showed virtually no recent form and suddenly blossomed when history and big money is on the line? Do the stewards go back and question why Viewed ran dead last in Saturday's Mackinnon? Do they call in Viewed's rider that day, Steve Arnold, and question him about what instructions were given to him with the Melbourne Cup only three days away? What about all the trainers that avoid winning the prep races so as not to pick up a weight penalty? How is the betting public's interest protected when horses are entered in races and there appears to be a lack of effort because bigger races are on the horizon?

Australia has this rule and it's a good one but it is only a good one if it is enforced unilaterally. It was a bad day for O'Brien and it could not have been a happy plane ride back to Ireland for the team. Besides the stewards' inquisition, the Australian media has been brutal on him

One other thing that Cumani and others do is use Australian jockeys in the Melbourne Cup. Cumani had Damien Oliver, who has won two Cups, aboard Mad Rush and Brown aboard Bauer. Dermot Weld, who has won two Melbourne Cups, one with Ireland's Mick Kinane and the other with Oliver, used Glen Boss, winner of three Cups aboard the immortal Makybe Diva, on PROFOUND BEAUTY (Danehill). O'Brien brought his own riders, decided against a prep race and went home with an ignominious ending to a season that at one point looked like he was going to set a record for Group 1 stakes wins.

Beneath O'Brien's placid exterior is a burning passion for success. I have to assume that he and Team Coolmore will regroup and plan another raid down under next year with a vengeance. But, they will have to show some flexibility in selection of horses and tactics. Next year's Cup will be extremely difficult for anyone to win; even Bart Cummings. The Japanese, who ran first and second in 2006, should be over their Equine Influenza issues by then and two miles on firm ground is right up their alley. Cumani will be a force again and Profound Beauty ran a gigantic race to be fifth for Weld. Godolphin had horrible luck when ALL THE GOOD (Diesis [GB]), winner of the Caulfield Cup when Viewed ran 10th, came up injured the week of the race and they will be back next year as well.

There are many things to like about Australian racing. In the track program, every imaginable equipment change is listed. In a section called "Today's Gear Information," details on blinkers, bandages, glue on shoes, bar shoes, cross over nosebands, lugging bit, tongue tie and winkers are listed at the time of entry.

On Saturday's card that was highlighted by the Victoria Derby (Aus-G1), an announcement was made two races in advance that the probable heavy favorite, WHOBEGOTYOU (Street Cry [Ire]), had suffered an injury in shipping to Flemington and had been examined by the attending vets for contusions on one of his forelegs. He passed inspection but no piece of information about the horses is too small to be communicated to the bettors.

Flemington Racecourse is a big, expansive track that handles the six-figure crowds quite well. Saturday's Derby card saw 117,700 attend and while there were long lines to bet it was comfortable. I purchased my seat online like anyone else and due to the luck of going online the day that they went on sale it was right on the finish line in the Hill Stand. I can't imagine having that opportunity in any major American race.

The train system in Flemington is fantastic. They have constant service for their four major race days of the Spring Racing Carnival and most take advantage of it. I walked from my hotel to the Flinders Street Station on the two days of racing that I attended, got aboard with thousands of other racegoers and was at the track in twenty minutes. The train arrived behind the track as close as Union Avenue is to the Saratoga grandstand. Leaving the track was even easier.

Because of the long lines to bet I made most of my plays through the many licensed bookmakers at the track. If you want to make exotic bets you have to get on line and bet with the tote but if you bet win and place -- as most people do -- the bookmakers are a convenient option.

Two factors with betting with bookmakers are worth noting. First, most of the money comes in early. If a big bettor likes a line that is being offered they grab it and do not wait until the last second like tote betting. When I arrived on Tuesday, Septimus was offered at 6-1 odds. Even with the firm ground, I thought that was a very fair price and took it. Second, by post time, he had drifted up to 7-1 meaning that not only could I have gotten better odds had I waited but the money was going elsewhere and there was little confidence in his chances. The favorite wound up being Mad Rush at 9-2 but the horse that dropped the most was Profound Beauty who was quoted at 7.5 to 1 near post time.

We all complain in America about late odds changes but the reality is that many horse's odds go up at the last second as go down. Fixed odds wagering is great and if given the chance I would always use it but there is a downside to it when you are locked into a price that is going the wrong way.

Melbourne is a long way from home and the Albany/Baltimore/Nashville/Los Angeles/Auckland/Melbourne journey is grueling to say the least. But if finances permit it, I'll be back. It was that good.

Steve adds:
NB: regarding on-line booking, I have booked seats on-line for Del Mar long before leaving Australia for the southern Californian meeting (Clubhouse, pictured above)and, depending on what you wanted to pay, the options were excellent. A few years ago, for US$8 a day, I had entry and a reserved seat in the grandstand opposite the winning post for the whole fortnight I was there. The first day I arrived I fronted up at the Will Call window and the tickets were there as booked, waiting for me. No one ever mistakenly sat in my seat, the place was as clean as a whistle, there were no drunken louts abusing me as I left the track and no one vomiting on the train station platform (because there isn't one). One of the most pleasant parts of the experience was to go to the organised trackwork sessions in the morning (around 7.30 a.m.), breakfasting al fresco in the grandstand while noted former jockeys and personalities wander around with a remote microphone giving all the details of the workouts happening in front of you. The weather always seemed good and the prices very reasonable. They are getting out of hand for the average family in Australia. After paying entry and racebooks for a couple of adults on some of these big days, how much do people have left to bet with? Every time you spend a dollar at the windows you are contributing something to help pay for putting on the show. Turnover is the name of the game in racing, that's why gate prices should be cheaper than other forms of entertainment or sport.

Sounds Irish

2008-11-08T18:22:00.006+11:00

You have to have a Ph.D. to understand the racename merry-go-round played by the VRC. Swick’s win in the G1 Patinack Farm VRC Classic on Saturday reminded me.

Let me quote from Racing In Australia, published by The Thoroughbred:

“For almost half a century the Salinger Stakes (once known as the Craven A Stakes) has been the premier sprint race down the famous Flemington straight 1200m course during the Melbourne Cup carnival.

“In 2007, the VRC took the major step of not only relocating the Group 1 sprint from Derby Day to Final Day, but also changing the conditions from a handicap to weight-for-age. To add confusion to the mix, the old sponsor Seppelts Salinger preferred to remain part of Derby Day, so the “old The Age Classic (formerly raced on Oaks Day and then Final Day as the Linlithgow Stakes at weight-for-age) was moved to Derby Day and renamed the Group 2 Salinger Stakes (1200m).”

Are you with me?

So Swick (NZ) has done the only logical thing and won both of them. He won the Salinger in 2007 which was a G2 race, not a G1, for the first time that year, even though it really wasn’t the Salinger, it was The Age Classic. He made up for that this year when he won the G1 VRC Classic, even though it really wasn’t the VRC Classic, it was the Salinger.

Are you still with me?

Anyway, the win by the very consistent Swick highlighted a notable day for his sire O’Reilly (NZ) (Last Tycoon (Ire)-Courtza (NZ), by Pompeii Court (USA)). Eight of his 10 runners on the day – two bush results are still to come – provided four winners including one other at Flemington, Vigor (NZ).

Equally significant, his daughters were represented by only two runners in NZ and both won black-type races. Daffodil (by No Excuse Needed (GB)-Spring) took out the G1 NZ Thousand Guineas at Riccarton Park and Tootsie (by Pins-Hyades) won the Listed sprint at Te Rapa. Though he’s only 15 years old, O’Reilly is already the broodmare sire of seven stakeswinners.

Check out the results of the two 2500m stakes races run on Saturday in Australasia. Stand Tall won the G3 Gold Club Metropolitan Trophy at Riccarton Park. He’s by Zabeel (NZ) (out of Grand Archway). Capecover (NZ) won the G3 Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington. He’s out of a Zabeel mare.

It’s a disease.

STOP PRESS: one of the two O'Reilly bush results is in and would you believe Sylvan O'Reilly has won the $52,500 Ararat Gold Cup (a bush race?). So that's 5 winners from 9 known runners by the sire. Not bad. Big day also for O'Reilly's owner Garry Chittick: he bred 3 stakeswinners on the day in G1 Daffodil, G1 Swick and LR Tootsie.

Must Mean Something

2008-11-06T23:09:00.003+11:00

Of the six richest races of 2000m or further run in Australia and NZ this season to date, Sir Tristram (Ire) features in the pedigrees of the winners of five of them. The Caulfield Cup is the only race he has struck out in.

The winners have been Viewed (Melbourne Cup - sire of the grandam), Maldivian (NZ) (Cox Plate - paternal grandsire via Zabeel), Princess Coup (Kelt Capital Stakes - via broodmare sire Sovereign Red), Rebel Raider (VRC Derby - paternal grandsire via Zabeel and via maternal grandsire Dalmacia) and Samantha Miss (VRC Oaks - via broodmare sire Zabeel).

The closest finisher carrying his blood in the Caulfield Cup was Red Ruler, sixth. Can't figure out what happened there; must have had an off day.

Sam I Am

2008-11-06T00:11:00.009+11:00

It’s hard to go past Samantha Miss (3f Redoute’s Choice-Milliyet (NZ), by Zabeel (NZ), pictured) in Thursday’s G1 VRC Oaks, 2500m. She is as dominant a filly in her generation as were recent winners Miss Finland, Serenade Rose and Special Harmony at the same stage in theirs, the only difference being they were all trained in Victoria.

All she’s got to do, and I say all, is prove she’s trained on and prove she can handle 2500m. Flemington should suit her better than Moonee Valley where she briefly got off stride but her closing effort in the G1 W S Cox Plate was meritorious. Her spring preparation has been a model of good timing and she looks as good a stayer as Miss Finland, the fine Redoute’s Choice filly who won this in 2006.

Kimillsy (3f Danehill Dancer (Ire)-Lady Fidelia, by Snippets) should have won Saturday’s G2 Wakeful Stakes quite easily; hers was the best run in the race which is frequently a good guide. A Danehill Dancer filly, Arapaho Miss, won the race last year but as this Cup carnival has illustrated graphically through the success of interstate horses, the class of 2007 in Melbourne left something to be desired. Four of the top chances this year are trained in NSW. The Danehill Dancers which genuinely stay are in the minority though we saw Moatize run a bottler in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. Out of a Snippets mare then a Biscay mare, Kimillsy doesn’t appear to have the pedigree for 2500m but she will get a cheap run from gate two and ought to be in the finish though, like every other filly from Sydney, Samantha Miss has always had her measure.

Seven fillies carry the blood of the number one stamina influence, Sir Tristram (Ire). To save you looking them up they are Samantha Miss, Rocha, Oval Affair, Miss Scarlatti (NZ), Tobouggie Woogie, Allez Wonder and Poco Gusto. It's 16 years since the last NZ-bred won this classic, Slight Chance (NZ) in 1992. Miss Scarlatti (NZ) is the only hope this year but if Samantha Miss does the business at least it can be said she was bred by Kiwis!

Bart has won the race eight times and has two engaged, Think Money (3f Danehill Dancer (Ire)-Ponziani (NZ), by Nassipour (USA)) and Allez Wonder (3f Redoute’s Choice-Luna Tudor, by Military Plume (NZ)). Both are maidens, both have the Cummings trademark running style of getting back and getting home, and both are owned, wholly or in part, by Dato Tan Chin Nam. Lee Freedman is a four-time winner with a superbly-bred and in-form pair this year, Miss Scarlatti (NZ) (3f Stravinsky (USA)-Crimson, by Zabeel (NZ)) and Estee (3f Redoute’s Choice-Tycoon Lil, by Last Tycoon (Ire)).

Unlike the VRC Derby, who moans and groans about the VRC Oaks being 2500m and too taxing on the fillies at this time of year? Owners of fillies who are often also breeders will grab any chance to get black type so in they go. In the long run, you don’t run value off a filly for the odd over-ambitious failed attempt. When people look at dams' records in a catalogue they basically take regard of the races shown, not the ones which aren’t, whereas most bad runs are used in evidence against an aspiring young stallion.

How many times do you hear, “She’s a nice mare, she was stakes placed", as against “No stud would have him, he’s only stakes placed.”

I wonder if the Sex Discrimination Commissioner knows about this?

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Bishop's Disease must be catching. Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, and I suppose I should be grateful somebody reads my blog. A Melbourne Cup story appearing in the breeding section of the nation’s number one racing website bears a more than passing resemblance to my blog, below. Journos are a lazy mob. I know. Thirty years ago I was one.

Single-handedly, Bart Saves The Australian Stayer

2008-11-05T01:08:00.007+11:00

This year, perhaps more than for a long time, the Melbourne Cup was a sheer lottery.

Fuelled by growing international involvement, the weeks leading up to the race and the unpredictable contest itself were charged with drama.

Conventional form was hard to spot in the outcome. If you wagered successfully in the Melbourne Cup this year it was most likely on account of your faith rather than because of logical form analysis, on account of impressions formed of horses when they were previously at their peaks and who you trusted would revert to their peaks on the day.

Winner (by a small pimple) Viewed had not filled a place in his preparation. The historical stats will show he finished last in his lead-up race just three days before.

Third placegetter C’est La Guerre (NZ) had not filled a place previously this preparation.

Fourth placegetter Master O’Reilly (NZ) had placed only once from four lead-up starts.

Only runner-up Bauer (Ire) had been meaningfully on the board, via his Geelong Cup victory at his only prior Australian start.

Coincidentally, last year’s winner Efficient (NZ) did not fill a place in any of his four lead-up races. You have to go back a long way to find the next previous example of a winner without a conventional spring form line.

Such is the nature of a 3200m handicap with 22 starters, seven of whom travelled across the globe to run. There are lots of unknowns and lots of possible permutations. The final 800m of these races can be unforgiving.

But the constant in modern Melbourne Cup history has been Bart Cummings. How ironic, given Bart's well-aired views about overseas horses competing in the race, that it should be a JBC horse which deprived yet another import of victory.

Viewed gave him an unbelievable 12th success in the race, by the width of one of Bart’s bushy eyebrow hairs. Nobody now living is likely to see a comparable record put together, and, conceivably, Bart is not finished yet. I see quite a bit of Bart around the traps and he is one sharp 80-year-old! Lee Freedman is 30 years younger than Bart and has five Melbourne Cups in the cupboard so if he lives a long and productive life Lee has a statistical chance – but his stable couldn’t field a starter this year. You need a certain type of owner prepared to go the stayer’s route and in four-time winner Dato Tan Chin Nam Bart has had such an ally for decades.

Here is an amazing fact: in the last 16 years only three Australian-breds have won the Melbourne Cup. Bart has trained all of them. Viewed this year, Rogan Josh in 1999 and Saintly (conceived in NZ but foaled in Australia) in 1996. Of his nine other winners, starting with Light Fingers (NZ) in 1965, eight were NZ-bred and one USA-bred.

Viewed will owe a lot of his stamina to his NZ family heritage and, of course, to Sir Tristram (Ire), sire of his grandam. His fourth dam is the famous polo-playing mare Wuthering Heights (by Avocat General (Ire)). She is also the sixth dam of Weekend Hussler who, perversely, has shown there are clear limits to his stamina. Interestingly, Viewed carries on the bottom side of his pedigree a line of L’Enjoleur, twice Canadian Horse Of The Year, as does G1 Epsom and Mackinnon winner Theseo.

Viewed comes from the 13th crop of now-deceased Scenic (Ire), the first son of Sadler’s Wells at stud in Australia and still easily the best. His crop of 48 foals in 1998-99 is the only one not to contain stakeswinners of which he has had 66 worldwide including 10 Group 1 winners, all in Australia. Scenic drifted in and out of fashion like bell bottom trousers and you were doing well if in any given year you could nominate correctly where he was standing. He finished his time covering at a fee of $16,500 in Western Australia, dying in early 2005 aged 19.

I haven't looked underneath to check, but if the official data is correct, Viewed is the first Australian-bred entire to win a Melbourne Cup since Rain Lover in 1969. It’s said to be the kiss-of-death for a stallion. Judge for yourself: the other entires to win since Rain Lover have been Silver Knight (NZ), Beldale Ball (USA), At Talaq (USA), Tawriffic (NZ), Kingston Rule (USA), Jeune (GB) and Delta Blues (JPN) in 2006. Of those used at stud in Australia, Jeune was given the best opportunity by breeders, averaging 95 mares a year for 10 seasons. At Talaq averaged 60, Kingston Rule 39 and Tawriffic 26 prior to his export to Ireland as a 14-year-old. Silver Knight sired four stakeswinners including, significantly, the 1984 Melbourne Cup winner Black Knight.

Yes, three Australian-bred Melbourne Cup winners in 16 years. And Bart trained them all. And who was the next Australian-bred to finish behind Viewed? Moatize, sixth. Good old Bart trains him, too. Don't ya love him!

Recession? What Recession?

2008-11-03T15:28:00.004+11:00

Latest piece of lunacy out of the USA - 12-year-old EMPTY mare Better Than Honour sells for a world record US$14,000,000 at Fasig-Tipton Kentucky November Sale today, to USA buyers Southern Equine Stables who were joint owners of the mare when she went into the ring. The mare, by Deputy Minister-Blush With Pride, by Blushing Groom-Best In Show, is the dam of two G1 Belmont Stakes winners: Jazil (by Seeking The Gold)and the high class filly Rags To Riches (by A P Indy), as well as current Japanese-trained USA G2 winner Casino Drive (by Mineshaft), from her first five foals. She is the most recent Kentucky Broodmare of the Year. At today's exchange rate that's Aus$21 million.

That's a lot of money for a uterus but if you're paying with 50 cent dollars it's a snip at just A$10,500,000 !

First Boozeday In November

2008-11-02T10:56:00.009+11:00

I’ve consulted Weatherzone (see sidebar) and it tells me there’s no reason for VRC or RVL management to weak-kneedly cave in to the blackmail from certain overseas participants to doctor the track for Tuesday’s Cup.

Undignified and condescending comments reportedly attributed to overseas connections – including one supposed Australian – about what should and shouldn’t be convince me that some people still have trouble coming to grips with the fact that the Empire and Australia parted ways long ago.

There’s a likelihood of some precipitation each day including Tuesday, so no need to alter the natural status of the track. No more Makybe Divas please. Weatherzone predicts it will be quite gusty so ladies put a hatpin through your fascinators and tie your miniskirts down.

Interesting aspect of this year’s field and a sign of the times: these stables don’t have a runner: Hayes, Freedman, Waterhouse, Snowden, Hawkes, Price, Moody, Rogerson.

The weight scale is compressed, I think it’s a strongly competitive Cup field. We should see a stirring contest.

SEPTIMUS (Ire) 58.5 10 6h Sadler’s Wells-Caladira, by Darshaan Aidan O’Brien/Johnny Murtagh. You take your life in your hands bringing a Sadler’s Wells to Australia. But he’s won 5 of his 8 starts on tracks rated ‘good’ so I don’t see what their beef is. Shortest win 1408m as a 2YO maiden, longest win 3621m of the Doncaster Cup. Pertinent fact: in only two of his 12 starts has he been in a field bigger than nine. The first was at his debut when there were 12 rivals, the other was in the Epsom Derby where he finished 12th of 18 and was never closer in running. If he lands midfield I hope he doesn’t get claustrophobic or sulk. His two closest stakeswinning relations got their black type in Sweden and India.

MASTER O’REILLY (NZ) 55 6 6g O’Reilly-Without Remorse, by Bahkaroff (USA) Danny O’Brien/Vlad Duric. Last year’s favourite. I think this is the one he’s been trained for. Cox Plate run was just trackwork. Has only once carried this weight successfully, in a Class 1 race at Seymour. Must get himself handier in running. How many Melbourne Cup winners have a Golden Slipper winner in their pedigree? I have some nagging reservations.

HONOLULU (Ire) 54.5 24 5h Montjeu (Ire)-Cerulean Sky, by Darshaan Aidan O’Brien/Colm O’Donoghue. He won’t be hanging about from the draw but of course he won’t be a pacemaker. Has run more marathons than Abebe Bikila (lately, anyway). Winning range 2414m to 4369m. His rider has never ridden him in a race before – probably his work rider. Has a magnificent pedigree and some good formlines. There will be more people at Flemington than your average crowd at Roscommon or Limerick; may fire up and lose his cool in the Cup day cauldron.

C’EST LA GUERRE (NZ) 54 5 4g Shinko King (Ire)-La Magnifique, by Kampala (GB) John Sadler/Brett Prebble. This year’s NZ Derby winner. There are some heavy-hitters in this horse’s ownership including Singo and leading music industry identities, they must have paid a squillion for him so Tuesday is get-square day. If it happened to hose down his chances would magnify. His last two runs have been very good. There are no stayers in his family so he is the black NZ sheep. Dedicated back runner but he’ll be going forward when others are looking for an armchair. Real smokey.

NOM DU JEU (NZ) 54 1 4h Montjeu (Ire)-Prized Gem, by Prized (USA) Murray and Bjorn Baker/Jeff Lloyd. If he’d have been in a yearling sale, Demi O’Byrne would have bought him for a store jumper. But he’s a home-bred out of a mare who won both a Kelt and a Brisbane Cup. Noble Bijou and Mellay are mixed up in the genes. Proven class act. From his barrier position there has to be a rough hope Jeff Lloyd won’t cover too much ground and with the length of the Flemington straight won’t arrive too late. I think he’s an international-class stayer with a great chance. (pictured above)

YELLOWSTONE (Ire) 54 12 5h Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire)-Love And Affection, by Exclusive Era Jane Chapple-Hyam/John Egan. Someone should tell Jane that Daddy’s born-to-rule party aren’t in power any more and to stop being so bossy. Has won only three races from 19, and has always been distanced when in G1 company. No one in Australia would back a Rock to win a Melbourne Cup. Hasn’t raced since 13 September when 54 lengths second last behind Septimus. How can you fall into it? Would make Rebel Raider look like a favourite. Out of a three-quarter sister to high class G1 miler Zoman who proved infertile at stud. SCRATCHED

ZIPPING 54 16 7g Danehill (USA)-Social Scene (Ire), by Grand Lodge (USA) John Sadler/Danny Nikolic. Had four lead-up runs last year before his good fourth placing in the Cup, only three this year. Had seven lead-ups in 2006 when also fourth. So you can see they are fine-tuning the formula. Has been racing very well. Was $1.90 when he won his first start in a Gold Coast 2YO maiden on 31 July 2004. Will go back looking for economical run, he and stablemate C’est La Guerre may make their runs together. Live hope.

MAD RUSH (USA) 53.5 4 5h Lemon Drop Kid-Revonda, by Sadler’s Wells Luca Cumani/Damien Oliver. Has raced only nine times. His Caulfield Cup finish was in keeping with his name. In his only race beyond 2400m he was beaten a short neck at Longchamp. Owner Earle Mack is a highly distinguished gentleman with a long and successful history in thoroughbreds and real estate. USA Ambassador to Finland in 2004, Chairman of the New York State Racing Commission for seven years. Mad Rush’s sire is a relation of A P Indy and his family doesn’t have a rich stamina heritage but it’s hard to poke a hole in his form. One thing’s for sure – D Oliver has so many holidays ahead of him you know he’ll be trying.

ICE CHARIOT 53 22 6g Semipalatinsk (USA)-Snow Chariot, by Chariot Ron Maund/Michael Rodd. Has not run a bad race all season and is seasoned with four starts in the last month. Finished 22nd in the 2006 Melbourne Cup and looking at his record overall I wonder if he the class to win a race like this. He has won $1.1 million without beating anything of quality. How did I make him my roughie in the Caulfield Cup? Will get back but Hot Rodd has a secret Flemington map which could help him at the finish.

VIEWED 53 9 5h Scenic (Ire)-Lover’s Knot (NZ), by Khozaam (USA) Bart Cummings/Blake Shinn. A sentimental favourite because a win would be Bart’s 12th and his 250th G1 victory. No doubt he has been trained for this and nothing else. Undistinguished in good quality company so a leap of faith is required. His sire has never left true stayers but there’s Sir Tristram (Ire) in the pedigree and he comes from the polo-playing family of Battle Heights so there’s some toughness there. I won’t jinx Bart by having my dollar on.

LITTORIO 52.5 17 4g Bellotto (USA)-Our Centasea, by Centaine Nigel Blackiston/Steven King. Has done nothing wrong and Saturday’s run of race didn’t suit him so forget it. But is he just a one-dimensional plodder? It looks a bit that way, and/or his style of racing can get him into a lot of trouble in races. There are 23 others to get around here. Not entitled on breeding to be a stayer. Two wins from 16, he’s going to have to pull finger soon to avoid the “gonna” tag.

BAUER (Ire) 52 13 6h Halling-Dali’s Grey, by Linamix Luca Cumani/Corey Brown. Winning form is good form; in Australian debut beat Moatize at Geelong and he went on to win the Saab. The Europeans don’t rate him as highly as some of the others which is understandable looking at his background. Stamina aplenty in his pedigree and all his wins have been in the 2000m – 2800m range. His sire was a late-blooming crack by the same sire as All The Good. Can take a reasonably prominent position in running and likely to be well served for jockeyship. Could be a player.

BOUNDLESS (NZ) 52 20 4m Van Nistelrooy (USA)-Nothing Less, by Star Way (GB) Stephen McKee/Greg Childs. I gave her a big hope in the Caulfield Cup but she didn’t really kick on. Flemington will definitely suit her better but the spectre of G Childs and 20 at the barrier haunts me. Bred to go five miles on the dam’s side but Van Nistelrooy?? That's a stretch. Wouldn’t surprise me altogether if she was in the firing line somewhere down the straight.

GALLOPIN (NZ) 52 21 5g Pins-Carla Rossi, by Spectacular Love (USA) Danny O’Brien/James Winks. Defies his pedigree and appears to stay well. Looking for sources of stamina, the sire of his fifth dam sired a Melbourne Cup winner and the sire of his grandam had an Auckland Cup winner. Otherwise it’s a dead-set blue collar background – this may be the best horse in the family for 60 years. Won the Moonee Valley Cup last start and prior to that raced without luck, but I can’t see that he’s ever beaten a good horse.

GUYNO (NZ) 52 8 5g O’Reilly (NZ)-River Century, by Centaine Lou Luciani/Craig Newitt. Hasn’t been far away in four starts in Melbourne but these have been second tier races. Last won 12 months ago, consistent meantime. His half-sister Legs won the Kelt and NZ Oaks. He was bought originally after his owners met the breeder in a dress shop. I reckon they’ve secretly come to Melbourne for a shopping spree again. I’m looking hard but I can’t find him; the others would have to have a collective off day.

ZARITA (NZ) 52 7 4m Pentire (GB)-Gin Player, by Defensive Play (USA) SCRATCHED

NEWPORT 51.5 15 6g Encosta de Lago-Sibelienne (GB), by Nishapour Paul Perry/Chris Symons. Just the sort of grinder who occasionally gets in the frame in a Melbourne Cup at cricket score odds. Three wins at 2400m including the Metropolitan and Brisbane Cups (erstwhile prestigious races) in which he carried 52 kgs each time – close to his weight here which might be significant. Has an Olde Worlde French staying pedigree. Encosta has done most things except sire a 3200m winner on the flat – 3000m is as close as he’s got.

PROFOUND BEAUTY (Ire) 51.5 2 5m Danehill (USA)-Diamond Trim, by Highest Honor Dermot Weld/Glen Boss. Oh my god, that combination! This horse could be the silent assassin, puts a chill of fear up your spine. Comes terribly well connected, owned by the famous Moyglare Stud of Swiss-born Walter Haefner who, if he is still alive and I think he is, is 98 years old, certainly the worlds’s oldest billionaire and in the top 200 on the planet. Has only one black-type success in 10 starts but has been all around it. Out here we don’t usually think of Danehill mares winning 3200m races but who are we to question Mr Weld? Past running pattern suggests she’s a forward-going mare so from the draw Bossy might just put her to sleep then pounce. She hasn’t raced for 11 weeks but as Mr Weld has demonstrated previously, so what? Has Sadler’s Wells, Fappiano and Graustark on her female line.

RED LORD 51.5 14 5g Redoute’s Choice-Dame Cath, by Zabeel (NZ) Anthony Cummings/Nicholas Hall. In the old days they said you had to have miles in your legs for the Melbourne Cup. Red Lord has 13,700 race metres in his, most of them run to good effect. Did finish 5th in a Sydney Cup and has won at 2800m, the extremes for a Redoute’s. Bred on the same cross as Fast ‘n’ Famous who loved 1200m – funny thing, breeding. For him, he is carrying a postage stamp weight and this just might keep him in the hunt. One to throw in your First Four multiples.

VAREVEES (GB) 51.5 23 6m Kahyasi-Danse Bretonne, by Exit To Nowhere Richard Gibson/Craig Williams. Marathon runner, triple stakeswinner. Shortest distance ever attempted is 1800m as a two-year-old! Has only raced three times in 2008 and best finish was 6th of eight. Usually races forward so from 23 at the gate C Williams will be on his bike. Is Melbourne-owned so connections are going to have a great day out. Will be an extraordinary training feat if she gets up.

PRIZE LADY (NZ) 51 18 7m Prized (USA)-Pen Bal Lady (GB), by Mummy’s Game Graeme Sanders/Mark Sweeney. Has only won four races but two of them have been the last two G1 Auckland Cups (not the race it once was) over 3200m on affected going. Also 2nd in NZ Oaks and 4th in Queensland Oaks, so a true stayer. Normally takes a handy position in these long races. Has had three lead-up runs with midfield finishes, how can one assess her? Dam was a triple G1 winner in USA but had a horrific produce record at stud. Jockey Mark Sweeney is the trainer’s son-in-law so he’ll be under strict instructions. He was a top grade apprentice a decade ago. It is four years since this mare carried a weight this light.

ALESSANDRO VOLTA (GB) 50.5 11 4h Montjeu (Ire)-Ventura Highway, by Machiavellian Aidan O’Brien/Wayne Lordan. Another from the vast O’Brien/Magnier/Tabor/Smith reservoir. Two wins in nine starts including the Lingfield Derby Trial where he led and beat four others. Sixth in the English Derby to New Approach and 4th in an average Irish Derby (led) so not a complete mug. Has never carried less than 56 kgs so he won’t even know he's got a saddle on which will allow him to roll forward, to absolutely no one’s surprise. All form on a sound surface, bred to do the business.

BARBARICUS 50.5 3 4g Lion Hunter-Light Of Erin, by Palace Music (USA) Danny O’Brien/Stephen Baster. The revelation of the last month. He will possie up and go to sleep in the trail. The first four in the running will probably be trained by an O’Brien! I guarantee they’re related (if you’ve been watching TV and listening to the ABC, it’s less than six degrees). Lots of stamina on his dam’s side and this is what he is racing to. How can you knock him on his recent form? He’s going to look a winning chance in the straight.

MOATIZE 50 19 4g Danehill Dancer (Ire)-Shezabeel (NZ), by Zabeel (NZ) Bart Cummings/Clare Lindop. The latest last-minute rabbit to sneak out of Bart’s hat. A big thrill for Cummings-aligned syndicator Veronica King to have a Cup runner. Her partner and co-owner Michael O’Keefe is executive chairman of Riversdale Mining, an ASX listed company with coal leases in Moatize, a region in Mozambique whence the horse takes it name. Mining for gold here. Amongst his 778 individual winners, Danehill Dancer has had a handful win at extreme distances. At black-type level the furthest is the 2600m G3 won by Danebar in Adelaide. Moatize shares with Anna Pavlova and Arapaho Miss success over 2500m, then it’s Lorne Dancer and Ice Queen at 2400m. But none of those has the Zabeel turbo boost. If Bart and Clare win they’ll raise the roof

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

2008-11-01T18:05:00.008+11:00

Whobegotyou appeared not to stay the 2500m of the Victoria Derby and was comprehensively defeated by longshot Rebel Raider, with unlucky Pre Eminence third. But he’s a fine horse Whobegotyou, he's had a splendid campaign and his day will come again.

Perhaps in years to come we will be saying of Reset (pictured) what I have felt about his sire Zabeel – back them all at 2000m and beyond, and double the bet when the blinkers go on (as they did with Rebel Raider on Saturday!!). Wish I had thought about that before 3 p.m.

Talk around the traps had tagged Reset a ‘failure’ even before his first crop turned two, eighteen months ago, an opinion which dumbfounded me with its stupidity. Then I remembered I was in Australia where the smarties believe they can pick a sire in the breaker’s lungeing ring. Much the same opinion was held of Zabeel when his first crop went into training in Australia, though no one can be found who will own up to it. The feedback from the east coast was so negative that some original Zabeel shareholders bailed out prematurely, the rationale being that if that’s what the market thinks then the sooner you get your money out the better.

Reset is a long way off being an unqualified success, but his oldest crop are barely three years old in real time so what chance has he had? Reset himself had not even had a race by November of his three-year-old year, and he is by Zabeel – so I chuckle when would-be gurus of the game make these sorts of predictions.

Rebel Raider (ex G1-placed Picholine, by the emerging broodmare sire talent Dehere (USA)) was a lovely big yearling, no deprived first foal look about him. At Magic Millions 2007 I scored him a respectable 7.5, which is on my ‘buy’ line, and noted “looks a Zabeel type” – well, he sure did winning that Derby on Saturday. Rebel Raider may be the highest-rated winner doubly-bred to Sir Tristram, in his case 3m x 4m. I’ve watched doubling up to Sir Tristram with interest, it’s been tried often, especially in NZ, and the results have left me fairly cold. But now it’s getting back into the fourth remove it might be more effective, or less damaging, whichever way you want to look at it. Rebel Raider is distantly related to A Little Kiss, an amazingly tough filly trained by T J Smith who ran second in the Wakeful Stakes on this day 19 years ago.

Queensland Derby placegetter Moatize finally got his name in lights beating a second-rate bunch of handicappers in the G3 Saab Quality. Presumably he’ll be in the Cup on Tuesday and conventional wisdom would give him zero chance of getting a strong 3200m – even though Bart trains him – as he’s by Danehill Dancer (Ire). But wait, there's more – his dam’s by Zabeel! She won up to 2050m and was herself second in a Cup – at Waipukurau. Talking of Danehill Dancer, I thought one of my favourites, Kimillsy, was a good thing beaten in the Wakeful Stakes. Can she get the 2500m of the Oaks next Thursday? On physique, yes. On pedigree? Danehill Dancer sired the winner of last year’s restricted edition, Arapaho Miss, and her dam, a winner up to 2000m, is by Snippets, more regarded for speed. You wouldn’t think it's a convincing Oaks-winning formula, especially against the Zabeel factor – Samantha Miss - but funnier things have happened.

In contrast to Rebel Raider, Rocha (Encosta de Lago-Larrocha, by Danehill (USA)) was not an inspiring first foal but on pedigree alone she made $400,000 at the 2007 Sydney Easter Yearling Sale. Swettenham Stud had placed a $500,000 reserve on her but passed her in after bidding her up to $475,000. The sale was negotiated back at the boxes. She was a neat and compact filly but her legs went every which way. Her NZ owner, 64-year-old Terry Jarvis, with his agent Michael Otto, sniff around the sales for value fillies with strong pedigrees, often giving away a bit of conformation, and such was Rocha whose dam won the G1 S.A. Oaks and whose grandam Kensington Gardens (NZ) left five stakeswinners by Danehill. Jarvis was a useful right-hander for NZ when they had a pretty good team, playing 13 tests. In 1972, he and Glenn Turner made an opening stand of 387 against West Indies. Terry was also a pay-TV pioneer in NZ and a one-time stud owner (The Oaks). Hill Of Grace (NZ) is probably the best he’s raced.

It was probably only because of indifferent front leg conformation that Gai Waterhouse didn't end up training Reset. She was given to train the full brother before him, So Assertive (a raging bull until he was castrated as a late two-year-old, after which he became a good quality racehorse) and paid $1.3 million for the half-brother after him, Assertive Choice (died at three). The Graeme Rogerson/Lloyd Williams team bought the piggy-in-the-middle, Reset, for $190,000. An immature November foal, he had light bone and upright pasterns and was a bit jointy but he was very strong through the middle. Zabeel had 92 yearlings sell that year, 2002, and Reset was $10,000 under the average price. Graeme Rogerson signed for 20 of them.

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Quarter of a million bucks. Group 3 status. Just six two-year-olds. That’s all they could get for the Maribyrnong Plate at Flemington. With ‘big’ owners now reluctant to expose their costly, pampered two-year-olds early, there’s a more compelling case to demote this over-rated race than any case which can be mounted to tamper with the Victoria Derby. And what about four three-year-olds lining up for 70 grand in Sydney? Between Saturday 1st and up to and including Melbourne Cup Day Tuesday 4th there are 86 race meetings in Australia. To be fair, half these ‘meetings’ have little to do with good racing opportunities, they’re just an excuse to take Tuesday off and get pissed.

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Good on you, Gai, Two G1 winners on Derby Day, Northern Meteor and Theseo, both of whom featured in this blog recently. One owned by a billionaire, the other by ten average Joes (with apologies to John McCain and the plumber).

In the excitement of the moment Gai can be forgiven in her post-race TV interview for crediting Secret Savings instead of Danewin for siring Theseo. At least she got the stud right!

I reckon few winners give Gai greater pleasure than those in Melbourne. I was with her for several of those years she had to endure a pasting from a baying Melbourne media mob (one or two cretins in particular) which reached a frenzied peak with the disgraceful treatment meted out over Platinum Scissors exactly six years ago this week. I was with her in Melbourne right through that week and was sitting next to her on the Wednesday when she first spoke to vet Percy Sykes about her concern with the colt, so I know the circumstances and the chronology. Sections of the press were determined to weave a web of conspiracy where none existed, their attitude in my opinion fuelled by pathetic sexism, the Melbourne/Sydney enmity and the long-festering Melbourne antipathy to the name Waterhouse.

So most Derby Days, Gai rubs their noses in it. I call it Gambling Man’s revenge. Give her the right horse and there is simply no better trainer in Australia, supported as she is by her proud, loyal and long-serving staff. Her figures over a long period of time prove it.

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Four classier-looking colts you wouldn’t find than those which dominated the G1 Coolmore – Northern Meteor, Fist Of Fury, All American and Von Costa de Hero – and not a drop of Danehill in sight! What a tragedy to see Wilander and Tindal come out of the race at the barrier. The contest was much the weaker for it. And keeping on the subject of good lookers, of the opposite sex, the Miss Universe of the G1 Myer Classic field, Forensics (Flying Spur-Prove It, by Dehere (USA)) was a class above them. Again, scratchings materially weakened the field, this was not a vintage G1, but take nothing away from Forensics, she has always been right at the top of the class. I love G1 form in G1 races and apart from the South African Dane Julia, Forensics was the only G1 winner in the field. And what about two G1 winners on the day for Dehere mares, coming on top of Midnight Lute’s second G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint last weekend? Dehere is young as far as broodmare sires go but he’s putting together quite a serious record, already 26 stakeswinners out of his daughters worldwide.

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By how far Wanted? Try 1.3 lengths. He looked in real trouble at the top of the straight. The penny didn’t drop until the last 100m. Nice horse.

Why Make It A Race For Plodders?

2008-10-30T23:18:00.003+11:00

Every year as the Melbourne Cup rolls around there's rumblings about overseas visiting horses taking up places in the field which might otherwise be filled by locals. Bart, who has won the race so often it should be called the Cummings Cup by now, makes it his cause celebre. It must be a while since he's won it. Of course he and others know full well that the second-rate imports basically have our measure barring accidents.

So I ask the question, what locals are they depriving of starts?

Imagine the quality of this year's Cup field if the 8 or 9 visitors going to the post were replaced by 8 or 9 locals who thus far haven't proved good enough to get in on merit?

Thank heaven for overseas participation (and that's even without the Japanese). "Australia's greatest race" would be descending into utter mediocrity without them. Those who espouse restrictions are thinking of themselves rather than having the quality of the race at heart.

It's just a handicap. Resist any attempts to restrict free and fair access to the field. Let overseas interests cart off the lion's share of the prizemoney every year until we locals get so fed up we change the distance to 2000m. Either that or we put greater emphasis long-term into programming which positively promotes the preservation of stamina in this part of the world. There's no chance of that happening, incidentally, if commercial breeders run racing.

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Four three-year-olds compete for 70 grand at Rosehill on Saturday. Hard to believe, isn't it?

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Wanted in the two-year-old race. By how far?

Hit The Self-Destruct Button

2008-10-28T21:55:00.003+11:00

Because I seldom get anything right I have few opportunities to say "I told you so". But if you read my blog of 15 July, Conspiracy Theories Are Generally Just That, then you won't be dismayed by the unedifying demise of the process put in place via a parliamentary bill to appoint a new Board of RacingNSW.

It was a flawed, not to mention costly, process, unlikely to succeed virtually from the start. It is an indictment that in a critical hour of need the industry couldn't negotiate an outcome without fear or favour.

So now the peak body will be run by a Board foisted upon the industry by a politician. Like it or lump it. With a serious reduction in the flow of funds to NSW racing appearing a strong likelihood, not to mention macro-economic conditions, we are in very challenging times.

Another Barrier Broken

2008-10-27T09:45:00.003+11:00

I don’t read newspapers often enough unless I’m killing time at McDonald’s, in which case it’s the Daily Telegraph which is about as informative as the table napkin, only better illustrated. So my news may have hit the press but excuse me if I didn’t see it.

Not that it’s anywhere near as important as where Sarah Palin’s panties and bras are purchased and how much they cost, and other world-shaping events like that, but in the tiny, insignificant world of horse racing and breeding it’s important enough.

The first repatriation of horses from Macau to Australia occurred just a few weeks ago.

Quarantine protocols and plain obstinate human unhelpfulness deemed in the past that once your horse hit Macau it had arrived at the ultimate equine black hole. However, necessity has once again proven the mother of invention.

A Victorian breeder was persuaded some years ago to allow her useful racemare to go to Macau for easier racing opportunities. Coming off fair Sydney form, the mare unfortunately proved legless in eight starts up there, not adjusting to the conditions. In the cause of animal compassion, attempts to bring the mare back to a good home in Australia proved fruitless for two years.

The cause became even more worthy when, all of a sudden, said mare became a half-sister to a sexy young G1 winner, now standing its first season at stud in Australia.

With some introductions to the right people etc etc etc ... get the picture? ... some shoulder was applied to the wheel during winter and, wouldn’t you know it, a way was found to accommodate the will. A pallet was put together to bring the mare and two others back home, at much expense let it be said. The mare is now visiting Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire).

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A breeder colleague became a proud ‘father’ a couple of days ago (a colt foal) and exercised his bragging rights by emailing me a 55 second video of the newlyborn, asking for my comments. The captioned and musically enhanced video is part of client service provided by Eliza Park and I think it’s an impressive touch, using today’s technology to good advantage.

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The results from the Inglis Breeze Up & Racehorse Sale in Melbourne look a bit chilling. But the real test will come at the Gold Coast this week. There are some big numbers trying to be recouped up there. Hold your breath.

Northern Dancer Done And Dusted

2008-10-26T22:01:00.007+11:00

The expanded two-day Breeders’ Cup extravaganza at Santa Anita has come and gone.

There was controversy over the synthetic Pro-Ride track surface which Curlin’s trainer asserted was tantamount to turf and contributed to his champion's disappointing, modest fourth in the Classic. And there was a very positive showing by the European based runners.

The two Breeders’ Cup championship days now embrace 14 events worth US$25.5 million, broken down into just about every division imaginable; silly really. It’s no more a world championship than I am Harry Houdini but John Gaines’s brainchild has stood the test of time for a quarter-century as a showcase of many of the greatest horses of our era.

The most dramatic outcome of the meeting this year was the obliteration of the Northern Dancer male line from the winners’ circle.

It was responsible for just two of the 14 winners. The Mr Prospector line, on the other hand, came up with eight.

Is this the beginning of the end up north?

The remaining four winners came from the Mill Reef, Tudor Minstrel, Seattle Slew and Ribot male lines.

Here’s a brief summary:.

Breeders’ Cup Classic, 2000m: Raven’s Pass, English-based 3c by Elusive Quality (USA) out of a Lord At War mare. Darley’s shuttler Elusive Quality has been an expensive failure in Australia so far. Three stakeswinners in his first local crop (now 4YO), total progeny earnings just under $2 million, or equivalent to about 20 of his first year service fees. Still has time to redeem himself, perhaps; may be just a dirt sire or too old when he first got here. They asked US$75,000 for him this year at Darley Kentucky and probably got it; hands up if you're paying $82,500 at Darley Aberdeen this season. I can't see any hands.

Breeders’ Cup Turf, 2400m: Conduit, English-based 3c by Dalakhani out of a Sadler’s Wells mare. The high quality English St Leger winner transferred his form to the USA. From the first crop of his Aga Khan bred and owned sire, a champion by Darshaan (Shirley Heights-Mill Reef). This sire looks highly promising; he also has an Oaks winner in his first crop. I've written about him previously on the blog.

Breeders’ Cup Mile, 1600m: French-based Goldikova, 3f by Anabaa (USA) out of a Blushing Groom mare. One-time wobbler and champion sprinter, ageing Anabaa finished his shuttle run to Widden last year but he has been one of the more consistent successes in the role with 19 Australian-bred stakeswinners so far and a 70% winners-to-runners strike. None of the stakeswinners are out of Blushing Groom-line mares. Seeing out his days in France after strangely doing a season in the USA.

Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, 1600m: Midshipman, 2c by Unbridled’s Song (USA) out of an Avenue Of Flags (Seattle Slew) mare. Winner of this race himself after famously failing the yearling sale x-rays, Unbridled’s Song, a big son of Unbridled, shuttled to Arrowfield for three seasons up to 1999, serving an average book of 75 mares. Got a passable 10 stakeswinners from those crops and 78% winners-to-runners, but not a lot of class amongst them. Being a big, strong grey, there should be some nice clerks-of-the-course horses by him. Stood for US$150,000 in 2008.

Breeders’ Cup Sprint, 1200m: Midnight Lute, 4h by Real Quiet (USA) (pictured above) out of a Dehere (USA) mare. The first back-to-back winner of this race. Another to shuttle for three seasons, to Vinery, Real Quiet was a fabulous racehorse but a poor specimen – he wasn’t called ‘The Fish’ for nothing. Look at him front-on. Under 50% winners-to-runners and three little stakeswinners, he was despised by Australian breeders, his biggest book being 70 mares. These days you find him in Pennsylvania at US$10,000, where he has some cred. His main Australian earner Tommifrancs is his ninth highest earner worldwide. Well named.

Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic, 1800m: Zenyatta, 4m by Street Cry (USA) out of a Kris S. mare. An unbeaten champion mare, perhaps as good as any horse in North America. Sire Street Cry shuttled for four years to Darley but hasn’t returned since 2006. His plainish stock looked like horses which would take time (and they do) and although he averaged just over 100 mares a season whilst here the declining local enthusiasm level versus the northern hemisphere demand saw him stay stateside where he stood for US$100,000 in 2008. Has a growing list of truly superior horses and obviously is a serious sire. Had an unlikely background himself for a dirt performer and was possibly being stigmatised as “another dirt sire” at the end of his shuttle duty here. I’ve always maintained Machiavellian would make a big contribution eventually. (Street Cry's fee raised to US$150,000 for 2009).

Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, 1300m: Desert Code, 4h by E Dubai (USA) from a Lost Code mare. Ye gods! E Dubai! Another who came on a Darley shuttle: not a single stakesplacegetter in Australia so far in his first two crops (oldest 4YO) and only one horse which has earned more than $30,000 - his progeny may have been held up by EI?. Served an average of 85 mares a season (which seems regrettable at this point) but was a lost cause and not foisted upon us again this season. US$15,000 at Darley, Kentucky.

Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, 1600m: Donativum, 2g by Cadeaux Genereux from a Warning mare. An English invader by a never-shuttled old timer who got this gelding when he was 20 years old. Represents a dying branch of the Tudor Minstrel line of Hyperion. Cadeaux Genereux has had 58 stakeswinners.

Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, 1700m: Stardom Bound, 2f by Tapit (grandson of A P Indy, out of an Unbridled three-quarter sister to the disappointing sire Rubiano). Stardom Bound’s dam is by the very obscure Tarr Road, by Grey Dawn II. A G1 winner at three, Tapit is quite an attractive-looking grey son of Pulpit standing for US$12,500 at Gainesway and Stardom Bound belongs to his first crop. Another of his fillies was third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. Maybe one to watch.

Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, 1600m: Maram, 2f by Sahm (Mr Prospector-Salsabil) out of a mare by Quest For Fame (GB). Sahm stood at Shadwell Farm in Kentucky. He was a US$5,000 fee stallion in 2007 but died in March of that year aged 13. Modestly patronized, he has sired 13 stakeswinners to this point.

Breeders’ Cup Marathon, 2400m: Muhannak, 4g by Chester House out of a Forzando mare.
Breeders’ Cup Fillies & Mares Sprint, 1400m: Ventura, 4m by Chester House out of a Be My Guest mare.
A feature double for this prematurely deceased son of Mr Prospector-Toussaud, by El Gran Senor, thus a half-brother to Empire Maker. Muhannak was bred in Ireland and is raced by Australian Richard Pegum. Ventura is American-bred. The majority of Chester House’s progeny raced in North America with reasonably good turf aptitude; he left 25 stakeswinners in three crops so his early demise is shaping as quite a blow.

Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile, 1600m: Albertus Maximus, 4h by Albert The Great, the G1 Jockey Club Gold Cup winning son of Kentucky Derby winner Go For Gin, out of a mare by Forty Niner. Albert The Great stands in Pennsylvania at just US$4,000 but that may be on the way north as he is also responsible for one other very capable horse in Nobiz Like Shobiz, winner of $1.5 million. Albert The Great is 11 years old and represents the declining Ribot male line through His Majesty.

Breeders’ Cup Fillies & Mares Turf, 2000m: Forever Together, 4m by Belong To Me (USA) from a Relaunch mare. Now 19, Belong To Me rose from humble New York origins to do a steady but unspectacular job on both sides of the equator. He shuttled to Widden for seven seasons (missed 1999) but was never screamingly popular, averaging around 75 mares a season. He has left 10 stakeswinners from his Australian seasons, the best of them Bon Hoffa, Beauty Watch, Proprietor and Bulla Borghese. He’s seeing out his days at Lane’s End in Kentucky, currently standing at US$12,500.

The Breeders' Cup Inc. is not an organisation which lets the grass grow under its feet. On its website already it has a clock widget counting down the days, hours and minutes to the 2009 Breeders' Cup meeting at Santa Anita (6 & 7 November).

A Few Moments Of Fame

2008-10-26T10:03:00.005+11:00

Though he’s not a big wheez in the sire business, Quest For Fame (GB) nevertheless notched a significant achievement on Saturday.

He is the sire of Sea Battle (pictured), winner of the G2 Crystal Mile at Moonee Valley, damsire of Hollows (by Thorn Park), winner of NZ’s first two-year-old stakes of the season, the Wellesley Stakes, and damsire of Maram (by Sahm, son of Mr Prospector), winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Santa Anita.

The one-time Juddmonte/Woodlands shuttler, now Darley senior citizen at their Cootamundra property, 21-year-old Quest For Fame has sired 38 stakeswinners worldwide, 31 of them in Australia. As a broodmare sire his figures are promising if not extraordinary, with 14 stakeswinners out of his daughters, representing 3.7% of starters to date. The horse is these days a tiny cog in the massive Dubai machine which experienced a few moments to savour at the Breeders’ Cup meeting at Santa Anita over the weekend. I wonder if Sheikh Mohammed knows he owns him?

The English Derby winner of 1990 and twice Breeders’ Cup Turf third placegetter, Quest For Fame has never been the height of fashion. His stout turf form on top of a dodgy set of front legs saw him enter stud in 1993 at a face value generous fee of $10,000. No one in Australia, of course, really wanted to breed to a marathon runner who mightn’t produce picture-perfect sale yearlings. His career peak fee grew to around $30,000 and he’s back down to $10,000 today for those who are interested.

In his first three seasons at Woodlands QFF served 67, 44 and 49. Ouch. Then when his first results started to roll, out came the risk-averse breeders, solidly backed by Woodlands’s numbers, giving the horse between 100 to 130 mares for the next seven seasons. Over that mid-career hump, his support in the last five years has dwindled to the point where he got only 22 in 2007 (possibly affected by EI restrictions).

I’ve always considered Quest For Fame a prepotent influence for poor front leg conformation, frequently light of bone and offset. There’s even a noticeable incidence in his second generation stock. This goes to explain his relatively modest career yearling sale average of about $55,000. By far and away the highest price ever paid for a QFF yearling was NZ$750,000 at Karaka in 2004, generated by the Pencarrow Stud/vendor – Rob McAnulty/purchaser combination, the horse in question becoming De Beers, winner of two from 21 including the G1 Rosehill Guineas.

As he went through a two-year-old sale which I did not attend, for just $15,000, Sea Battle doesn’t read like a sale ring standout. He was catalogued in Melbourne Premier as a yearling but didn’t make it. He is one of six stakeswinners bred on the QFF/Danehill cross, the first and most fondly remembered being the G1 filly Unworldly. The first half of Sea Battle’s career was spent in Sydney with Guy Walter but as he has matured he has grown a leg with Mark Kavanagh. Significantly, he is still an entire so somewhere, sometime a stud career beckons.

Sea Battle’s part-owner Peter Parker, an Australian, was a near-neighbour of mine in Matamata during the ‘80s but he is back on this side of the ditch these days. His involvement in breeding in NZ was not without controversy. He has raced some good horses in the past – Saxon Slew and Runyon are two I seem to recall.

All Over In The Blinkering Of An Eye

2008-10-25T21:58:00.010+11:00

Take your pick, call it yin and yang, feng shui, karma or just plain coincidence. There are some strong connecting lines between the main players in today’s W S Cox Plate result.

Maldivian (NZ) and his connections reaped sweet reward for the cruel circumstances which forced his withdrawal at the barrier in the 2007 Caulfield Cup for which he was a raging hot favourite.

After his second start this preparation, I wrote in my blog of 13 September: I can’t help being impressed also by Maldivian (6g Zabeel-Shynzi, by Danzig). I’m aware he was only fourth as an odds-on favourite but he has raced with plenty of vim and vigour. Fact remains that at distances of 2000m and further, Big Mal has raced five times, winning four and being defeated a half-neck in the other. I wish, at the start of his siring career, I had thought of the betting system of backing every Zabeel in every race of 2000m and longer … a licence to print money. But I wasn’t that clever or born that lucky. Zabeel himself raced five times at 2000m or further and only won once, and even then by a mere half a head.

I should have added, “and when they put blinkers on a Zabeel, double your money”.

I lost some faith after Maldivian’s so-so run in the Caulfield Cup on 18 October, but on went the shades and out popped the real horse at Moonee Valley. Zabeels have always had a love affair with blinkers and with their help, at start number 26, Maldivian achieves his enduring place in history.

And as per my system I should have backed Maldivian – he's the only Zabeel in the race, and it’s over 2040m.

Maldivian is Zabeel’s fourth Cox Plate winner, after Savabeel, Might And Power and Octagonal. This surely won’t be the final chapter in the Zabeel saga, even though he’s now 22 years old – there are lots of little Zabeels going through the maturing process, waiting to write their own page in history. How much will we miss him when he’s gone! And what will replace him as the most reliable progenitor of class stamina in the southern hemisphere? Probably bloody nothing.

Zabeel himself ran in the Cox Plate of 1989, as it happens as three-year-old. He ran 28.3 lengths last behind the import Almaraad (GB). So here’s a little coincidence: his grand-daughter Samantha Miss endeavoured to be only the second three-year-old filly to win the Cox Plate. With her excellent third placing, she did much better than granddad. Zabeel has stood his career at Cambridge Stud whose proprietors Sir Patrick and Justine, Lady Hogan, bred Maldivian. And the only three-year-old filly to win the Cox Plate: Surround (by Sovereign Edition (Ire)). And who was the co-breeder and owner of Surround? Patrick Hogan.

Now consider Lloyd Williams. For the last decade Australia’s best unlicensed trainer has single-mindedly collected yearlings by Zabeel in his quest to win major Australian staying races. There was a huge payoff in 2007 when Efficient (NZ) won the Melbourne Cup. In 2008, Efficient again looks one of the few capable of footing it with the visitors.

Lloyd’s own horse Zipping (by Danehill (USA)) finishes second in the Cox Plate, looking up the backside of Maldivian, a Zabeel which slipped through Lloyd’s net, but only just.

The year before Maldivian went through the yearling sales ($195,000), Lloyd had bought his full brother ($200,000). Named Briefing (NZ), this horse won a maiden at the Gold Coast and a Class 1 at Bendigo in five starts before Lloyd culled him at a Melbourne auction, the then four-year-old gelding fetching $72,500. For the Zapellis at Colac, Briefing has raced 14 times for wins at Geelong and Hamilton (Victoria). He won his last start on 18 October and will take his celebrity pedigree to the Terang meeting on Sunday for an assault on the 1850m Ratings 68 handicap. After the Cox Plate, he may touch false odds!

The Lloyd Williams-Cambridge Stud connection was further played out at Moonee Valley via Millbank (NZ), winner of the Gr 3 1200m for three-year-olds, his third win in four starts.

Lloyd raced Millbank’s sire Keeper (by Danehill (USA)) who went to stud at Cambridge. Via his one-time trainer Graeme Rogerson, he acquired Millbank for NZ$64,000 at the select session of the Karaka yearling sales in 2007. He seems to have gone perilously close to quitting him because Millbank was catalogued for sale as a two-year-old in Melbourne just last autumn, only to be withdrawn. He must have put in a good gallop and saved his bacon!

Keeper is no Zabeel but he’s not a complete disaster, either. Millbank is his seventh individual stakeswinner in three mature crops. Keeper was placed in useful company as a two-year-old but went on to win seven of his 10 starts at three including Adelaide’s Gr 1 Goodwood Handicap over 1200m. Unusually distinguished by a pedigree containing His Majesty 3f x 3m, Keeper doesn’t get much precocity considering he’s a sprinting son of Danehill, but that’s likely due to his maternal grandsire Pleasant Colony, and probably explains why Australians haven’t been scrambling to buy his stock.

Another thread linking the Cox Plate principals is John Messara and Arrowfield Stud. Zabeel (bred by the late Robert Sangster) carries the Arrowfield brand slapped on him at Auckland's Ra Ora Stud when Arrowfield was in control of that nursery in the ‘80s. John Messara imported Zipping’s sire Danehill and stood him at the ‘original’ Arrowfield (now Coolmore) before the famous bust-up. And, of course, the ‘new’ Arrowfield is the home of Samantha Miss’ sire Redoute’s Choice, thus completing the trifecta.

This result proves stockbrokers can still make a positive contribution to humanity.

Maldivian’s dam Shynzi (USA) is an unraced daughter of Danzig and the very good Californian racemare Shywing, by Wing Out. After producing a foal in Ireland, she was imported to NZ by a partnership which included auctioneer and now NZ Bloodstock Ltd chairman Joe Walls. One year later (after producing a Last Tycoon (Ire) colt which must have been a spastic - it sold for NZ$1,250 as a two-year-old) Shynzi went through the ring at Karaka where Sir Patrick paid $250,000 for her, in foal to Tale Of The Cat (USA). The wheels fell off after Maldivian was foaled in 2002. The next four seasons saw two dead foals and two not serveds so she officially exited the Cambridge Stud fold and transferred to Rogie’s Dormello Stud where she got back on track in 2007 with a colt by Duelled.

The recent family form is almost exclusively West Coast USA, with a smattering of New Mexico thrown in for good measure. But dig deeper and there’s real gold – his eighth dam is Myrtlewood (Blue Larkspur-Frizeur), through her champion two-year-old daughter Durazna (by Bull Lea). Such luminaries as Seattle Slew, Mr Prospector and Typecast are amongst Myrtlewood’s descendants.

Myrtlewood was a distaff champion, winning 15 of her 22 races. Edward L Bowen wrote in his book Matriarchs that Myrtlewood “thrilled her fans with front-running flash”.

Does that have a familiar ring to it?

(Maldivian photo credit: John Donegan, The Age)

Where Is Lion Hunter When We Need Him?

2008-10-20T19:41:00.004+11:00

Saturday’s Caulfield Cup continued the inexorable decline of the Australian-bred stayer, soon to be as commonplace as the mammoth.

We were routed by barely G3 standard Europeans and a good Kiwi. The best Aussie-bred was despised outsider Barbaricus – and I take nothing away from his gallant performance – by Danehill’s deceased sprinting son Lion Hunter (pictured). Only 12 of Lion Hunter’s 369 individual winners (3.25%) have won a race of any description beyond 1600m. Naturally enough, Barbaricus has some stamina on his female side and in fact belongs to the same extended family as Holy Orders (Ire) whose one unplaced run in Australia was 17th of 23 in the Melbourne Cup of 2003, the first of Makybe Diva’s three-peat.

In the 28 years since Ming Dynasty’s victory in 1980, only 10 Australian-breds have won the Caulfield Cup, and one of those was by default – Railings (by Zabeel) arrived here in utero.

It’s even worse, of course, in the Melbourne Cup. Just five Australian-breds have won in the same time period, the most recent being Bart’s last winner, Rogan Josh, in 1999.

For how long will Australian racing and breeding interests be content to see the lion’s share of $8 million worth of prizemoney go offshore annually, basically unchallenged.

Bring the races back to a mile!!

The Melbourne Cup 3200m record of 3:16.3 was set way back in 1990 by American-bred Kingston Rule and only Media Puzzle (USA) has remotely threatened the time since and nothing probably ever will now we are in the era of doctored tracks.

I got the shock of my life when talking this morning to Nom du Jeu’s trainer Murray Baker, already back home in NZ.

He tells me that an edict has recently been brought in over there whereby no barrier trial in future will be longer than 1200m.

So that’s what happens when the CEO of NZ Racing and the Chief Steward are both Australian!

They’re losing the plot over there – they may as well bring all their horses over to Sydney where the racing is becoming so homogeneous (especially with the one-way fast lane at Randwick on Saturday) that the city tracks bear an uncanny resemblance to Ruidoso Downs.

Longer barrier trials – some for jumpers as long as 2200m – have been available in NZ on a fairly regular basis for as long as I can remember and I’ve bemoaned the fact that there is never one in Sydney. As Murray said to me, what assistance and encouragement is there in the training of a stayer, where teaching horses to relax and breathe properly is paramount?

Murray Baker, now training in partnership with his son Bjorn (whose mother is Swedish), understands the calibre of horse required to compete in Australia and when he occasionally finds one in his care he’s not frightened to have a go. Over the years he’s been noticeably successful and in Nom du Jeu he has a top class staying colt who is one of the few with any chance of stemming the import tide in the Melbourne Cup. His Caulfield performance was fantastic. Frighteningly, Murray says Nom du Jeu will be better next year. He might be one stayer worthy of taking on a wider international jaunt, getting back to the days when Balmerino, Strawberry Road, Ring The Bell, Sir Silver Lad etc. strutted their stuff in Europe.

Around 1979-80, I had an interest in a filly which the partners placed in training with Murray. He hadn’t been training very long at that stage and his stables were in godforsaken Woodville, a damp place God never wanted anyone to make into a training centre as you had to wind your way through a tortuous gorge from Palmerston North just to find it. The filly was by an evil sire named Barcas (USA), son of Sailor. She was a dud.

Maybe the only Australians pleased about All The Good’s Caulfield Cup win, apart from bookmakers and the McEvoy family, were the crew at Blue Gum Farm in Victoria. Their first season sire Strategic Prince (GB) (by Dansili) is out of a three-quarter sister to All The Good. I wouldn’t mind betting Blue Gum will be sending out all-points bulletins reminding people that, unlike All The Good, Strategic Prince isn’t tainted with so much as an ounce of stamina in his body, that seven furlongs (1400m) was as far as he liked to go. Which is a surprise: his sire was a miler, his dam won an Oaks Trial and her sister won the English, Irish and Yorkshire Oaks and was second in the St Leger.

Like a Lion Hunter in the Caulfield Cup, you never can tell with breeding. That’s what keeps sucking us in.

Done Enough Already

2008-10-18T23:45:00.002+11:00

Right now, the Encosta de Lago three-year-old Northern Meteor (pictured) must be the most serious stallion prospect in Australia. Ahead of even the likes of Sebring, Von Costa de Hero, Time Thief et al.

How many good horses down the years have trodden the turf at Randwick over 1200m and at Canterbury over 1250m? Northern Meteor has now run faster than any of them in what is essentially a two start career since he got on top of the ground and had blinkers applied.

He has beaten no champions on either occasion, that's for sure (my little buy Geared Up was best of the others today at Randwick) but the times are in the book.

His career could stop right now and that would scarcely lessen his credentials (Danzig and Red Ransom (USA) only had three starts each, winning five of the six). His speed should be bottled.

He’s a big, imposing individual as you might expect from a horse bred on his cross. Oozes power and masculinity. And what about the pedigree? First two dams by Fappiano and Forli, the grandam Scuff being a blood sister to Special (think Nureyev, Sadler’s Wells etc), the colt being linebred to these genetic siblings. Hard to knock that package, I’d take a chance with him!

Andrew Baddock’s phone at Gooree Park Stud will be ringing off the wall.

I draw some similarities with O’Reilly (NZ) who had just a six-start career. Like Northern Meteor unraced at two, he won his first four straight including 1000m in 56.32 secs, a G1 3YO 1600m at his third start and a G1 all-age 1200m at his fourth start in 1:07.36, by 2.8 lengths. A month later he was at Flemington where he finished second to Mouawad in the G1 Australian Guineas (Gooree Stud-bred King Ivor was fourth) then he broke down and failed to finish as favourite in the G1 Newmarket Handicap.

P.S. In a small touch of irony, it was a John Hawkes trainee Ab Initio (by Spectacular Spy) whose name Northern Meteor erased from the Randwick record book. John trained Northern Meteor for his first two starts before his transfer, along with all the Gooree horses, to Gai Waterhouse.

You Asked For It

2008-10-17T23:11:00.006+11:00

It’s never been the intention to turn the blog into a form guide but to requests from my readers in Tashkent, Hanoi, Madrid, Dusseldorf and Johnstown, Pennsylvania, I give my impressions of this Saturday's Caulfield Cup (this post will be removed after the running of the race so that I am not embarrassed in perpetuity) –

Weekend Hussler (by Hussonet): love him as we do, but still hard for me to come into him after a six lengths tiring defeat at WFA at his most recent start. Can get the trip on his dam’s side and if he is a champion he will overcome the Hussonet distance limitation and the weight turnaround. The moderate pace may help him but he doesn’t give me any confidence.

Maldivian (NZ) (by Zabeel): the golden rule is ‘back every Zabeel in races 2000m and longer’, so on that basis alone you can’t dismiss him. He hasn’t found the line in any of his five races this preparation and a couple of gear changes have been made to help him – or in desperation. In last year’s EI Group 1-Restricted Caulfield Cup he went to the barrier almost even money and we shouldn’t forget that. He’s not going as well, and his wide gate forces his hand tactically, but I think at Caulfield his running style puts him in the picture and he will beat more than beat him.

Master O’Reilly (NZ) (by O’Reilly) (pictured): The key fact is his near-perfect record at the 2400m+ distance range. Won the race last year with 1 kg above the minimum, this year he carries 5 kgs above, and let's face it, last year's edition was a total farce. His preparation has a sense of timing about it, he’s third-up here and this breed is happiest when their racing diet is light. Hard to imagine him out of the frame, wieght and all.

Fiumicino (NZ) (by Zabeel): being by Zabeel he goes into the multiples automatically but other than that there isn’t a form reference to recommend him. Doesn’t look particularly well weighted. Has a fine ‘Cups’ heritage but I have to risk him.

Kibbutz (NZ) (by Golan): scratched

Nom du Jeu (NZ) (by Montjeu): High class animal having to contend with gate 20 minus scratchings. Appears to have come back well at four though reportedly knocked by the effects of vaccination en route to Melbourne. Stays every step of the distance. Will go back and be ridden for luck, a bit harder to get at Caulfield than at Randwick. I feel he has a class edge on most of these and I will be keeping him very safe.

Mad Rush (USA) (by Lemon Drop Kid): How do you measure these horses? By the sex appeal of their assistant trainers? Other than the professional respect his connections undoubtedly deserve, it’s hard to make a cogent case for him other than D Oliver has climbed aboard, he comes down in weight, and in the past some pretty moderate imports have stood up in these races. I don’t know why the Caulfield Cup has to be his first stakes win, so I have to let him run against me.

All The Good (Ire) (by Diesis): most of my comments from the above apply. His win in the modified Ebor Handicap (the Newburgh run over 2700m this year at Newbury) suggests Melbourne Cup to me. As a three-quarter brother to triple Oaks champion Ramruma he has the pedigree, but what Godolphin horse hasn’t?

Douro Valley (by Encosta de Lago): Fit, in form, well drawn and second last year. Persuasive factors. He also carries considerably less weight than in any of his past five starts. Undoubtedly, he will be the horse pouring on the pressure from the 800m trying to put his rivals to the sword. He is a terrific example of all-too-rare durability and longevity and there’s little between him and Maldivian on form. My only wish is that the Caulfield Cup isn’t won by a horse having its 49th start with just eight wins but I don’t know how you can keep him out of the dogfight.

Ice Chariot (by Chariot): This is a very good horse, just unfashionable. His lead-up form has been fine; in fact his third placing in the Shannon Quality two starts back saw him return one of the highest ratings of his career. His last win was on this track 13 months ago but he is probably best remembered for his complete no-shows in the Caulfield Cup-Saab-Melbourne Cup races of 2006. A horse that cannot make its own luck but nonetheless he is entitled to much better than a bolter’s chance on a good track; he’s stout-hearted.

Viewed (by Scenic): Goes in with just two runs under his belt. Routed his rivals in the G2 Brisbane Cup on a heavy track back in June, but Fulmonti, Sky Biscuit and Scenic Shot were the ones chasing him home. I’m aware he has a certain aura about him and he has looked good in lower grades but I’m not in his corner.

Littorio (by Bellotto): The reasons he has won only 2 of his 14 starts are that he has to lump around his maturing 17.2 hands frame and cannot make any of his own luck in running. But he’s a terrific grinding stayer with the right form lines. Has to weigh in somewhere.

Red Ruler (NZ) (by Viking Ruler): Good class four-year-old whose second placings in the AJC Derby and Kelt Capital Stakes (two weeks ago) give him legitimate credentials. Some contention that the 1 gate won’t suit him but Corey Brown is at the top of his game and he’ll be looking for an out early in the piece. As long as the track is in the good-dead range he can act effectively. May have traffic issues but good enough to run into it.

Boundless (NZ) (by Van Nistelrooy): Figures to get the perfect run and is fourth-up. Nom du Jeu and Red Ruler ran her down narrowly in the Kelt but she is good at this trip, Caulfield suits, and this team know how to travel a winner. To think a Van Nistelrooy could win a Caulfield Cup you’d have to have rocks in your head but she gets everything from her mother’s side – Star Way, Sir Tristram, Zamazaan. Historical oddity: shares the same name as the Group-winning full brother to the outstanding NZ-bred Cadiz (Targui-Infinity) winner of the Hollywood Gold Cup in 1963. The former Boundless’ best win came at 2400m.

Dolphin Jo (by Dolphin Street): Breeding oddity inasmuch as his five wins have been from 2200m to 2800m, yet he is by a sprinter-miler out of a grand-daughter of Without Fear. But he has Sobig and Better Boy lurking in the depths of his pedigree and shares the same fourth dam as Miss Badoura who upset the applecart at Caulfield last week. An admirable campaigner in career-best form but just misses out on a class basis.

Riva San (by Any Given Sunday): Last season’s Queensland Oaks and Derby winner who also won twice as a two-year-old. One of those horses that pops out of nowhere – by an unraced son of Sunday Silence and she’s the only stakes performer in the first four removes of her family – commercial breeders just love those G1 winners but they would tell you that as it’s over 2400m it doesn’t matter anyway, unless it's one of theirs! Should have won her last start at Randwick over 2000m and looks to be peaking. I have great respect for this yard.

Zagreb (by Zabeel): By Zabeel, so include. Glen Boss, so include. David Hayes, so include. Young stayer on his way to something really significant and there’s been money to suggest this could be the start of it, though he didn’t fire in the Turnbull. May need some luck in running but has a miracle-worker on board whose lust for G1 wins is legendary. People aren’t buying so many flatscreen TVs these days so Gerry needs the money and it wouldn’t surprise me if he gets some here.

Guillotine (NZ) (by Montjeu): Four-year-old half-brother to Melbourne Cup winner Efficient and highly capable in his own right though he’s got the Montjeu fizziness which needs harnessing and he’s yet to win beyond 1900m. I thought his win over 1600m three starts back was absolutely outstanding. The horse was always going to mature into something which has been fortuitous for David Hayes who has had him for just this preparation. The big question is, where will he be in the run from his outside gate? I just question whether he’s got the mental tractability for a race of this pressure; he has the physical ability.

Barbaricus (by Lion Hunter): If he wins, they should make the race Group 3. Can’t think of any reason why he should.

Newport (by Encosta de Lago): As a Brisbane Cup and Metropolitan winner he looks unlucky not to have made the field. Has an excellent record at 2400m but needs a scratching to get in.

Red Lord (by Redoute’s Choice): Has gone like a bomb in Sydney this spring but this is a big step up in class even if he did get a start.

My selections:

1. Boundless (NZ)
2. Master O’Reilly (NZ)
3. Nom du Jeu (NZ)
4. Douro Valley

Best bolter: Ice Chariot.

There’s no bias evident, is there?

A Breeding Machine

2008-10-16T09:34:00.003+11:00

Might this be some sort of record?

Club Liquid, winner of the Listed Murray Bridge Gold Cup in South Australia yesterday, is the 17th foal of his dam Dame Ivor (USA).

Now, the Murray Bridge Gold Cup is not exactly the Caulfield Cup, but has there ever been a stakeswinner in this part of the world who was a 17th foal?

I recall Malcolm (Snippets-Finneto) was a 15th foal? But a 17th foal? Credit must go to his breeder, Mr J Lejejs of South Australia.

Club Liquid, a five-year-old gelding by Fasliyev (USA), also won the Darwin Cup earlier in the season.

He has a pedigree deeper than the Mariana Trench. His unraced dam Dame Ivor (USA) bred two stakeswinners prior to her arrival in Australia in 1996. She is a three-quarter sister to Bates Motel, Optimistic Gal and Super Asset as well as a half-sister to four stakeswinners. Contemporary international members of the family include Magna Graduate (US$2.5 million earner, pictured above), Exciting Story (G1), Aries Diamond (G1) and Our Faye (G3 in 2008).

Dame Ivor (USA) was retired as a 23-year-old after producing Club Liquid in 2003. She produced her first 15 foals without missing a year.

A House Of Cards

2008-10-16T01:28:00.007+11:00

A cheeky little email received the other day from Emma Candy in England gave me cause to notice that her trainer father, Henry, has another smart galloper on his hands in the form of Amour Propre (2c Paris House (GB)-Miss Prim, by Case Law).

Just to set the scene for those of you who may be unfamiliar, Emma Candy came out from England to be Gai Waterhouse’s assistant trainer for two years, prior to the incumbent Tania Rouse. Like most guys who cross her path, I’m in love with Emma, so let's get that off my chest here and now and move on with the rest of the story.

Henry Candy has been training for decades and I can’t catalogue all the good horses he might have had, but the outstanding mare Time Charter (the only good horse sired by Saritamer) was a wonderful performer in the first half of the ‘80s, earning a 131 Timeform. This decade, he has sent out the brilliant filly Airwave (Choisir’s rival by little-remembered shuttler Air Express (Ire), sire of the dam of recent Breeders’ Plate winner Real Saga) and the G1 sprinter Kyllachy (by Pivotal) who has made a good start at stud in England.

When Emma’s time was up at Gai’s she returned to England and for a time assisted her father but then moved to the Newmarket yard of James Fanshawe where she has put the polish on many a good one.

While on holiday in England a few years ago I was kindly invited to visit the Candy stables near the market town of Wantage (pictured) in bucolic Oxfordshire. With a population of about 10,000, Wantage is just down the road from the famous White Horse of the Vale and is claimed as the birthplace of King Alfred The Great and is also where Lester Piggott did his schooling. It’s horse country supreme. The Candy gallops appeared to be set in about 4,000 acres of farmland, much of it used for cropping. The gallops seemed to begin over the horizon then the horses would appear as dots about five furlongs in the distance and gallop straight towards us as we stood at the top of the gallop. A lasting memory is the sight of Henry Candy on a clear English summer’s morning, surrounded by his five magnificent, doting black Labradors, clocking his gallopers in at this majestic spot. Oh, Emma was there, too.

Back to Amour Propre, the two-year-old which has won three of his four career starts including the G3 Ascot Cornwallis Stakes at his most recent start, 11 October. Incredibly, Henry Candy plucked him out of a Doncaster yearling sale in 2007 for just 1,500 guineas. There were only four yearlings by his sire sold last year, and the dearest was 2,200 guineas! Amour Propre has a reasonably close relationship to the top flight sprinter Cape Of Good Hope (GB) who won the G1 William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley on one of his three visits to Australia.

Amour Propre is by Paris House (GB), foaled in 1989, who I thought I’d never hear of again and I really don’t know whether he’s still alive. But I have to take the brunt of the blame for shuttling him to NZ for three seasons, 1994 to 1996, at Haunui Farm; it was basically my idea. Because he had an offbeat pedigree, the sireline especially, he was never popular, leaving just 134 live foals from those three seasons.

Just as well he wasn’t more popular as he turned out to be a poor sire and we don’t need them watering down the breed. Although 55 of his 87 starters won, there was just one stakeswinner and one stakes-placegetter amongst them. Only four of his progeny won $50,000 or more. A disaster.

Oddly, he has performed much better as a broodmare sire which is hard to fathom because he’s not even a well-bred failure. His NZ daughters have left six stakeswinners including Paris Petard, Moodometer, Ticklish and Solvini.

Named for a famous restaurant in Woburn Park in Bedfordshire, the grey Paris House (GB) was a slick 1000-1200m performer which is what he has almost exclusively sired in Europe, albeit with not much class amongst them. The most ever paid for one of his yearlings was 32,400 guineas and that was by red-shirted Jack Berry who trained him – obviously a sentimentalist – way back in 1996.

A multiple Group winner from two to four years and twice second (once as a two-year-old) in the G1 Nunthorpe, Paris House (GB) raced when there were some super sprinters in England, holding his own against the likes of Lochsong, Elbio, Sheikh Albadou and Wolfhound. His sprinting class more than justified a chance at stud and shuttling him from Sean Collins’s Corbally Stud in Ireland on an NZ$8,500 fee, he looked a gimmee to be popular.

But breeders had misgivings about his male line, and they were right. His sire Petong was a cheap speed sire with seven lifetime stakeswinners and he was a son of a Listed winner, Mansingh who actually ran second in the Cornwallis Stakes which his great-grandson Amour Propre has just won. Mansingh was American-bred, by Nasrullah’s son Jaipur. Hardly a threat to Northern Dancer.

Wanted. You Can Say That Again.

2008-10-14T18:39:00.003+11:00

There may only have been 17 two-year-olds who trialled at Rosehill this morning but there were a few good ones amongst them.

My interest in particular was in Wanted (2c Fastnet Rock-Fragmentation, by Snippets) which won the first of the heats.

Wanted is rather a prophetic name for the colt. I had the displeasure of being the underbidder on him at the Easter Sale last April.

He went for $800,000. Little doubt in my mind that he was the most imposing colt in the sale. Got knocked off by John Hawkes who it turns out bought him for the quixotic Eddie Hayson. Well done, Eddie, at last you’ve got yourself a proper horse. He trialled like a machine.

Wanted was bred by Ron and Deb Gilbert at Highgrove on the Darling Downs. Ron builds houses but he also builds beautiful horses (only one letter different). The previous Easter I thought his Falbrav colt was the standout horse on offer and said so in this blog, before he raced as Fravashi (see The Long Distance Curse, April 6).

If you’ve been looking at my sidebar photos, you’ll see I bought another Fastnet Rock colt for $800,000, out of Rare Insight (NZ), (by O’Reilly (NZ)), the equal top priced yearling by the sire along with Wanted. I had to knock off John Hawkes to get him.

If you’d have asked me before the sale if I was going to be all over Fastnet Rock (pictured above) I would have scoffed at you. I don’t get hung up on stallions, especially unproven ones. But that was the way things worked out. Whilst he had some clunkers, I was vastly impressed with the best of them. Their temperaments were superb.

I’ve written before that after inspecting the offerings I could usually forecast which horses Woodlands were going to buy when J Hawkes was in the chair. John wanted to buy both these colts, just as my client and I did.

Instead of opening our shoulders, shutting our eyes and bidding until there was no tomorrow on the Fragmentation colt (Wanted), we were doing mental gymnastics about how much to buy the pair etc, instead of concentrating on getting the first job done.

The Fragmentation and Rare Insight colts were quite different types of horses. They were with different vendors but were in the same little alleyway at the sales. Anyway, we determined we weren’t going to miss him, and didn’t. He’s grown about three inches in the last few months. He has a lot of the characteristics of his female line, plenty of quality and scope, but a later-maturing type than Wanted who is very ready-made which is the type of horse my client usually likes to buy. Such a horse was Fist Of Fury (Hussonet (USA)-Venticello, by Chimes Square) at the 2007 Magic Millions. Beautifully balanced and developed, he scored an 8.5 with me which means he’s an honourary member of the Holy Trinity, and, presciently, as a kind of wish-list, I even wrote my client’s name on the catalogue page. However, he was overseas at the time and didn’t take part but I doubt I would have been brave enough to top the $470,000 that was given for the colt. That looked serious money. Telepathic that my client should ask me about him later.

The other two-year-old which trialled at Rosehill with plenty in reserve was Little Surfer Girl (2f Encosta de Lago-Special Harmony, by Spinning World (USA)) which we have seen go around on a previous occasion. She may be one of the first of the new wave to wear cerise on raceday. She was second in her trial which was slowly run but she was barely out of idle. You don’t have to be a genius to buy a filly like her at the sales ($1.5 million), being by a champion sire out of such a terrific racemare, but it helps if you are a rich genius. Significantly she looked every bit as good as her page; she was another 8.5.

It may seem somewhat naive to be ramping up a couple of very expensive two-year-olds, especially after less than twenty-grander Whobegotyou has thumped the three-year-olds. But you can’t blame horses for the prices humans decide to pay for them and it just so happens that Wanted and Little Surfer Girl look the part – not just cosmetically but mechanically and athletically - cost heaps, and can run, evidently. Like Fist Of Fury, Samantha Miss, Time Thief, Wilander and a growing list of others of late. Sometimes you just get it right.

Let 'Em Eat Cake

2008-10-13T09:59:00.002+11:00

The goings-on, or not goings-on, at RacingNSW re the appointment of the new Board have a depressingly familiar ring about them. I won't say I told you so. Refer Conspiracy Theories Are Generally Just That, July 15. The whole world is falling down around our ears so you would think there would be a sense of urgency to get one's house in order.

Whogeldedyou

2008-10-11T20:18:00.015+11:00

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.

Knocking Heads Once More

2008-10-11T09:51:00.007+11:00

Given Arrowfield’s good strike rate in the last decade with their stallion selection, the Sydney debut of runners by Charge Forward (Red Ransom (USA)-Sydney’s Dream, by Bletchingly) at Rosehill today has interest.

Not that in any way the result of an early-season 1100m juvenile is going to define a stallion’s career for all time. But Charge Forward was a very superior and precocious colt in probably the strongest year of two-year-old racing in Sydney in a quarter century and we have been accustomed to looking in that direction for our future breed-shapers.

I thought the trial three weeks ago at Randwick of Gaston (2c Charge Forward-Capto, by Octagonal (NZ)) was a real eye-catcher but as he seems friendless in the betting I either looked at the wrong horse or the figures out of the trial were rubbish. Capto is also represented on the Rosehill programme by Rendzina (by Testa Rossa) a mare who in my opinion is better than her record might indicate. Charge Forward is also represented by Engulf (out of Absolute Lure (USA), by Lure) who has also trialled OK, giving him a numerically strong hand in a nine horse field.

Gaston was one of the best types by the stallion offered at the sales, fetching $230,000, bred in partnership by controversial industry figure Phillip Esplin who was also co-breeder of Charge Forward.

There was a price beyond which punters weren’t prepared to go on the first crop Charge Forward yearlings which I put down to the Red Ransom (USA) factor (top price $350,000, average $90,989).

Red Ransom has always been a hit-and-miss sire for front leg conformation; he's not perfect himself and you see it coming through in his descendants. With Bletchingly close up in the pedigree, Charge Forward has a double whammy and I think his prices fairly accurately reflected the degree of conformation neatness in his various yearlings.

But, by and large, the winning post pays little heed to what the textbook says as far as conformation is concerned – if it did we’d never have had the likes of Seachange, Veandercross, Might And Power and a thousand other good ones including a potential champion I once sold, on a one and only bid of $20,000, named Golden King (he’s a story for another day). Legs are wheels, not motors, and it’s the motor that counts most. Ultimately, yearling buyers also take on board the lessons of the winning post though it can be a painful learning curve for a helluva lot of them who are addicted to optimism instead of realism.

I bought one yearling by Charge Forward, a little filly out of Zerlina, a Zeditave mare, after having a crack at one or two at a higher level. Fastnet Rock, Not A Single Doubt, Dane Shadow, Savabeel and Oratorio were amongst the other very fast colts in Charge Forward’s generation and they, too, have first runners this season. It was a season in which the gelded Dance Hero dominated, running records in order to beat his high class rivals, and included fillies like Alinghi and Wager.

The racetrack rivalries of 2003-2004 are set to continue anew.

P.S. here's one for the trivia evening: which horse separated Charge Forward and Dance Hero at the end of the AJC Breeders' Plate of 2003? Answer: Wenceslas Square.

I Want One Of Those For Christmas

2008-10-07T23:28:00.002+11:00

I was intrigued to read in Thoroughbred Daily News (Oct. 7) quotes attributed to Zarkava’s trainer Alain de Royer-Dupre on sober reflection after the filly’s stunning win in last Sunday’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

The article said (de Royer-Dupre) refused to be drawn into comparisons to his 2003 Arc hero Dalakhani. “He was a great horse because he had two accelerations,” he said. “He could quicken, and then quicken again. The filly is different because she has only the one acceleration, but that is a very strong one.”

On The Aga Khan Studs’ website, de Royer-Dupre is quoted as saying "Of all the greats I have trained for His Highness, Dalakhani is the most complete racehorse. He has all the qualities - he has speed, he stays and he always relaxes perfectly."

Dalakhani’s pedigree is free from Northern Dancer. He is a great-grandson of Mill Reef who I never saw in the flesh but I suspect the descriptions made of Dalakhani applied equally well to him. Put down in 1986, Mill Reef was said to be suffering at the end from a heart complaint.

Too big.

Geared Up? No Way, Just Hay, Oats and Water

2008-10-06T21:01:00.006+11:00

He only had four rivals but he got the job done nicely in the first at Warwick Farm - Geared Up (3g Testa Rossa-Certain, by Rory's Jester).

This showy little bloke, rated an 8.0, was bought by yours truly at Magic Millions 2007 ($100,000). He mightn't be Mr Tiz but he has cruising speed and a short, sharp turbo boost which so far has enabled him to win two city races and half his purchase price. I'm two-for-two with Testa Rossa , the other to race being G3 winner Ortensia (ex Aerate's Pick, by Picknicker).

Certain is one of those mares which seems capable of leaving a winner by anything: Sri Pekan (USA), Orpen (USA), Monashee Mountain (USA) (twice) and Testa Rossa so far.
I well recall her dam, Silver Tip (One Pound Sterling (GB)-Sun Wing, by Sallust), a Dave O'Sullivan trainee at Matamata. A nifty little sprinter (Geared Up isn't the biggest horse either), she won the 1986 G1 ARC Railway Handicap with a postage stamp on her back - Lance O'Sullivan, weighing all of 48 kgs. Ah, there's G1 form and G1 form. A couple of years later when she was retiring to stud I was involved in her purchase in a package with another, better, G1 winner, Eastern Joy (Three Legs (GB)-Diatrelic (Fr), by Diatome).

Unless you were supporting Kerrin McEvoy, the only thing harder to find than a winner at Warwick Farm was the racebook. Being an old hand, I know you can always buy a racebook from the ladies in the cloakroom. It's the first place you think of, naturally. So I'm wandering around the rails betting ring, on the public side, with my racebook in hand and desperados are rushing up to me, asking, "Where did you find it, where did you find it?" like it was the holy grail. People have to be desperate to talk to me, and they were. Like, even with free entry to soften the blow of the rapacious $40 charged at Randwick last Saturday, you'd expect to be able to buy a racebook somewhere near your point of entry or at a prominently placed kiosk. But not where I and hundreds of others came in at Warwick Farm, that's for sure.

Samantha Miss, Here's What You Have To Do

2008-10-06T09:17:00.011+11:00

I discussed the background of French filly Zarkava (3f Zamindar-Zarkasha, by Kahyasi) in my post The Aga Sure Khan on 16 September. If you saw last night’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe you’d be convinced you were seeing a champion in action.

Making her first attempt at open weight-for-age, all her earlier six unbeaten performances coming against her own age and sex at 1600m-plus, Zarkava was electrifying, no other word for it. At this point in her career she is up there with the Allez Frances, Dahlias, Ruffians and Surrounds, or even Petite Etoile from whom she is a direct female line descendant.

Comparisons will no doubt be made in this part of the world with Sydney/Newcastle three-year-old queen Samantha Miss (3f Redoute’s Choice-Milliyet (NZ), by Zabeel (NZ)) who to quite a degree shares Zarkava’s blinding turn of foot. Samantha Miss is not unbeaten, but that’s irrelevant really. In nine starts her cumulative margin of defeat has been just three lengths and she has already beaten males once in three attempts, in the G1 AJC Champagne Stakes, which Zarkava hadn’t been required to do until the Arc.

The main difference between the two at this stage is their age. Zarkava has had her supreme moment as a late three-year-old whereas Samantha Miss has just completed the first quarter of her three-year-old season. However, she would have to win a W.S. Cox Plate, every bit as rare and difficult to do for a three-year-old filly in Australia as it is for a three-year-old filly in the Arc, for her to earn true comparison. Or should she not run in the Cox Plate, come back in the autumn and win something like the G1 Australian Cup, 2000m.

Zarkava has a link to last Saturday’s racing at Flemington via Light Vision, winner of the Listed Bart Cummings Handicap over 2520m. His sire, Zerpour (Ire) is a 1994 Aga Khan product by Darshaan. His fourth dam Zahra is the third dam of Zarkava.

Committing those mortal sins of winning over staying journeys, Zerpour (Ire) developed good form when imported to Australia, winning the G2 VRC Queen Elizabeth Stakes, 2500m (beating Samantha Miss' uncle, Cronus, 3rd), and the Werribee Cup, 2000m. Installed at (a euphemism for ‘banished to’) Auckland’s Westbury Stud, he proved sensationally unpopular, struggling to attract mares and leaving 158 live foals in seven seasons of use, many of them to Westbury’s own mares. He was down to nine mares covered in 2005 and just four in 2006 at an advertised fee of ‘on application’ (a euphemism for ‘we’ll give you a thousand bucks’). Though his numbers have been low, probably matched by the quality of mares served, Zerpour has been a modest achiever with four stakeswinners from 74 starters. He departed New Zealand in January 2007 and I seem to recall him being advertised as standing somewhere in Australia, possibly Victoria, though he's not listed as such yet on the Australian Stud Book website.

While her staying capacity has yet to be tested, Samantha Miss is probably relying on the French if she is to be effective in that area. Her stamina source will undoubtedly be the female line of her broodmare sire Zabeel who traces to Diseuse, dam of Le Filou (Fr), and from whom the likes of Arc de Triomphe winners Detroit and Carnegie (Ire) descend. The two outstanding fillies share a similarity inasmuch as their sires were essentially sprinter-milers: Zarkava’s sire, Gone West’s son Zamindar, pictured above, was not placed beyond 1400m, and Redoute’s Choice won only up to 1600m though he was fifth in a strong W.S. Cox Plate, 2040m, behind Sunline and Tie The Knot.

John Messara shuttled Zamindar's superior racing brother Zafonic (USA) to Arrowfield in 2002, only to have the horse die via accident after coverng four mares. With his new-found bosom buddy the Aga, might he be able to arrange a match race between the two super fillies some time next year?

Incidentally, Zamindar’s previous best galloper until the emergence of Zarkava, the Princess Zahra Aga Khan’s triple G1 winning filly Darjina, was retired after finishing second on Saturday in the G1 Sun Chariot Stakes at Newmarket, incredibly her sixth consecutive G1 second placing. You’d want to retire her just to stop ripping your hair out.

P.S. Add to the match race the fabulous unbeaten American filly Zenyatta (by Street Cry). Jockey Mike Smith has said she is probably the best horse he has sat on, and that's a big, big call.

Epsom? What Epsom?

2008-10-05T15:49:00.004+11:00

Pointed out to me by a fellow racegoer ... taking Saturday's Randwick racebook as the example, why is the Breeder of races other than 2 and 3YO Group races omitted from the racebook? Is it less meritorious to breed the winner of the G1 Epsom as opposed to the Gimcrack?

(Excuse me as I roll around on the floor splitting my sides with laughter. Where have you been?).

The answer looks simple - it shows where our current racing mentality is at.

Perhaps it is a condition of Thoroughbred Breeders' NSW sponsorship of the Breeders' Plate?

Next thing you know they'll be dropping the breedings of runners in races beyond 2000m as no one would want to profess their guilt.

I will do my bit to redress the balance and herewith list the breeders of the winners of all the other Group races on the day:

Lorne Dancer - Yarraman Park Stud Pty Ltd and R W Vincent
Newport - DHK Investments Pty Ltd
Theseo - Emirates Park Pty Ltd
Fritz's Princess - Vinery Australia NSW Pty Ltd
Neroli - Woodlands Stud (only a Listed race but I couldn't leave her out).

One Of These May Be Your Daughter

2008-10-05T15:19:00.005+11:00

A reprobate has drawn my attention to a worthy blog in the cybersphere, http://bloodstockhotties.blogspot.com/.

No self-respecting man of morals would waste time looking at it, but I only came to that conclusion after viewing it myself. X-rated, I recommend it only for males over 40.

It's very fertile subject matter. I cannot understand why there are not dozens more examples on this blog. It has the potential to be bigger than Facebook.

The blogger, Simon Thompson, is not unknown in this part of the world - I imagine there are lots of irate gals and parents trying to find him.

100% Of The Fun For A Fraction Of The Cost

2008-10-05T01:21:00.009+10:00

Ever since Harry Lawton began syndicating racehorse prospects in Australia in 1971, syndication as a means of enabling low-cost involvement in racehorse ownership has become a well-entrenched part of the ownership mix.

The era of steadily increasing yearling prices witnessed over the past dozen years would have squeezed out many would-be owners if it wasn’t for the opportunities offered by syndication.

Syndication has also provided a valuable learning curve for many new owners before they stepped up their levels of investment and bought into
horses ‘wholsesale’.

It was rafferty’s rules for a long time, with syndication companies and lots of fly-by-night cowboys coming and going, but since 2003 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has regulated licensing which has led to a more uniform set of standards and much more transparent disclosure.

Syndicated horses have won a slew of big races down the years, from Kensei’s Melbourne Cup in 1987 to Sebring’s Golden Slipper in 2008.

Saturday’s big programme at Randwick was yet another impressive advertisement for the syndication model and should strike hope into the hearts of all who hanker to be involved in ownership but don’t have a Darley or Patinack budget.

Star Thoroughbreds-syndicated Theseo (5g Danewin-Ozone Sand (USA), by L’Enjoleur) and Bank Robber (4g Dash For Cash-Saliah, by Salieri (USA)) ran the quinella in the G1 Epsom Handicap. Their sale purchase prices (their 'wholesale' prices) were $120,00 and $70,000 respectively. To date these relatively lightly raced geldings have won $1,322,680.

It’s a moot point whether horses carrying 51.5 kgs and 52 kgs in G1 races deserve too much kudos but the irrepressible Gai specialises in identifying potential milers and getting them into big races on light weights. Desert War won the Epsom with 50.5 kgs in 2004 and went on to be a first-rate weight-for-age commodity, and the outstanding Excellerator carried 53 kgs in 2002.

It’s been a very big year for the meticulous and consummately commercially-savvy Denise Martin who operates Star Thoroughbreds. One of Star’s best early colour-bearers, Kingsgate (Danzero-Vowed, by Without Fear (Fr)) was second in the Epsom in 2001 and 2002 so Saturday’s result was an emphatic get-square. The year 2008 has seen Star horses collect the Golden Slipper (Sebring)-Epsom (Theseo) double, providing a further vindication of Denise's determination to keep her business going. There was a prolonged period earlier in the decade when disappointing results made her question whether it was all worth it. For a while there, I thought she was in danger of hanging up her tack and becoming a marriage celebrant or real estate agent. A decision in about 2004 to lift her buying budget to a much higher level so she could keep pace with the rising prices of yearlings has been the key. It was a decision not without real risks as Denise was effectively doubling her debt burden and putting a lot of pressure on herself to market and move the new purchases. Of course she had an invaluable ally in Gai who selects the yearlings and trains exclusively for Star. Gai’s charisma and success is unrivalled in the sport and if you can keep saying no to Gai and get away with it you are George Cross material.

Theseo (pictured above, photo courtesy Lisa Grimm) was a Magic Millions purchase the last year I did the sales with Gai, 2005, from Emirates Park with whose horses Gai had enjoyed much success, though Emirates doesn’t seem to have anything like the racing profile these days. He was foal number five and quite a late foal, 29 October, but he was a stretchy, loose colt and had more quality than the average Danewin, a sire you can’t help but admire. As a gelded youngster Theseo was still very much on the leg and when he showed competitive ability as a two-year-old you just knew he would do good things as he grew into himself – but even when he turned four he didn’t look like he’d got there yet! But that’s just him, lanky with a well-oiled motor and totally genuine.

Theseo is a direct descendant of Grey Flight, the famous American daughter of Mahmoud bred in 1945. As a breeder, Emirates’ Nasser Lootah has had a bit of fun playing around with her genes. Ozone Sand, Theseo’s dam, is 2m x 3f to Buckpasser, one of turf history’s immortals (25 wins from 31 starts). Her sire, the modestly successful L’Enjoleur, is out of Fanfreluche so with his Northern Dancer-Danehill top line Theseo shares some of the same genetic ingredients as the likes of Flying Spur and Encosta de Lago (a great Emirates Park product).

The incomparable George Smith spotted Bank Robber for Denise at the Melbourne sale in 2006 which I didn’t attend, being instead at my son’s wedding. Bank Robber is also a fifth foal and though bred by a Tasmanian has an Emirates connection inasmuch as Nasser Lootah bred his sire, Dash For Cash.

At the start of the day at Randwick, syndicate groups banged heads in the Gimcrack Stakes, the first Sydney race of the season for two-year-old fillies, and a Listed event.

Star was there with the favourite, Horizons (2f Choisir-Ubiquity, by Hurricane Sky; $120,000 yearling) only to be knocked off by a $15,000 filly Our Joan Of Arc (2f Beautiful Crown (USA)-Bright Heroine, by Bluebird (USA)) carrying the logo of syndicators Darby Racing.

I can’t help myself, I have to say it – instead of burning at the stake this Joan Of Arc won the stake. I’ll never use that line again, I promise.

Mopping the brows of owners who have just had their odds-on fancy gallantly defeated is something Denise Martin is a past-master at. But I will excuse her a moment’s discomfort as she headed for the number two stall as Darby, the syndicator/part-owner of the winner, had its origins more or less in Star Thoroughbreds. (Take it as a compliment, Denise).

Scott and Renee Darby were shareholders in a 2003 Star Thoroughbred purchase Flaming (Beautiful Crown (USA)-Mahlin, by Mister C (USA)) who returned $390,975 on his $25,000 (wholesale) purchase price under Gai’s tutelage.

When you have exposure to the best you can learn a lot. In 2006, Scott Darby helped set up the Storm Thoroughbreds syndication outfit but about 18 months later there was a parting of the ways and he hung up his own shingle in late 2007. A photo of Scott with Flaming at the G3 Bill Ritchie Handicap presentation adorns the Darby Racing website.

Our Joan Of Arc, a 10th foal, was not the most prepossessing filly to parade for the Gimcrack, with lighter bone and a bit straight in front, all of which helps explain the giveaway price. But in this game handsome is as handsome does and that’s all there is to it. The winning post does not choose favourites. She is the third result of unions between Beautiful Crown and Bright Heroince, a non-winning but stakes-placed two-year-old who has a pure Australian speed/precocious pedigree with successive dams by Without Fear (Fr), Biscay and Wilkes (Fr). It’s the Fireside family established in New Zealand a century ago. It may have been her ‘short’ pedigree that attracted Darby’s attention as a fledgling syndication outfit needs early runners, and in view of that it’ll be interesting to see how much progress Our Joan Of Arc can make.

The Breeders’ Plate winner Real Saga (2c Tale Of The Cat (USA)-Windy Kate, by Air Express (Ire)) will undoubtedly make further progress. I declared him in my post of September 19, Babes On Show, so I trust my handful of readers (hi, Mum and Dad) copped the tip. He is a beautifully developed, strong colt which was retained by his breeder. As I pointed out in that post, he traces to the same female source as Samantha Miss and Bianca – what a day it would have been for the Volifox family if Bianca had held on the G1 Metropolitan, but who’s complaining?

From a future point of view, Onemorenomore (2c Red Ransom (USA)-Palia, by Last Tycoon (Ire)) caught the eye. He's a much different style of horse to Real Saga.

Liberating Landor

2008-10-02T20:17:00.007+10:00

I manage horses which contest Group 1 and Group 2 races this Saturday so I’ll don the tin of fruit and and tot off to Randwick with hope in my heart and spend the day mingling with the Ray Bans-and-mousse set.

But do you know where the most remarkable racemeeting is being held this weekend? No, not Flemington, not Randwick, not even Longchamp.

Landor.

The Landor picnics, Western Australia’s answer to Birdsville.

I’ve never been to Landor. Who has? Shame on me, it’s more than 15 years since I’ve been to anywhere WA. My closest encounter has been watching Japanese Story which was set in the Pilbara, north of Landor. But I’ve just put Landor on my bucket list.

We are talking remote, we are talking spirit of the bush, we are talking real Australia (Pitt Street is not real Australia, it's Everywheresville).

Landor is a station (ranch in Yankee). Population about two. To the nearest town, Paraburdoo, it’s 230 kms. GPS says 760 kms north of Perth, 265 kms north-west of Meekatharra and 380 kms inland from Carnarvon on the WA coast. Red dirt country, remote as one thing.

It’s not far from reputedly the world’s biggest monolith, Mount Augustus. You thought it was Uluru, didn’t you? Apparently, there’s a rivalry between these two, a geological stare-down, but Mount Augustus wins hands down at 47.95 square kilometers in area.

But back to the Landor races. They began in 1921 after a lively discussion amongst stockmen about who had the fastest horse. Much the same as Derby and Bunbury, really, without the wigs and stiff upper lips.

The Landor picnics (the East Gascoyne Race Club) occur this weekend every year, two days of racing with a gymkhana squeezed in between. Something like a thousand people converge. Standing starts, amateur jockeys, bush-bred horses, a dirt track.

They don’t suffer from small fields at Landor.

Seven races on Saturday with field sizes as follows: 9, 22, 28, 14, 25 (this the feature, the Margaret Dawson Memorial Ladies Bracelet over 1200m for a gross stake of $3,325), 24 and 21.

Then on Monday, Elders Landor Cup Day (1800m, $3,850), there are eight races of 25, 16, 28, 14, 9, 15, 27 and 29 !!

The only problem is, each horse seems to be down to run at least four times and very often in consecutive races ! I haven’t done a meticulous count-up to flesh out the above statement but one horse I can see, Howling (6g Ihtiram (Ire)-Minimoon, by El Moxie (USA)) has accepted eight times over the two days – and he’s just one of many! Howling hasn't raced since this meeting last year, when he ran a first and third. Presumably, in the meantime, he's been doing whatever it is horses do out there.

The Hammarquist family are one of several launching a Patinack-like assault on the meeting. Don is listed as training at via Meekatharra. His horses have been nominated and accepted (I think it’s actually a one-step process at Landor) a staggering 36 times. Brother – and I presume it’s brother – Graeme, from Walkaway, isn’t far behind him with 29! That's not 65 different horses, that's about five horses accepted 13 times.

Just how this all works I have no idea. The barrier draws have been done but I guess they just line up when and if they feel like it, or if the horse feels like it, to be exact.

This sounds like the most fun you can have out of bed. I feel compelled to switch off my computer for an hour or two and dive into Singer Of The Bush (book 2 of 'Banjo' Paterson’s complete works, one of my few treasured possessions) and transport myself spiritually if not physically all the way to Landor. It would be utterly liberating.

Photo credits: taken in 1991, sourced from the National Library Of Australia electronic files. Click on the top photo and see the cigarette advertising and see if you can spot Rob Waterhouse.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mention of Patinack – I see there’s a horse named Husson (3g Hussonet (USA)-Sultan’s Gift, by Radjhasi (USA)) going around in a maiden at Tamworth on Friday, hoping to improve on the 13th of 14 on his debut at Quirindi the other day.

Get out the cheque book, Nathan, and get him out of sight. Someone might get confused.

Something To Tell Your Grandchildren

2008-10-02T00:56:00.004+10:00

A few months ago, I gave a free and unsolicited plug for a magazine emanating out of Melbourne, by the name of The Thoroughbred. In response to my last post, below, I've had another communication from its managing editor, Geoff Slattery:

Steve, Your blog has become must reading for us at The Thoroughbred magazine, and Racing In Australia, volume 2 (just out). I agree absolutely with your thoughts, and it doesn't just apply to stallions and stud farms. We live by the dictum you espouse: we will not take advertorial, or anything like it (e.g. we'll advertise if you write nicely about us). Independence is something we believe in, in all our publications. It remains to be seen whether an industry used to paying for editorial, and (worse) allowing readers to be played with, will support such an approach. Sad days for the industry if the 'advertorialists' win. For those who've not come across The Thoroughbred, you can read the latest edition (including a letter to the Editor from The Racing Game) at thethoroughbred.com.au.
Best wishes, Geoff Slattery

I've just read the Spring Edition. It's class. It's also dangerously thin, 82 pages (my impression only).

If you're passionate about racing and know good storytelling from the boring-as-batshit stuff we normally have to read, and you appreciate good graphics, then I really recommend you subscribe to The Thoroughbred. Sure, it's got a Victorian feel about it but that's irrelevant - Damon Runyon had a New York feel but everyone still read him! Actually, the latest issue covers the ground from England to Chile via Perth and Sydney, so it spreads it wings.

Go to The Thoroughbred and for 50 bucks less 5 cents get yourself a great deal. You'll be able to tell your grandchildren you did your bit to preserve something of quality, and they'll be proud of you.

The Meek Do Not Inherit The Earth

2008-09-28T10:37:00.007+10:00

If you live on the internet - you’re reading the blog, obviously you do – and use it as your means of keeping up with racing and breeding info, you are probably a victim of the plethora of stallion PR which bombards our email every day.

How easy it must be to make money on the internet when there are so many news bulletins and alerts landing in our mail boxes each day, essentially peddling the same information. Stallion and stud advertising props them up, led by the deep budgets of the multinationals engaged in their war for market share. Perhaps one of them would like to sponsor my blog - why not? they advertise in Indian Charlie.

So every time Flying Spur farts, or Encosta exhales or Snitzel sneezes or Quality gets one of his Elusive winners, it’s news on no fewer than four or five advertorial services on the same day. Frankly, I was under the impression that it was the job of the stallion to beget winners, especially when you pay megadollars to obtain their semen without any assurance of success. To me, the real news is when they don’t get the winners commensurate to their cost and opportunity. When will someone in charge of the databases be game enough to publish a sires' comparative index?

Here are a bunch of bush stallions which had runners in the eastern states over the weekend which you’ll never read about, and rightly so. But they illustrate what a vast, diverse enterprise Australian racing and breeding is, how it’s populated by people who devote their time and money to the most unlikely scenarios in order to get their fun and pleasure out of the noble animal. In brackets is the number of live foals these stallions have left.

Amundsen ’99 Getting Closer-Captundra (40)
Baanya Boy ’88 Grand Rocky-Hailia (50)
Bright Treble ’77 Brightlights-Treble Choice (57)
Bull Demus ’98 Demus-Fleeting Miss (16)
Coincidence ’96 Snaadee-Momentaire (23)
Colour The Wind ’92 Zephyr Bay-Sophie (49)
Cooky Tikit ’96 Canny Lad-Tikitiboo (27)
Declarations ’96 Brief Truce-Loyal Lyric (42)
Fernside ’91 Our Paddy Boy-Pretend (10)
Golden Aura ’91 Aurealis-Ramonita (12)
Kristel Pistol ’93 Western Gun-Splendid Companion (31)
Premier Slot ’95 In The Slot-Lilith (31)
Red Chevalier ’86 Niebo-Nicole’s Dream (32)
Ridge Top ’91 Forever Regal-Cheswart Castle (2)
Ring Star ’92 Monarch Star-Leading Attraction (21)
Sirtatt ’91 Tattenham-Natalie Star (43)
Smart Alex ’92 Drawn-Pika Bella (18)
Some Charm ’80 Handsomne Harry-Leila’s Lass (37)
Swift Duke ’96 Alannon-Ideally (7)
Tuscan Artist ’89 Ahonoora-Lotka’s Star (60)
Under A Spell ’89 Bletchingly-Khaptivaan (113)

.....................................................................................

When the EI tests out of Eastern Creek last week came back negative, the biggest audible sigh of relief surely came from Canberra.

Were I a cynic (who, me?) I could draw an association between the announcement of the scare and the EI summit set down for the same week.

I'm sure the quarantine incident was fair dinkum. But I must admit the words Wag The Dog went screaming through my skull instinctively!

To Their Owners, It's Like Winning The Cox Plate

2008-09-28T00:55:00.002+10:00

I trust you took the tip for the Come By Chance picnics on Saturday (see article below).

Bloodsport won by 5.8 lengths and Glenorchy won her race, too.

Up at Atherton, on the tablelands inland from Cairns, two I sold to Tom Hedley also saluted: Gaelic Lad (6g O'Reilly-Swanette, by Danzero) won the open sprint, his seventh win in 10 starts since I sold him to Tom. Berate (5g Diatribe-Danelle Smytzer, by Danewin) prevailed at his second start up there after being wiped out at barrier rise at his first attempt.

From the slit my wrists and bleed to death department comes news that my pin-up girl Ortensia gave herself an injury requiring treatment during last week which has put her out for the rest of the Melbourne spring. Her assignation with Samantha Miss will have to wait.

It's tough being an owner.

Come By Any Means You Like, Except Boat

2008-09-25T11:10:00.004+10:00

Another great Aussie institution, the Come By Chance picnic races, happens this Saturday.

Come By Chance is stuck in the middle of a triangle formed by the towns of Coonamble, Walgett and Wee Waa in NSW, a pleasant 607 km drive north-west of Sydney.

Here’s a pen portrait about Come By Chance from the Walgett Shire Council’s website (with their numerous spelling mistakes corrected):

This pleasantly named village on the Baradine Creek (known locally as the Bungle Gully Creek) was pioneered by early settlers around the 1850's. The name Come by Chance originated when the sons of William Colless selected land in his name - previously informed, all lands in the area had been selected - hence the name of his property "Come by Chance Station". Mr Colless later owned the Post Office, Hotel, Police Station, Blacksmith Shop, Cemetery and other building blocks. Reputedly, the only privately owned village in the Southern Hemisphere.

Cattle were grazed in early days, then predominately wool and since the late 1960's cereal crops have been grown. In the early days, people didn’t need as much land to make a living. In those days, 2560 acres of land was considered as a living area. Today at least 10,000 acres of land are needed to earn a living. The development of artesian bore water early this (last) century was a terrific boost to primary production. It meant that properties could graze both cattle and sheep.

The annual Come By Chance Picnic Races have been held since 1947, with the first meeting concerning the idea held in 1946. The original race course was built behind the village, over towards the artesian bore. It was part of the stock route for years, until Dan. W. Atkinson fenced the land for W.D. Colless, it then became the Bore Paddock. The races are still held today and bring thousands of people out to the tiny village. The racecourse is now located at Gleneda, owned by the Allerton Family.

(There’s at least one other place named Come By Chance – it’s on the eastern extremity of Newfoundland in Canada, which looks and sounds far more remote than the Aussie version).

There are six races at Come By Chance on Saturday featuring 30 runners. Incredible how far so many people will travel to look at a horse and have a beer.

To prove that my reach knows no bounds, I bought one of the 30 as a yearling and sold another as a slow tried horse.

I selected Bloodsport (7g Foxhound (USA)-Make Haste, by Zoffany (USA)) as a yearling at the Classic Sale for a New Zealand friend. He could gallop. Unluckily beaten second at his first start, he then bolted in by 2.3 and 5.5 lengths respectively in his next two races at Hawkesbury. He looked like he could go all the way. Given a spell, he returned in a very hot race at Warwick Farm (won by Snippetson) but had a touch of “the virus” and ran below expectation ($3.80 starting price). Then, a niggling leg issue surfaced and the decision was taken to sell him. Almost a year later Bloodsport appeared for new connections and in the three years since he has travelled from Gosford to Townsville and back to Come By Chance. His 14 starts in that period have reaped a win at Newcastle and seconds at Carinda and Warren. He’s in the 1000m open trophy race at CBC, against four others, and will be first or second favourite. His breeders, the Gadsbys, have a share in the promising Waterhouse two-year-old filly Horizons (by Choisir).

Bloodsport’s trainer Philip Ayoub is also starting Glenorchy (5m Shinko King (Ire)-Aloisa, by Success Express (USA)) in the Class 4 1400m, one of four going to post. Glenorchy couldn’t keep up in a half pace track gallop when trained in Victoria. She’s had four wins and four placings in 20 starts in the bush for Philip who also trained the remarkable bush horse Velsontas (NZ) (Star Way (GB)-Merry Maiden, by Crested Wave (GB)).

The Day Of The Triffids, The War Of The Worlds, The Martians Are Coming ............. The Bogongs Are Here

2008-09-25T00:53:00.007+10:00

Famed American baseballer Willie Stargell, the only player to ever hit a ball out of Dodger Stadium twice, said “I love September, especially when we’re in it.”

I agree. September is always a big month for me. With only a few days to go before it’s gone, let me reflect on that.

My first-born son arrived in September. My only surviving brother has his birthday in September. The two women I’ve loved most in my life were both born in September, one day apart, four years apart. If Kerry happens to read this down in Melbourne, here’s lookin’ at you, babe. I’d send roses but I remember you once told me you didn’t like flowers because flowers always die.

It was on a September day that I decided to come to Australia.

The two-year-old trials and the opening of the serving barns in September herald the arrival of spring.

But most important of all, the bogong moths arrive in Sydney in September. Set your clock by them.

Last year I swore I would be out of this godforsaken apartment before another bogong invasion, but it hasn’t happened. Before the end of the month these pests will sweep into the nearby trees and wait until nightfall when, attracted by the lights, they will attack the building, getting in no matter how hermetically sealed the place might be. And don’t say “turn out the lights” – that doesn’t deter them. I reckon they can see the LCD light on the microwave from a thousand metres through a brick wall. If you took no precautions there would be a thousand a night, pinging and boinging, dive-bombing your face, leaving their dust all over your walls and ceilings and settling in every crevice.

I’m ready to do battle. I’ve got netting which I tape over the outside aluminium window and door frames. This is 70% effective, the blighters still squeeze through impossibly small gaps to invade your space. However, this also means I can’t open any of the doors or windows to get fresh air for at least a fortnight until they decide to migrate elsewhere. My initial armoury of four full cans of spray is at the ready – the spray only seems to encourage them and makes them fly in even greater frenzy - and I’ve got three fly swats which I place in the lounge, office and bedroom for quick access. You can tell I don’t like these buggers, they make life a misery just at the time spring is happening. If anyone's got a better suggestion as to how to keep these things out of one's house, please let me know! ‘Bogong’ is said to be the translation of the word ‘Canberra’ in the language of the local indigenous. More rubbish from out of the capital.

Fist Of Fury (3c Hussonet (USA)-Venticello, by Chimes Square) was foaled in September, on the 15th which also happens to be my brother’s birthday. He has been probably the most impressive Sydney winner this week. A good old-fashioned masterstroke by John O’Shea to keep this colt covered up so that his legion of well-known owners were able to get big odds when he made his debut at Canterbury on Tuesday.

Fist Of Fury was a much-admired yearling at Magic Millions 2007 where his $470,000 price tag was more a reflection of his physique than his catalogue page. Breeder Mike van Gestel wouldn't let anyone walk by the box without making them have a look at this guy. Mike’s a hard seller at the best of times, with the persistence of the Dutch to boot, but in this colt he had the goods to produce a bonanza in the sale ring. The pedigree gurus knew it had a special elixir in its veins (take it out to seven generations, it’s interesting). I have a theory that when they are ‘properly’ bred they usually look like runners, and Fist Of Fury was one of those. Hussonet needs another good horse, I hope this one trains on.

Another of Hugh Bowman’s winners at Randwick, Roman Emperor (NZ)(3c Montjeu (Ire)-Gussy Godiva (NZ), by Last Tycoon (Ire)) was also impressive, a stayer of potential. He wasn’t cheap at Karaka, costing $240,000. He and Fist Of Fury won in similar fashion, cutting through the field in the home straight and going strongest at the line.

The Astronomer (3c Galileo (Ire)-Foxy, by Canny Lad) was good enough to triumph over adversity in running when winning his debut at Canterbury. Guy Walter’s had a lean patch but with winners on consecutive days perhaps this good trainer's stable has turned the corner. The Astronomer’s family can be described, at best, as workmanlike; it will be interesting to see how far he can go. There is only one Listed winner produced by his first three dams or any of their descendants.

Joku (4g Xaar (GB)-Biru Lang (USA), by Pine Bluff) won his fourth race from six starts, yet another advertisement for Gooree Stud's guile. As a sire, Xaar (GB) was a despised commodity by the time Joku hit the ground but the 3f x 5f Best In Show must have been what Gooree wanted to experiment with (the highest auction price for any Xaar conceived that year was just $40,000). Pine Bluff, by the way, is also the damsire of G1 winner Absolut Glam.

A birdie whispered to me that Joku, Lorne Dancer and Bianca, three gallopers currently in rare form in the Waterhouse yard, were all designated ‘potential realised, move on’ not so many weeks ago. Just shows what the threat of eviction can do to a horse.

Juice's Blood Worth Bottling

2008-09-22T18:16:00.006+10:00

Tang, Lucozade, Seagers, Schenley, Schnapps, Gordon’s – to this liquid line of related thoroughbreds now add Juice, winner of Saturday’s G3 Gold Trail Stakes for three-year-old fillies at Hastings.

It was fitting that Juice (Bertolini-Call Minder) should annex this early-season feature, the first race in the NZ Bloodstock Filly Of The Year Series, as her family is steeped in Hawkes Bay tradition. Her fourth dam, Tang, actually ran second in the Gold Trail Stakes of 1978 when it was 1400m rather than the 1200m of today. The winner that year, Springtide (by Karayar (Ire)) was another brilliant filly who was later exported to the United States but became a failed producer there.

Before going any further, credit to Hawkes Bay Racing, and the sponsor, for reinstating the traditional name of this event. For the past 10 years it has become very well known as the Highview Stakes, and compliments to Brent Gillovic for maintaining the sponsorship for so long. The new sponsor has allowed his name to be tacked on to the race’s traditional name and it was run as the Gold Trail Stakes, in association with Hutchinsons.

Gold Trail perpetuates the 1929 grand-daughter of Desert Gold, bred by T H Lowry. A son, T C Lowry, bred Lapse, the seventh dam of Juice. The Lowrys are, of course, Hawkes Bay’s Okawa Stud clan who gave short, elegant, one-word names to many of their good horses. How times have changed since the glory era of the great Hawkes Bay breeders who along with the First Four Shippers of Canterbury were the closest thing New Zealand had to transplanted English squatocracy.

Juice’s fourth dam, Tang (Taipan II (USA)-Agricolet, by Agricola (GB)), was an exceptional filly bred in Hawkes Bay, by the Curtis brothers of Clear View Stud, Otane. Champion filly at two and three, she raced 30 times for 10 wins and 13 placings, her wins including the Thousand Guineas, NZ Oaks, Royal Stakes, Ladies Mile, Lowland Stakes, Great Britain-New Zealand Stakes and the Wakefield Stakes. Taipan II stood in Auckland and was probably the first sire to successfully overcome the anti-USA-bred stigma.

Tang had a tragic stud career, producing just two filly foals, and her blood survives through just one of them, Dash (by Sovereign Edition), the third dam of Juice. The other daughter, a full sister named Thrive, had atrocious luck. In 11 years at stud she produced one live foal, an unraced filly Juniper (by Star Way (GB)) who has produced just one named filly in 13 years at stud and that filly, Fairjet (by Jetball), had no progeny - the end of the line.

The foaling season is happening all around us but if we ever needed a reminder that it isn’t all beer and skittles, there it is.

Weekend Hussler Is A Powder Puff

2008-09-22T15:54:00.005+10:00

Now that I’ve got your undivided attention - and in response to the plethora of cards, letters and blog comments received – let me introduce you to the hero of last weekend’s racing: Freedom Tower (7g Peintre Celebre-Burst, by Marauding).

As foreshadowed in my pre-weekend post (see Lest We Forget. A Tribute To Survival Skills, below) the former $300,000 yearling Freedom Tower graced the track at WA’s remote Leonora, 235 kms north of Kalgoorlie on the Goldfields Highway.

In the hands of Ben So, Freedom Tower first won the Rating 67 1400m event then backed up three races later to win the $12,000 Leonora Cup 1600m (Rating 73) by a comfortable two lengths returning $4.00.

Freedom Tower is still part-owned by Victoria Samba/Nikolic. Given those surnames, I imagine the bookies needed blood transfusions. Prior to Leonora, he was a distant 13th of 15 in a Ratings 62 at Kalgoorlie on 10 September. Though Freedom Tower began his career around Melbourne where he was placed twice in four starts, he has been in WA since mid-2005. Since mid-2007 he raced 20 times consecutively in Kalgoorlie for three wins, prior to his northern odyssey to Leonora for easier pickings.

I’m pleased for Freedom Tower’s sake. After Leonora, there's only Laverton left, which is 120 kms further into the desert to the east of Leonora. Only winners return home from there.

Leonora has a fascinating history, like so much of outback Australia. Two things amongst the many I didn’t know is that it’s host to Australia richest foot-race, The Golden Gift, and that it was once home to Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States who was a miner and one of the founders of Zinc Corporation which later became part of Rio Tinto.

Other results from my Bushies Honour Roll of last weekend: Call A Friend 6th, Let’s Bat 2nd, Nehemiah 2nd last, Optic Fit 4th and Winning Express 4th.

Oh, let’s not forget King Sapphire. Last at Lismore, for the 43rd time.

81 Group Ones - The Bloke Can Ride

2008-09-20T08:50:00.007+10:00

Winning the G1 Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes (registered name the Invitation Stakes) for the sixth time, Damian Oliver recounted afterwards that the race had given him the first of his 81 G1 winners, Submariner (NZ), 19 years ago.

In my former life as general manager of Haunui Farm, I sold Submariner (Sea Anchor (Ire)-Deep Amber, by Deep Diver (Ire)) to syndicator Harry Lawton (for $25,000) at a sale which has probably been forgotten by most – the Gilt Edged Sale at Belmont Park, North Richmond. Belmont Park is the former Woodlands, now Darley, pre-training property.

I cannot remember the circumstances which gave rise to the creation of this sale, or who ran it, but it was a one-off. Doubtless some dissention in the ranks of NSW breeders; usual story. However, we brought a consignment over for it. We were marketing so many horses back then that every opportunity to spread them across the market was usually taken. We may have been the only NZ vendors.

I dispensed with the Gilt Edged Sale catalogue many years back so I don’t have reference to it any longer. I have a feeling the sale wasn’t for yearlings only, Submariner might have been a two-year-old at the time? He was foaled in 1986 but another horse I seem to recall taking to Belmont Park was a small filly subsequently named Bas Bleu (Bassenthwaite (GB)-Princess Dan, by Mr Dan) who became the dam of the good gallopers King Lotto, Lady Of Letters and Pugad Lawin. However she wasn’t foaled until 1988, so I may have my wires well and truly crossed - my mind is becoming enfeebled. Someone’s bound to know.

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Ortensia (3f Testa Rossa-Aerate’s Pick, by Picknicker) got her reward with a tactically superior victory in the G3 Thousand Guineas Prelude at Caulfield on Saturday. Last week, from the outside barrier at the Valley, she came from last in running, this time she led all the way. Really, she should be unbeaten in all five starts. I have bought enough slow ones – who hasn’t? – but in selecting perhaps the best three-year-old filly in Melbourne as well as perhaps the best four-year-old mare (Absolut Glam) I am allowing myself some bragging rights. It’s not as if I have dozens of orders! These two cost $200,000 the pair, have already won a million and must be worth two or three times that. The people for whom I chose those fillies gave me a free hand operationally. As an agent, you appreciate that. Incidentally, Ortensia’s second cousin twice removed, the bonny little filly Romneya (Red Ransom-Mannington, by Danehill), was runner-up.

Of the black-type winners from Saturday which were auctioned as yearlings, Ortensia was the cheapest, $50,000. The others were Orange County (G1) $70,000, Weekend Hustler (G1) $80,000, My Vegas $110,000, Bhutane Dane $360,000, Fiumicino $425,000, Samantha Miss $1,500,000 and Musket $2,500,000. One for all price ranges. Surely Patinack can’t buy them all?

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There are four heats for two-year-olds being held on the course proper at the Warwick Farm barrier trials on Monday. First season sires with representation, at acceptance time, are Charge Forward, Fastnet Rock, Not A Single Doubt and Shamardal (USA) (2).

The Wellington Hiccup

2008-09-20T08:50:00.004+10:00

I’ve written about it long and often enough on this blog and the prophecy continues fulfilling itself. The Wellington Cup, once THE great race of New Zealand, has been reduced in distance from 3200m to 2400m.

It’s called ‘moving with the times’, a euphemism for ‘inevitable weakening of the breed’.

Those of you planning on living another 50 years, bone up on your quarter horse pedigrees, you’ll need them.

There is nothing sacrosanct about 3200m but as a recognised extreme test for a flat racing thoroughbred, if you don’t count the longer races in England and France, it has its place. I don’t see the marathon being expunged from the Olympic programme any time soon.

The problem in all this, in my opinion, is that the Group race system (or the Pattern Races as they should be more properly described) has become a device by which racing clubs advertise their idea of their own prestige rather than as a pure servant of the breed. It was devised in order to lay down a logical pathway of competition in which horses could be tested through which breeders and buyers would have a ready means of understanding racing merit. I have some knowledge of this, I led the introduction of the system into NZ in 1979.

Because the races ‘belonged’ to the clubs, inevitably they wanted to take ownership of the process as much as they could as their ‘prestige’ was at stake. When Stakes Subsidy Fund monies were then attached to the Groupings the process became highly politicised. Where the money goes is where the breed goes.

I’ve read that a justification for reducing the Wellington Cup distance from 3200m to 2400m is to try and regain its Group 1 status (it has been relegated to Group 2). That ought not to be an end in itself and illustrates how the system gets perverted.

Since the gulf between spring NZ and Australian prizemoney became so marked post-1990, retaining high quality older horses, especially stayers, to compete in NZ through the late spring and summer became problematic. This caused a gradual reduction in the numbers of proven superior horses available for the Wellington Cup (which is the second, not the first, 3200m race at Trentham to have its distance reduced).

I have the greatest reservation about ANY handicap being a Group 1 race. I also think racing clubs as we know them should be abolished (that’s a yarn for another day but every time I look at those Gestapo-guarded empty seats at Randwick opposite the winning post my opinion becomes even more entrenched). Before I left NZ I recall a survey in Auckland which showed members attended their race meetings on average 2.5 times per year. It’s probably not even that at Randwick and certainly not at Warwick Farm. What a waste of resources. But don’t get me going on that.

One of the most competitive and publicly-appreciated races in Britain is the Ebor Handicap over 2800m at York, the richest handicap in Europe. The fact that it is Group Nothing doesn't matter.

In the days when TAB betting closed 30 minutes before the off, when TAB tickets were handwritten by an agent behind a grille with carbon paper used to produce a copy, when the amounts bet had to be rung through to TAB headquarters so dividends could be calculated, that was when the Wellington Cup was the great race of NZ, its history saturated with the deeds of the great and immortal.

This was a time before the socio-economic drift to the north became pronounced, when the prizemoney at the Wellington summer carnival was so compelling you had to travel from anywhere in either island if you had a horse with half a chance. They were the days when the National Yearling Sale was held at the northern end of the Trentham track during Cup Week. If you were selling a relative of the Oaks, Derby or even the Cup winner, you could double your reserve and get it.

With the senility that comes with advancing years, my sense now is that those were pretty good days. In some respects its a pity the younger people of today will never experience those more sedate, more innocent times when all we had to worry about was obliteration by the H-bomb and not to forget to take The Pill.

The last two runnings of the Wellington Cup have attracted capacity fields of 18 runners. The recent roll call of winners – Cyclades, Oarsman, Cluden Creek, Zabeat, Envoy, Willie Smith and Young Centaur – is a Who’s That? rather than a Who’s Who or racing but that really doesn’t matter. The club should have continued carding the race at 3200m as the field fills easily enough, fund the race to the best of its ability and continue to promote it innovatively because by its very nature it’s not a run-of-the-mill race. The club’s pride might be hurt in ‘losing’ a Group 1 but that’s not the end-all-and-be-all.

Lest We Forget. A Tribute To Survival Skills

2008-09-19T01:17:00.012+10:00

Weekend Hussler, Light Fantastic and Co. Rivetting stuff coming up at Caulfield. But still giving pleasure in remote corners of Australia, my ‘Bushies Honour Roll’ for this weekend:

Call A Friend (7g Zabeel-Call A Queen) 24: 1-8-1, $29,200. Gooree-bred ex-Waterhouse half-brother to Call Me Henry, in race 2, Collarenebri, NSW.

Freedom Tower (7g Peintre Celebre-Burst) $300,000 yearling, dam won a Golden Slipper, 28:4-5-1, $41,208, in race 3 at Leonora, WA, and if he goes well in that he might line up in race 6 too.

Let’s Bat (4g Encosta de Lago-Clowning) $175,000 yearling, half brother to Chuckle, 9: 0-3-1, $6,550, gracing the track in race 3 at Betoota, Queensland.

Nehemiah (6g Fusaichi Pegasus-Trouble Woman), Gooree-bred ex-Freedman trainee, one-time dual Sandown winner, 26: 6-0-3, $70,000, in race 2 at Surat, Queensland.

Optic Fit (9g Snippets-Century Pike) $220,000 yearling, one of 13 foals (only 3 city winners) of multiple SW, 49: 2-3-2, $24,172, in race 4 at Alice Springs, NT, on Sunday.

Winning Express (7g Deputy Governor-Domino) $120,000 yearling, dam won the NZ and AJC Oaks and produced dual G1 winner Hero, 33: 3-3-8, $21,635, in race 4 at Surat in Queensland.

And the daddy of them all:
King Sapphire (11g Silver Magnum-Queen Sapphire) the pride and joy of Frank Dichiera of Mullumbimby: race 2 at Lismore on Sunday will be his 67th start. He has finished third, once, on 2 July 2005. His total career earnings are $400. He has finished last, officially, 42 times. Some people think this is funny but it is actually a blight on racing which clearly isn’t interested in standards.

P.S. Back in January, I commented on a NZ trotting mare by the name of Invasion Of Privacy who that week was having her 148th start with a record of 1-2-3 and $10,313. Wonder what happened to this now 14-year-old?

Babes On Show

2008-09-19T01:17:00.008+10:00

Only forty two-year-olds went around in the first ‘official’ trials at Randwick on Friday, a far cry from days of yore. There were a handful of eye-catching performances.

The 40 juveniles came from 13 stables. The biggest representation came from Graeme Rogerson with 9, Clarry Conners 6, Maryann Thexton (from the Gold Coast) 4, Paul Perry 4, Gai and Anthony Cummings 3 apiece.

Amongst first season sires, only four had runners: Savabeel a surprising 4, Charge Forward 2, Dane Shadow and Al Maher one each (no Fastnet Rocks).

There are four more heats at the Warwick Farm trials on Monday.

I was impressed by Real Saga (2c Tale Of The Cat-Windy Kate, by Air Express – not offered as a yearling) from the Hawkes stable which won heat two. He’s the first foal of his dam who was smart, winning three races at two. A good sort, this colt. And, believe it or not, he traces to Volifox as does Bianca and Samantha Miss (see Jim And Veda’s Work Lives On, below).

You couldn’t miss Gai’s/Star Thoroughbreds’ Horizons (2f Choisir-Ubiquity, by Hurricane Sky - $120,000 Magic Millions) who cleared out in heat one to record the fastest time. But she looked already very well drilled, drew the rail and had the blinkers on, so if it were a betting race she’d be $1.04. The dam is a sister to Continuum.

Gaston (2c Charge Forward-Capto, by Octagonal - $230,000 Easter) from the Rogerson yard was a strong closer to finish second in his heat. He had no idea what he was doing early but showed maturity beyond his years to dash home. He was nice at the yearling sales and still looks nice.

Onemorenomore (2c Red Ransom-Palia, by Last Tycoon - $800,000 Easter) had a soft win and this Patinack colour-bearer will be worth watching, too.

Jim and Veda's Work Lives On

2008-09-19T01:17:00.006+10:00

If recent races are anything to judge by, stayers in New South Wales are a woeful mob. But in saying that you can’t take anything away from G3 Newcastle Cup winner Bianca who added this trophy to the Wyong and Ipswich Cups won recently. She's a tough cookie.

Just because she can stay and is trained by the past-master at making them stay, Bianca has already won a staggering $451,400 (gross) for the Cloros family who have enjoyed much success with mares Gai has sourced out of New Zealand, such as Coca Cobanna, In Joyment, Altiero and Pop’s Dream.

Yesterday Bianca showed a new dimension: ability to win on top of the ground. All her previous wins were on affected tracks, including the race off the back of which she was bought: the Great Northern Foal Stakes for two-year-olds at Ellerslie just over two years ago. The track was a swamp that day and Bianca won by 9.8 lengths, running the 1400m in 1:33.89 (not a misprint). Many people might have dismissed this, from an Australian point of view, as irrelevant NZ bog form, but here’s Bianca now with $451,400 already in the bank.

Bianca’s form pattern fits that of the majority of NZ tried horses with which Gai has had so much success, although, Bianca apart, it’s been lean pickings for her in that department for a while. Gai soon found horses coming from a NZ training environment took a long time to adjust to the different ways in Sydney. She was never too despondent if their first preparation was unrewarding; she knew they would improve through their second and even third preparations and invariably they did. This is Bianca’s fourth Sydney preparation – a helluva long one as it started back in February and the mare has raced every month since except July.

Kiwis can ask pretty much what they like for their up-and-comers and there’s a good chance they’ll get it. Tried buying a nice young horse out of a Sydney or Melbourne stable lately? Gai is as much to blame for that situation as anyone. As the number one NZ tried horse buyer through the 90s and early 2000s, she met the outrageous valuations placed on a few likely sorts; everyone got wind of this and upped the ante accordingly. For a while sales virtually ground to a halt; even Gai was priced out of the market. A few that she did secure in the early 2000s might have won a NZ maiden race impressively but they came from families thinner than Nicole Richie and after a win or two around Sydney they had delivered everything they had to offer.

Not so Bianca who has great depth to her female family though her sire Painted Black (JPN) flies below the radar. Painted Black is a Shadai Farm product, a Japanese G2 winner over 3600m and a G3 winner over 2400m, by Sunday Silence. Despite his name, he’s a chestnut – obviously they’re colour blind in Japan. With such an arresting background, and standing these days in the South Island where there can’t be many mares left, it’s little wonder he has served just 116 mares in six stud seasons. He’s had only 15 runners and Bianca is the only one to win a city race.

Quite how a mare like Blanche Amelia (by Grosvenor (NZ)) gets to Painted Black is a cause for wonder as she is a daughter of a top class mare, Cariere, winner of the G1 Avondale Cup when that race was almost as hard to win as the Caulfield Cup. The breeder is no longer alive to tell us but I suspect it was because of the relationship they had with the studmaster standing Painted Black who had once worked for them – probably no more than a token of support (however, I’m sure Bianca has a A+++ Werk nick rating and is 110 on Brain!).

The breeder was the late Mrs Veda Morris whose husband Jim predeceased her by many years. The Morrises had Rodmor Stud on the main road between Hamilton and Cambridge, distinguished by its neat hedgerows and the white cap rail, and were breeders of the old school, people of the land and stock. I recall Robert Sangster's mares used to board there. The Morrises developed this branch of what is known as the Volifox family for 40 years, producing a slew of good horses from it. From Fleetmistress, a daughter of Volifox (by Foxbridge (GB)), Jim bred one foal in 1965 by his own stallion Gold Sovereign (GB), a filly by the name of Gold Fleet. She in turn went to his own stallion, the moderately successful Rocky Mountain (FR), to produce the stakeswinner Ascending who in turn went to another Rodmor stallion, the disappointing Funny Fellow (GB), to produce a real gem, the G1 winner Cariere.

Gold Fleet is Bianca’s fourth dam. It just so happens she’s Samantha Miss’ fourth dam also.

That would make the Morrises very happy.

Better Than Bank Interest (Especially Today)

2008-09-17T19:35:00.005+10:00

It hasn’t taken Nathan Tinkler long to get a meaningful return on investment with Raheeb hacking up in the G3 Cameron Handicap at Newcastle, a race he sponsored.

Get used to it – the massive Patinack stable bristles with class.

According to TVN, Tinkler paid $850,000 for Raheeb (5h Royal Academy-Gatana). Former owner Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al Maktoum has been a huge benefactor to Australian breeders for much the last decade; he must have thought at long last he’d found one himself when Tinkler relieved him of Raheeb, a colt which at his second race start had won at Port Macquarie, where the Tinkler family have a base. Tinkler of course now also owns Murtajill (4h Rock Of Gibraltar-Skating), the best horse to have carried the Sheikh’s colours during his expensive foray into Australian racing. Murtajill, almost ready to race again, is a top class individual and needs just a G1 or G2 win to frank his stud credentials. He’s up to it.

Chestnut colts by Royal Academy were never the height of fashion, and Raheeb had difficulty selling as a yearling when Vinery offered him at Easter in 2005. He had all the size you’d expect from the Royal Academy/Marauding cross. His shoulder and girth were impressive as were his hindquarters but he was fairly flat through the knee. As I recall, he had a bump on his near hind fetlock which might have been an issue; he was passed in initially but sold afterwards for $90,000.

Raheeb’s G3 success supplants his previous four stakes placings and he looks capable of taking higher honours. He’ll have to, because a win in an ordinary race like the Cameron doesn’t clinch a sure-fire commercial stud career. The 2006 winner Collate stands for $5,500 in Queensland where he served 30 mares in his first season last year after a lateish start. Ability apart, Raheeb has two things going for him – a fashionable Danehill-free pedigree and his relationship to Fastnet Rock on whose coat-tails he can ride in the meantime.

They must be flat out building stallion boxes at Patinack.

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As far as I can see, Darley haven’t bought a Coolmore-sired yearling in Australia since 2004.

That's a long time to hold a grudge but if you’ve got that much money you can please yourself, even if it does cut you off from many successful bloodlines.

But Darley have come in through the back door via their purchase of Woodlands earlier this year, that operation being well stocked with progeny of some of the best Coolmore sires, as well as digging deep for the likes of Von Costa de Hero, by Encosta de Lago, ironically bred by the Sheikh’s cousin.

Sousa (3c Galileo-Liberty Song, by Last Tycoon), narrow winner of the G3 Spring Stakes at Newcastle, is one such Woodlands-sourced, Coolmore-sired progeny.

Whilst doing due diligence for the sales, I found I could predict, with a fair degree of certainty, which horses the (then) Woodlands team of Hawkes and Lobb were going to bid on. Our tastes were apparently very similar, though our budgets were several light years apart. New Zealand-bred Sousa was one such yearling, well developed and almost impossible to fault, a lofty 8.0+ on my scoresheet.

Sousa was bred by Lars Pearson who might have thought he was doing well when he got NZ$150,000 for him as a weanling. On behalf of the Cambridge couple who bought him, Trelawney Stud then marketed him into a A$420,000 yearling, by far and away the highest price for a Galileo yearling in 2007 by which time the Australian buying bench had pronounced him dead. As a matter of record, Galileo’s 59 yearlings in 2007 averaged just over $78,000; 34 of them sold for less than the $55,000 advertised fee Galileo stood for in his final Australian season, 2006. (23 others went through the ring and couldn’t find a home). Galileo’s emergence in Australia has been painfully slow compared with his northern hemisphere career. At this point in time, just 16 of his 146 starters in this part of the world have won as much in prizemoney as that final service fee – and two of them, Mahler and Purple Moon, came all the way from Europe to do it. So make that number 14.

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I wrote a blog on January 8 this year describing how I secured Justice Prevails (Proud Knight-Innocent Lady) for stud duty in New Zealand. Someone had to do it! I note he sired four winners on the eight race card at Gore on Wednesday where the track was a heavy 10 (2:16.25 for 2000m, a fair time for 2200m on the dry). Irrespective of where the race meeting is or the class of horse, such a feat is always noteworthy. Gore is in Southland, next stop the Ross Ice Shelf. Justice Prevails has been standing for many years in the deep south. He’s 18 now. How time flies.

The Aga Sure Khan

2008-09-16T00:35:00.009+10:00

One of the most enduringly successful influences in thoroughbred breeding and racing has been that of the Aga Khan, and his predecessors.

The current Aga has a homebred three-year-old filly in France named Zarkava (pictured) which, so far, is proving exceptional. On Sunday she won the G1 Prix Vermeille at Longchamp to remain unbeaten in six starts and become the first since Allez France in 1973 to complete the French fillies' triple crown, the 1000 Guineas-Oaks-Vermeille. She has the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in her sights - Allez France was second as a three-year-old, beaten by Rheingold.

The Aga is one of those people responsible for developing female families in which all the horse names have the same starting letter, in this case a Z family. Usually these names have Persian/Arabic derivations and are often very similar to each other. Annoying to the unsophisticated Anglo-Saxons amongst us who can’t differentiate.

The Aga inherited and further developed a rich thoroughbred heritage and has since made some highly strategic acquisitions, in sometimes controversial circumstances which reached the courts, notably the Boussac and Legardere bloodstock legacies.

Zarkava’s sire is Zamindar, Juddmonte’s lesser sibling of Zafonic but proving a useful sire. Her first four dams all begin with Z (zzzzz…zzzzz) but the fifth dam is one of the supreme race fillies, Petite Etoile (Petition-Star Of Iran) who was a tragedy at stud herself, producing just three foals in 14 seasons. Petite Etoile’s fourth dam was Mumtaz Mahal. Zarkava’s pedigree features 3m x 4m to the three-quarter brothers The Minstrel and Nijinsky.

In a blog like this, where readers don’t figure to have an attention span longer than five minutes, it would be impossible to paint a pen-portrait of the Aga Khan dynasty’s profound role in shaping the modern thoroughbred, and I’d have to take a year off to research it properly in any case. Not long ago, John Messara, Arrowfield, announced a breeding arrangement with a handful of the Aga’s mares which, as he said at the time, was quite a development for this part of the world.

Not that there isn't plenty of the Aga Khan bloodlines here in the gene pool already, acquired primarily at northern hemisphere clearing sales. Arrowfield’s near-neighbour, Kia Ora Stud, for example, owns half a dozen choicely-bred young Aga Khan mares including Zarinia (Ire), by Intikhab (USA), a mare whose third dam is the fourth dam of Zarkava. Later this week a Kia Ora bred and owned filly, Davala, will make her racetrack debut from the Guy Walter stable and she is 100% Aga Khan. Conceived in Ireland to southern time, she is by the Aga’s champion Dalakhani (Darshaan-Daltawa) out of Shashzaya (Ire), an S family mare by Ashkalani (Ire)-Shashna. Ten days ago, Davala’s three-year-old three-quarter sister Shemima won the G3 Prix de Lutece at Longchamp over 3000m. As Dalakhani is proving a significant early success at stud with this year’s G1 Irish Oaks winner Moonstone and G1 English St Leger winner Conduit leading the way, it will be interesting to see if Davala develops into anything. Next autumn perhaps? Interestingly, earlier this year Kia Ora imported a Danehill half-sister to Moonstone (also a half-sister to G1 winner Cerulean Sky, the dam of Melbourne Cup possible Honolulu).

As an owner-breeder, the Aga Khan has been able to steadfastly breed the way he’s wanted to and assiduously develop those marvelous, mainly classic-oriented, families. He and the likes of Prince Khaled Abdullah, Juddmonte, are colossuses (or colossusi?) of European breeding, churning out high quality winners year after year. The Aga Khan has studs in Ireland and France and currently stands his homebreds Dalakhani, Sinndar and Azamour.

The present Aga Khan (Prince Karim al-Husseini) is the fourth to carry this honorific title which first came into being in the 1830s and roughly translated means ‘Commanding Chief’. For 51 years (he is in his 72nd year) he has been the Imam of the Ismaili Muslim sect, the 49th Imam in a line which goes all the way back to Ali, the cousin of the prophet Muhammad. That's a pedigree.

Coincidentally, on the same Longchamp racecard on Sunday, a three-year-old colt maintained his unbeaten six-for-six career tally. Vision d’Etat won the G2 Prix Niel over 2400m, his first race since winning the French Derby, a 2100m race these days, on June 1.

Zarkava and Vision d’Etat, who are set to clash in the Arc, come from opposite sides of the tracks.

Vision d’Etat is by a grey stallion named Chichicastenango, to whom you got a free service if you could pronounce the name without hesitating first time of asking. (It’s a small city in Guatemala, so Guatemalans weren’t eligible for free services). A 1998 product, Chichicastenango is bred on the world famous Smadoun/Antheus cross. Smadoun (grandson of Caro) sired two stakeswinners. Chichicastenango was one of them, a decent dual G1 winner who was also second in the French Derby when it was run over the proper distance. He’s from the 2-s family; his seventh dam is Somethingroyal (fourth dam of Typhoon Zed). In another coincidence, there’s a grey 2-s family sire in Australia, the little-used Dyslexia. Young Chichicastenango is probably already doing better than his sire ever did. His last advertised service fee was 3,500 euros with a live foal guarantee. He stands at the historic Haras de Victot, about 30 kms south of Deauville.

There’s nothing particularly modern or sexy about Vision d’Etat’s pedigree. His dam, who traces to Illuminata, was 19 when she produced the colt. But lurking in the pedigree is my favourite genetic atom bomb, Mill Reef, sire of Vision d’Etat’s broodmare sire Garde Royale. French racing has this propensity to throw up G1 horses from the most modest backgrounds, I think moreso than Britain which is almost totally in the grip of the Irish and Arabs. One I recall is Millkom, a sensation of French racing in the mid-90s, a son of Cyrano de Bergerac (it’s an oldie but a goodie – he always won by a nose).

It’s easy to become dispirited watching the swathe being cut through the ranks of quality Australian bloodstock by the likes of Darley, Patinack and Coolmore. Try competing with them! I shudder at the prospect of all the good races in Australia being contested only by jockeys wearing maroon and purple (and occasionally navy and cerise). But the Vision d’Etats of this world remind me that no one’s got a total lock on winning.

Watch Channel Four Instead

2008-09-15T00:57:00.007+10:00

The bastardization of Group race names received another boost in England on Sunday with a Group 3 contest at Glorious Goodwood: the Select Racing UK On Sky 432 Stakes. Run over the common distance of 1 mile 1 furlong and 192 yards. Imagine winning and recounting the thrill to the fellows at The Club as you sink into the button-back leather armchair with your fifth gin in hand, “I say chaps, did you see my filly win the Select Racing UK On Sky 432 Stakes at Goodwood, what-what?” Just trips off the tongue, doesn't it? Race names like this are a con to fill out space in a catalogue pedigree. I think there should be a restriction on the number of letters and spaces, as with horse names. The race’s registered name is the Select Stakes, and Sunday’s running was the 42nd renewal. The winner, Lady Gloria, a previous G3 winner by Diktat from a Pivotal mare, was the rank outsider at 33 to 1. Serves them jolly well right.

As an aside, Great Leighs, in Essex, is the first new racecourse opened in Britain in 80 years. I noticed on an American blog recently a list of USA tracks which had closed in the last four decades and there were 40 of them. The latest, Bay Meadows, near San Francisco, closed its doors a couple of weeks back. People laugh when I tell them racing is a sunset industry. I have a memory of Bay Meadows. There was no live racing happening but I watched the 1998 Stradbroke/Queensland Derby via simulcast satellite at that track. Generously, I tipped Toledo to all and sundry - he was back on a fast track and I thought he was a good thing (he broke the race record!). Paid US$18 which helped pay for the trip. Russell Cameron must wonder why I smile every time I go by.

Managing Your Own Luck

2008-09-13T22:52:00.005+10:00

Successful people always insist that you make your own luck, and they’re probably right.

If your punting career has been structured around backing horses for a place – that’s any of the first three, for my American readers – and you become the world champion of fourth placegetters in photo-finishes, you’re entitled to think perhaps you weren’t born lucky.

I’ve always thought I wasn’t born lucky. Lucky to be born, yes, but not born lucky.

This depressing train of thought was only reinforced today when two of my recent sales selections Ortensia (3f Testa Rossa-Aerate’s Pick, by Picknicker) and Absolut Glam (4m Snowland-Pine Away, by Pine Bluff) were the biggest certainties beaten all day in Australia: photo-finish seconds, after horror runs, in G3 and G1 races at Moonee Valley. Naturally, the owners of said horses have more reason to feel aggrieved than I do, but when you only buy/select a handful each year, and usually on very limited budgets, as the intellectual resource behind such decisions you tend to regard the horses as your own, taking it personally however they perform. I sincerely hope both horses stay on their feet and get their just desserts during the spring to help make me famous.

I don’t know how good Ortensia is but her performance was extraordinary. Her managing owner rang me after the race and I couldn’t believe his equilibrium in the circumstances; he is happy to have a Group-placed filly after just four starts for what was a modest outlay. Every horse has a story and the story behind her purchase might interest you. I have to thank the late Dr Gerry Rose. I had decided to have a crack at a particular filly at the Inglis Classic Sale for my client. Bidding away, we had already outstripped the budget when I put my hand up at $62,500, only to be topped off with a $65,000 bid. I daren't go any further so had to let the filly go. I was very surprised to see Gerry sign the docket, he was someone I usually associated with Magic Millions sales, not lesser sales at Inglis, but was interested nonetheless because Gerry was a great judge. That filly turned out to be Estancia Rios (Hussonet-Eleanor’s Pride, by Barathea) which ran third at Rosehill on Saturday. Because I’d missed her I had to continue searching at the subsequent Melbourne Premier Sale where I managed to get Ortensia, on budget.

The person for whom Absolut Glam was originally purchased but who doesn’t race her owing to circumstances which I won’t go into here, also rang after her race. She has been backing the mare all through her career and even though some of the collects have been lucrative she is a long, long way behind, and drifting badly.

For my part on Saturday, I went to Royal Kembla where a horse I manage was performing. He ran well, perhaps the best race of his life, but the jockey set him a ridiculous task. You know you weren’t born lucky when (a) your horse is ridden like that, and (b) your horse finishes fifth – they only pay prizemoney down to fourth at Kembla.

Last time I was at Kembla, in August, I saw Takeover Target’s half-brother Predatory Pricer (3c Street Cry-Shady Stream, by Archregent) win his maiden and couldn’t help but be impressed by what a decent cut of a horse he is. Two starts later he has bridged the gap to stakes company, winning the Ming Dynasty Quality at Rosehill.

At Kembla, Gai was on fire – the course announcer said, accurately, she’s always on fire! – with a double including first-up-for-15-months Ditas (4m Don Eduardo-Zembu, by Fuji Kiseki), another Gooree Park Stud homebred. I’ve mentioned this before, but this outfit’s strike rate of breeding worthwhile horses over the last decade is mind-boggling and definitely not achieved simply by putting the best to the best and hoping for the best. Their Dreamscape (3c Choisir-Faith In Dreams, by Ferdinand) did a Magellan act in the Ming Dynasty and should have won (gave Predatory Pricer 4.5 kgs); meantime a horse they sold as a yearling (they are now selling a handful each year) won a G1 at Moonee Valley: Typhoon Zed (Zeditave-Royal Diploma, by Honor Grades). Gooree manager Andrew Baddock obviously had confidence in Typhoon Zed’s future, he got me to buy its then 2YO half-sister by Fusaichi Pegasus at the Gold Coast in June for what seems now a very reasonable $45,000. Typhoon Zed’s fourth dam is a mare named Somethingroyal. I have to say I am in awe of what Gooree have done this decade: ‘Danding’ Cojuangco might be a very rich man but that in itself guarantees nothing (come on down Wadham Park). If anyone thinks it is easy to breed good horses consistently then I invite them to have a go. It’s not. As well as that, Gooree have a great system of rearing, developing and managing their horses and working in concert with their trainers, primarily Gai these days. Hard to think of anyone doing it better.

While on the subject of awe, did you see Tuesday Joy (5m Carnegie-Joie Denise, by Danehill) win at Moonee Valley? She may not be Sunline or Makybe Diva and may have won only five of her 20 starts, but they have been five of the right ones. Such a regal mare, a distillation of what class pedigree stands for, she’s a legend. If I had the pick of all the mares in Australia ….. I would love to see Patinack, Deborah Ho, Sheikh Mo, Coolmore and any other billionaires you care to mention have a scrap in the sale ring trying to buy her. It will never happen: in Tuesday Joy, Singo has at last found his perfect partner and they will never divorce.

Mention of Singo allows me to tell a tale of how the G2 Theo Marks winner Hurried Choice (by Choisir) came to be. Her dam is an unraced mare, Hustle Bustle, by Catrail, bred by Arrowfield. Arrowfield sold her as a weanling for $17,000 to Tarcoola Park who reoffered her as a Classic Sale yearling, Gai giving $130,000 for her – a nice twist. Gai specked her thinking it would be not too difficult to sell her on as at the time she trained the very good half-sister Miss Bussell. But the Catrail poison was putting everyone off. Around this time, Singo had bought a filly by Danehill out of Cult Figure which he wanted to name Gai, as only he would. Out of courtesy, he asked Gai’s permission. Bad move. Not one to let a chance go by, Gai said OK, but there was a price – he had to buy the Catrail filly to get her goodwill and consent. Big-hearted Singo came to the party. Unfortunately, Hustle Bustle sustained a serious injury not long after and couldn’t get to the races (while the filly Gai was proving a disappointment). Singo probably couldn’t bear to look at Hustle Bustle by this time as she represented a double disaster, so he banged a service to Choisir inside her, took her to his Magic Millions winter sale and got shot of her for $110,000. The buyer? None other than Arrowfield who had let her go for $17,000 as a weanling. So Arrowfield get the credit as the breeder of Hurried Choice, benefiting from Singo’s genius. It’s all a matter of timing. After selling Hustle Bustle’s first three foals for a total $800,000 – not bad work if you can get it – Arrowfield put Hustle Bustle through the Magic Millions ring as a supplementary entry last June, in foal to Hussonet, with a $600,000 valuation but on the day there were no takers.

Hartmann (USA) (5g El Corredor-Fearless Wildcat, by Forest Wildcat) was one of a number of horses-in-training Chris Waller bought at the Tattersalls sale in England last October. No world-beater, Hartmann is nevertheless giving his new Aussie owners lots of pleasure and has put more than $40,000 in the bank already in only his first proper preparation. He cost just 3,500 guineas – about half the airfare to get him to Sydney. I wonder if Chris bought him by mistake?

Guillotine (4h Montjeu-Refused The Dance, by Defensive Play) showed great potential as a Sydney youngster for one of his breed but always figured to improve with maturity. Whatever he’s getting for breakfast since shifting to South Australia/Victoria is certainly agreeing with him. Midway through the 1600m G2 Dato Tan Chin Nam Stakes at Moonee Valley you could have loaded the entire sub-prime mortgage shortfall onto him, he was traveling that well. But I can’t help being impressed also by Maldivian (6g Zabeel-Shynzi, by Danzig). I’m aware he was only fourth as an odds-on favourite but he has raced with plenty of vim and vigour. Fact remains that at distances of 2000m and further, Big Mal has raced five times, winning four and being defeated a half-neck in the other. I wish, at the start of his siring career, I had thought of the betting system of backing every Zabeel in every race of 2000m and longer … a licence to print money. But I wasn’t that clever or born that lucky. Zabeel himself raced five times at 2000m or further and only won once, and even then by a mere half a head.

A fair effort by Capecover (6g Cape Cross-Set Up, by Zabeel) to land the Listed Tokyo City Cup in Adelaide having last raced in NZ just 2 weeks ago. This NZ G3 winner stays well; he has a magnificent pedigree with a heavy stamina emphasis, though a branch of the family produced the sprinter-milers Scintillation and Shania Dane – but they were by Danehill who broke all the rules. Capecover is trained by one Alexander Fieldes, a horseman who won’t be well known in Australia. Alexander did a stint in the racing media in the 80s and 90s, mostly TV/race calling, and he was, ahem, colourful. In an industry renowned for its conservatism and backside licking, I recall Alexander as a cross between Murray Bell, Richard Callander and John Clarke – opinions, with colour and humour. It's a hazy memory now but I think they had to get him off, he was too close to the bone. We all mellow with age; I look forward to seeing an interview with him.

P.S. They're keeping tabs on me in The Gulf. An analysis of where my blog's hits come from shows my second largest readership, after Australia, is in the United Arab Emirates! I imagine they're compiling a dossier on me. And I did the decent thing. I flew Emirates to NZ last week. Seriously, would you go any other way?

It's All In The Fine Print

2008-09-12T01:02:00.006+10:00

As if the disappointment or even the embarrassment of riding a million dollar colt which started odds-on but failed to fill a place wasn’t enough, the $1,000 penalty handed down to Hugh Bowman for his ride on Lonhroson at Hawkesbury on Thursday must have rubbed salt into his wounds.

Briefly, Bowman thought Lonhroson (racing with blinkers for the first time) had burst through the barrier an instant before the field was released and assumed he had ‘false started’, immediately checking the colt’s forward momentum. As a result, after half a dozen strides, he was in third last place instead of being on the speed as intended (ironically, Lonhroson had been a back-runner at both his previous starts, finishing fourth and sixth), having to make the best of it from there.

In the split second involved, Bowman made a mistake assuming a false start would be declared. He should have continued going forward whilst remaining alert for the normal false start signal which of course was not activated as the starter had no reason to doubt he had made a fair despatch.

In a field of maidens no better than country standard, Lonhroson was given a ground-saving ride thereafter to improve his position and was taken to the outer before the home turn for a clear run but was struggling and failed to finish the race off.

It’s the Stewards’ exacting job to administer the rules which exist for the protection of all, foremost the punters who dived in on this hot-pot.

Bowman was charged under rule AR175(k) which says ‘the Stewards may punish any person who has committed any breach of the Rules or whose conduct or negligence has led or could have led to a breach of the Rules’.

Justifying this, the Stewards cited rule AR135(b) as being the rule which Bowman’s conduct or negligence led or could have led to a breach thereof. That rule states ‘The rider of every horse shall take all reasonable and permissible measures throughout the race to ensure that his horse is given full opportunity to win or to obtain the best possible place in the field’.

In the next sentence of their report, the Stewards say they were not able to make a judgment (in their words ‘comfortably determine’) whether Bowman’s ride had cost Lonhroson a place.

Seems to me they are saying that the colt might well have run as well as it could which is the obligation placed on a jockey to ensure. They offer no opinion whether Lonhroson ‘obtain(ed) the best possible place in the field’ so if that’s the case, how would AR135(b) have held water and if it can’t doesn't AR175(k) fall down too?

I'm not even a bush lawyer but it seems an interesting call, and I wonder if Bowman will appeal.

Bowman’s interpretation of the start was incorrect but was innocently arrived at. We are talking a split-second judgment call which he was not entitled to make but which he nevertheless did.

Though the motivation is different, every meeting we see one jockey or another neck their mounts from a wide barrier and give away ground and momentum at the start so as to conserve the horse’s energy. This is done on the prior assumption that the race is going to pan out a certain way and that the horse cannot initially overcome the perceived disadvantage. They end up in the same place as Lonhroson did. Normally, that passes without comment. An exception was at Randwick on Tuesday when Dan Nikolic, riding Mangala (NZ), was reminded not to set his mounts too stiff a task.

Most days we will see one jockey or another make an injudicious tactical decision which mitigates against his horse’s chance. I’m sure supporters of those horses would love to see some AR135(b)s getting thrown around. But there is premeditation on one hand and there is error of judgment in the midst of battle on the other. Unless the Stewards are implying the former, I reckon Bowman's indiscretion comes under the latter, unpalatable as that may be to those who did their dough.

I have to declare my interest here inasmuch as I am a friend of the owner of Lonhroson and attended the meeting with him. The poor bloke went to the races hoping to have a few questions answered but came away with a whole bunch more. As for Hugh Bowman, I don’t hold a candle for him, having nothing other than a nodding professional acquaintance; strange, you might think, given the years I spent in the centre of the Waterhouse operation (as an apprentice, Hugh won a maiden race on a mare in which I had a racing interest, Regal Touch).

As a pressman in New Zealand for seven years, as a director of the Apprentice Jockey School, as a manager of horses and during my decade in Sydney, I've never become familiar with jockeys outside what was expected and required in the mounting yard. I respect them professionally and call me anti-social if you like, but I have never regarded the cushy relationships which often exist between journos, other functionaries and jockeys as particularly healthy. In 40 years, I can only recall going to the races with jockeys twice; both were here in Sydney and they saved my life – my car had broken down!

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The newcomer which impressed me most this week has been Tobique, a first-start winner at Canterbury on Wednesday.

In a nice field of three-year-olds, this colt stood out like a beacon in the mounting yard and raced accordingly, albeit at big odds. Bred and raced by the White family, he’s by Redoute’s Choice-Mammoth, by Marscay.

The Whites had him in Yarraman Stud’s draft at the 2007 Sydney Easter Sale. I’d seen him at Yarraman beforehand and was very taken with him. He was a 17 November foal and at that stage a bit on the lighter-framed side, just immaturity, but I noted he had “excellent rein and length, very correct, good head and jowl and a loose mover”. I was surprised when he didn’t make what appeared to be a reasonable $200,000 reserve; perhaps there were some issues or perhaps buyers thought the Whites don’t put their nice horses in the sales (after a short period of retaining their homebreds). Whatever, he’s a lovely colt now and surely hasn’t had his last win. Yet another in the long line of quality Redoutes being unleashed this year.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs

2008-09-09T20:28:00.007+10:00

I’m out of the country five minutes (five days, actually) and what do I find when I return?

The longest running soap opera on the planet – American politics – has taken a dramatic turn with the appointment of the quintessential MILF for Republican VeePee, Governor Sarah Palin. She will keep the good ol’ boys hoopin' and a-hollerin' up till election day.

Reportedly, Mrs Palin has owned a US passport for just a brief time so maybe her knowledge of the outside world isn’t very extensive which is a bit frightening when she could end up being second-in-charge of The Button.

She’s not alone. The Keeneland September Yearling Sale has just started which reminds me of the typical Kentuckian one meets in the malls and at McDonalds in Lexington. Once they have established where you come from – “oh, Noo Zeeland, that’s up near Norway” or “Osstralia, don’t you mean Osstria?” – they proceed to tell you more than you know yourself about your own country, whose backside it should be kissing and why, and what’s wrong with the rest of the world in general. Unfortunately, when you dig a little deeper, you find that most of these terribly knowledgeable and opinionated people have never set foot across their state line, let alone have a passport to go outside continental USA.

Backside kissing must be an important part of New South Wales politics. All of a sudden, on my arrival home, there’s no Iemma, no Costa, no Meagher, no Sartor … a coup of monumental proportions by Labour’s apparatchiks, and I was only just getting used to their names. Not a drop of blood shed, just tears, mostly by the long-suffering citizens of this fair state. Now we have yet another unelected premier, a Mr Rees, whose bio notes include stints as a green-keeper and garbage collector which is in keeping with his portfolio of Arts Minister (sorry, I keep thinking about Rod Menzies’s Picasso). Graham the racing minister has gone west and from this week it’s Kevin Greene, a former teacher. Hopefully he will be able to get all the stakeholders to put their hands on their heads and pay attention.

Olly’s gone, too, or going. Aussie boy made good, Olly Tait, that is. Darley have rearranged the deck chairs on their unsinkable Titanic. Olly’s off to plug the gap left by Dan Pride who exits Darley USA to help run the auction house with which Darley now has links, Fasig-Tipton.

A scion of a renowned NSW racing and breeding family, Olly is being replaced in Darley’s Australian managing directorship by The Honourable Henry Plumptre whose pedigree I venture to say has more black type than even the Sheikh’s mares. I can’t find it on Arion or Bloodhound but my guess is that The Hon Henry is a scion of the Barony of FitzWalter, created in 1295, which precedes The General Stud Book by 500 years. It’s a peerage of noble distinction which has, at various stages in history, lapsed or gone into abeyance as they say, only to be revived again, most recently in 1953. On a remote branch of the pedigree sits the likes of Lord Louis Mountbatten.

Historically, Plumptres were prominent landowners, one of their manorial seats being the prosaically named Fredville in Kent to which Jane Austen was a sometimes visitor in the early 1800s. Much of Fredville was lost to fire shortly after WW2, during which time it had been occupied by men of the Canadian Army; I wonder whether the two ghosts it is said to shelter still visit: one a faithful hound and the other a white horse (the one Singo doesn't own)? Conjecture aside, it would be interesting to know what makes Henry Honourable. Aussies and Kiwis have an abiding interest in the social trends of the upper classes of their former colonial masters. I suspect Hello!, Tatler and Country Life have their highest circulations per capita in the Antipodes. Amongst the upper echelons of Darley and (especially) Coolmore, one doesn't hear too many Australian accents these days, so Olly will be missed. Patinack seems to be largely local, but give them time.

The mare goes to Spinning World in the morning. I don’t care if he neighs or whinnies in Gaelic or Urdu, just get her in foal please.

When Less Can Be More

2008-09-02T21:42:00.005+10:00

I’m taking a bigger punt than usual in selecting only a moderately fertile stallion for one of my mares this year – Coolmore Stud’s Spinning World (USA).

In my former life I had a bit to do with a couple of sub-fertile stallions and it’s no fun standing them.

Spinning World’s fertility, or lack of it, is no secret. He has averaged 64.5% in eight Australian stud seasons, and he achieved just 57.7% in his lone New Zealand season in 2000. He’s now 15 years old.

Naturally, it’s the blood and the physicals which appeal to me about using Spinning World otherwise I wouldn’t be running the risk, but apart from that where else on this vast sandy continent can you find a stallion which has sired seven individual Group 1 winners standing for a listed $10,000 fee? Only Quest For Fame (GB), as far as I can see, and he’s a lot older (21) and isn’t appropriate for my mare.

Spinning World seems to be a filly sire with 11 of his 16 southern hemisphere-conceived stakeswinners being female, the latest being the good sorts Heavenly Glow and Kishkat. With the exception of Thorn Park, the black-type males have been a notch below the females, so maybe the sex bias is real. It would need a better mathematician than I to figure out how much the numbers are skewed by the fact that a significantly large chunk of stakes races are for fillies and mares only - though thinking out loud, it’s the same for all stallions so maybe I’ve already answered my own question! But Spinning World has an overall 68.3% winners-to-runners figure and 10% of his individual winners are stakeswinners,figures which indicate a good achiever to me. There should be no argument that he delivers more per spermatozoa than many stallions standing at multiples of his fee.

Danewin is another moderately fertile stallion whose figures almost mirror Spinning World’s. He is a very good sire and it is one of the great quirks of history that this horse was one of the cheapest Danehill yearlings ever sold - $20,000. He must have looked like Belsen. Spinning World has been more rigorously used at stud than Danewin, averaging 48.3 live foals per season (seven seasons, 3YOs and older) against Danewin’s substantially lower 38.4 live foals per season (nine seasons). One could quote statistics endlessly, and I’m mindful of the quotation I ran on this blog last week, but last season’s leading sire Encosta de Lago, for example, has had an average of 126.7 live foals per crop in his eight crops 3YO and older. To his great credit, his stats are much on a par with Spinning World’s and Danewin’s but a bit behind Redoute’s Choice who is probably the current benchmark: an average of 116.2 live foals per crop with 70% winners-to-runners and an impressive 15.7% of his winners being stakeswinners.

The two sub-fertile stallions I encountered close up in my working career were Zephyr Bay and Tights (USA). I still regard Zephyr Bay, by Biscay, as possibly the most handsome horse I’ve ever seen and the equal of any sire. He was majestic. There is a magnificent photo of him being ridden in his Waikato Stud paddock, as a stallion, on page 91 of Peter Taylor’s Thoroughbred Studs of Australia and New Zealand (published 1986).

Arion Pedigrees attribute these figures to Zephyr Bay from his 12-season stud career in New Zealand: 147 named foals (that’s an average of just 12.2 per crop for those of you having difficulty working it out), 117 runners, 97 winners (83%), 20 individual stakeswinners of which seven were then classified Group 1. In his later NZ seasons, only the home stud supported him with mares of much quality, the others sent up by his shareholders were more like jersey cows, understandable as they didn't want their prize mares going empty every year. Yet he could still leave a dasher. His transfer to Australia in 1987 (removed from the property with great subterfuge whilst I was holidaying overseas) was an ill-starred act of virtual criminality which ought to make a great movie – the main roles could be played by the real people, they’re still alive). The poor bugger was flogged at stud over here to produce a further 116 live foals in his final five seasons – almost double his New Zealand average seasonal output – but the result was a vindictive, measly two stakeswinners, the best being a Gr 3 and the other in Tasmania. Go figure. He was one Aussie who after tasting the delights of life in NZ didn't want repatriation! A handful of his Australian-bred daughters have subsequently featured in the pedigrees of worthwhile stakeswinners.

Zephyr Bay was a character. He would fall in love with the same mares every year. Grey mares were his Viagra. We even got to placing one in the serving barn while he was doing the business with a girl of another colour. There was a correlation between the vigour of his service and impregnations; his range of problems, some physical, some psychological, often reduced him to a reluctant coverer or one just going through the motions, fakin’ it.

Tights (USA) (Nijinsky-Dancealot, by Round Table), who went to stud with a lot of commercial fanfare, was not as impaired as Zephyr Bay. His output over 9 seasons was 318 named foals with fertility averaging around 60%. His winners-to-runners rate was a more mortal 63% but a strong 12% of his winners were stakeswinners and, extraordinarily, 14 of the 18 stakeswinners were fillies.

Are sub-fertile stallions outputters of higher quality? A question for our age. Bel Esprit covered 266 mares last year alone. Zephyr Bay would have had cardiac arrest and definitely phallic failure!

Though he didn’t suffer from any form of infertility that I know of, Pakistan II (GB) who died in his prime, is, for mine, the greatest local sire in my lifetime. This non-stakeswinner achieved 81% winners-to-starters (264/326) with 16.2% of his winners being stakeswinners. I know you think I've lost my marbles as I’ve lived through Star Kingdom, Sir Tristram, Danehill, Zabeel, Redoute’s Choice et al, but none of them except perhaps Sir Tristram had such a humble background and none was stood by a family of potato farmers.

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It's been announced Miss Andretti is to visit Exceed And Excel in her maiden year. That is something to conjure. What a wonderful sprinter she was and what far-sightedness on Sean Buckley's part to identify her ultimate greatness while she was running a million miles away in Perth. The lasting image I will have of Miss Andretti is the way she always attacked the line, ears back, teeth gritted, giving her all. You could see in her face she knew exactly what she was meant to do. From a pedigree page full of white space, she made a bigger transformation than Eliza Doolittle.

P.S. Former trainer Dave Mueller is a 25% partner in Miss Andretti. I wonder what he's going to do now the mare is retired. Will he stay in as a partner? Will he want to cash up and want Sean to buy him out? Will Sean be happy to do that and how will a value be arrived at? Will Dave sell his leg to someone new if they can't agree on a value? Will the mare go to auction perhaps to see if Sheikh Moh and Patinack have any money left?

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I wonder if there's any basis to the story I've heard that Dreamscape only started in the Up And Coming Stakes after he'd been missed from the acceptances for the maiden at Wyong two days previously? If that's true then either no one realised how good he was or, alternately, he's only just a good maiden winner and the other three-year-olds so far aren't much better!

Ronald Moves To Scone

2008-09-01T01:26:00.004+10:00

The most rivetting news I heard all weekend is that McDonald’s is coming to Scone.

The local burghers have been salivating about the prospect since it was announced in June.

This is a momentous development not only for the locals but also for visitors. No longer will we have to endure the culinary catastrophe which has been Scone.

McDonald’s will give Scone’s existing premier eating spots, Subway and Eagle Boys, a run for their money.

Few villages in Australia are visited by people of such high net worth but try getting a decent nosh anywhere up the main street of Scone in the last 10 years, especially at 8 o’clock of an evening … it has been diabolical. Heaven knows how or why the local squatocracy have put up with it for so long.

At least McDonald’s tucker will be consistent, predictable, dependable, lukewarm, and priced the same as Sydney. Such qualities have been hard to find in Scone.

A welcome oasis of sophistication for some time now has been Kerv, the trendy little eatery and design/antiques gallery just over the railway line where you can get a decent cup of coffee or tea and some nibbles in the morning. It’s run by one-time Vinery honcho and sometime author Kiwa Fisher and his wife Merv who is a hot-shot in the catering business. Kerv is a bit like my local in Sydney, the Peters of Kensington café - minus the eastern suburbs yummy mummies, but with a good supply of Scone’s ex-boarding school gals with their faux English accents. In a town where one's very social survival absolutely depends on knowing everyone else’s business, I suspect much espionage is traded within its walls.

But back to McDonald’s. As a salute to the Horse Capital, I understand the Scone menu is going to have a distinctly local flavour. The expected best seller is the Equine Burger, but the ingredients will not be listed on the wrapper. In a special deal with Hungry Jack’s and the Australian Veterinary Association, equine reproduction branch, they will also offer The Big Whoppa. However, management quickly realized there would be no demand in Scone for soft serve so it’s not on the menu. Original plans called for a Darley Halal Beef Burger but this was abandoned for fear of an injunction from that Ken bloke up in Tenterfield. (Following his example, I believe there will be a class action against The Smith Family by everyone named Smith). For those upper-crust individuals wanting a superior dining experience, Maccas will have the Ramsey Burger, featuring 110% Australian beef sourced only from cattle which stupidly sprint to the head of the queue at the abattoir. Macca’s market research indicates the Ramsey Burger is a better than even chance of being a winner, though not surprisingly the customer will be asked to pay a premium for the quality. Vinery are said to be opening a wine shop right next door and the much-valued Ronald McDonald House to be set up in the district will be renamed the Messara McDonald House.

Local farms are concerned that the impending opening of McDonald’s will impact on the available pool of youth labour for the foaling and yearling prep seasons. Apparently the pay is better at McDonald’s. The same goes for Red Rooster which is also planning a presence in Scone despite the Ingham family’s sellout to Sheikh Mohammed. In recognition of coming to the breeding capital of the southern hemisphere the outfit is dropping the s out of its name.

Having now fixed up the food situation in Scone, I suggest the local patricians turn their attention to the motels.
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There must have been close to 1,500 people at Darley’s parade on Saturday. Full marks, they began proceedings immediately after the running of the Golden Rose. I can’t say whether or not Ollie Tait watched the race; if he did then he did a remarkable job of keeping his emotions in check when he addressed the crowd because if I owned Desuetude I would have been sick to my stomach.

I managed to see only the first eight of the 19 stallions paraded. No one could point me to a TV set at Darley so I had to depart for the pub in Aberdeen to watch Dorabella (NZ) run in the last at Caulfield. I don’t own Dorabella but I have a professional involvement in her career. No amount of my bellowing at the TV set helped the mare in the straight, she was a good thing beaten.

Wiser and generally younger people told me I could have watched the race on my mobile phone and therefore stayed at the parade. They’ve got to be kidding, I’m too old to cope with that technology and in any case Telstra’s coverage in and around the Hunter is pretty crappy and I don’t think I had a signal in Downtown Darley.

Saturday morning, Patinack unveiled their two new NSW stallions Husson and Casino Prince and laid on lovely food and refreshments for the guests. Had I known I would never have had that sausage and egg McMuffin in Muswellbrook on the way there. Spoiled it completely. Team Patinack were here, there and everywhere, so many familiar faces sporting the Patinack livery, lured away from other farms. Even the legendary Suni Carnes has been tempted away from William Inglis. I reckon she was there longer than Reg. One colt who wasn’t seen was Roger, word on the street being that’s likely to be a permanent arrangement.

The Valley was blessed with rain on Saturday night and throughout Sunday so those of you with mares up there rest assured there’s going to be a decent spring flush in the next few weeks. My first call was to see Murphy’s Blu Boy at Baerami, then on to Widden for their parade. Now it has been mentioned to me that it’s possible to interpret part of my previous post (see below) as suggesting that there may be a marital to-do between Antony and Katie Thompson at Widden – absolutely not the case! Antony and Katie bear no resemblance whatsoever to the subjects of that reference. They were in their usual good spirits and such was their hospitality, and the delayed effects of the 2005 Saltram Mambre Brook cab/sav, that I was late getting to Coolmore and missed their parade entirely! Sorry Coolmore, but I am surprised you started without me. Still, I was given a quick tour through the stallion barns so all was not lost.

On a serious note, I was unaware until Saturday that Scone breeder Ivan Woodford-Smith has been indisposed recently. Ivan and Senga and their Southern Cross circle have been good friends to me whenever I've been in Scone so if you happen to read this, Ivan, I hope you're back on deck soon. I will not partake of the Wednesday night flied lice ritual until you are!

Hunter Valley Confidential

2008-08-28T00:21:00.006+10:00

I’m looking forward to this weekend’s trek to the Hunter Valley for the stallion parades – Patinack, Darley, Widden, Coolmore - plus a few other visits to check up on various clients’ private interests.

I can’t wait for James Bester to tell us in his mellifluous tones how bulging are the muscles above the eyes of the Coolmore stallions.

I live in hope that, for once, Darley might start on time.

If they don’t, could they please arrange a big screen so we can at least watch the Sydney and Melbourne races (the reason why so many invitees arrive late in the first place – and Darley will win half the races anyway) or put on some Brazilian dancers to entertain we assembled multitudes. It’s usually freezing by start time, 3.30 p.m., so please don’t keep us waiting – with the number of stallions they’ve got it’ll be nightfall by the time it’s over.

I look forward to seeing what’s happening at Patinack, as well as their new stallions.

I will continue to wonder at the stoicism of the people who live and work at Widden when you consider how far it is to the nearest corner store. And then I will spare a thought for those who live even further down this blind valley.

I will be interested, though saddened, to hear more about the alleged matrimonial turmoil being experienced by one of the highest profile operators in our business.

Sorry, this is starting to read like Hunter Valley Confidential.

If you're going up, check out the weather forecast using the widget on the right.

There’s been no shortage of nice young horses hitting the tracks in the last couple of weeks and the strength of competition we’re about to witness is the one positive legacy of the 2007 EI interruption.

From a purely personal point of view (isn’t that what a blog is meant to be?) I was pleased with the win of Geared Up (3g Testa Rossa-Certain, by Rory’s Jester) at Canterbury today as I bought this fellow for $100,000 at Magic Millions 2007.

The other Testa Rossa I bought ($50,000) that year, Ortensia (ex Aerate’s Pick, by Picnicker), had her unbeaten skein snapped when third resuming behind boom colt Time Thief, to whom she gave weight, at Moonee Valley. Let’s say she looked to be sympathetically handled, though not coping too well with the tight Valley circuit. She found the line just as well as Time Thief if you check the replay. She will figure amongst the best fillies if the lid can be kept on her powder-keg temperament so it was probably a good thing that she didn’t have a first-up gut-buster. I’ve been involved previously with another horse from this family and he, too, was a head case. He won a race at Mount Garnet – go Google Earth that one. One of this family’s remote branches produced Bollinger who has been in the news this week with a promising newcomer winner in the UK.

The impressive Canterbury win of Kimillsy (3f Danehill Dancer (Ire)-Lady Fidelia, by Snippets) suggested she is a stakes-class performer in waiting. Regular readers of this blog (all two of you, hi Mum and Dad!) might recall I labeled her in a post of 10 March as one of my best fillies from the sales of 2007, rueing the fact that I was underbidder on her. Picking them is not so difficult, getting the right buying budget definitely is. However, I am thinking of changing my name by deed poll to John Ferguson or Colm Santry or Nathan Tinkler.

Pleasingly, we have had our share of high-priced yearlings coming through in recent days. Allied Force (4h Redoute’s Choice-Urge To Merge, by Last Tycoon (Ire)) has an awesome way of going and he looks another rising star from this fail-safe family. I rated him a 9.0 at the 2006 Sydney Easter Sale which means he sits on the right hand of God. Nothing ever gets a 9.0! - maybe Dance Hero, Choisir or Exceed And Excel did. I didn’t have to be a genius to do that, he is an outstanding specimen, even though he has a jaw worse than Dulcify’s. It took a bid of $2 million to ‘buy’ him, though I see he still races substantially in the interests of those who put him through the ring and close friends of the family. I don’t know why I should be altogether surprised about that.

I got out of my ‘flu infested sickbed and traipsed to Newcastle on Tuesday to see one of my charges, Anavila (5g Anabaa (USA)-Highest Cool (Fr), by Highest Honor) go around. He had been balloted out of three races in the previous 10 days and although this 900m race was 4 – 500 metres short of the distance we desired for him, it was the only race in which he could gain a start. He defied us by winning anyway. Smart, aren’t we? I’ve previously expressed my appreciation of Jeff Lloyd’s riding; he’s enormously experienced and oh so good in my opinion. Sydney hasn’t been so well off for first class jockeys in a long time. There’s almost no room now for Beadman (oh yeah?). Not that Anavila was ever a high-priced yearling. He didn’t go through the sale ring as he has a terrible sway back. But it doesn’t seem to worry him. Chris Waller has turned this gelding around, as he has many others, almost daily. Like the jockey, a real talent. I recall a horse of David Hayes's, Dark Ksar, who won a million dollars and was a very swampy-backed beast. He had cost $750.

Newcastle was notable for the impressive graduation of Redoute’s Choice’s rellie Movin’ Out (3f Encosta de Lago-Twyla, by Danehill (USA)), $2.2 million worth of Woodlands-now-Darley investment. Apart from certain yearlings ‘bought’ by certain trainers from certain studs in recent years, they don’t make that sort of money unless they are an Adonis (who was a male, but you get my drift), and of course she was, an 8.0.

Then there’s the aforementioned Time Thief (3c Redoute’s Choice-Procrastinate, by Jade Hunter (USA)), the ninth foal of a very good racemare and producer. Another lazy $2 million, sold from the Kia Ora Stud draft at Easter 2007 on behalf of the fondly remembered Michael Ryan. Surprise, surprise, Time Thief was an 8.0, another equine Robert Redford. That dates me, I hope all my readers are 50-plus so they’ll know who I’m talking about. Hi, Mum and Dad.

In case you’re wondering how my number system pans out, I classify the horses as I see them without any conscious idea of how many in any sale I’m giving a ‘buy’ mark to. When I look back afterwards, I’ve found consistently that only about 15% of any catalogue gets a mark high enough for a decent second look. That’s probably too many – about 75 in your average Sydney Easter sale. There aren't that many good horses in it.

I’ll probably front up at the Scone Broodmare Sale Friday. Very underwhelming. In terms of horseflesh, I’d be better off at the Warwick Farm or Gosford barrier trials.

Of Medals And Men

2008-08-25T13:21:00.006+10:00

It beggars belief that in some circles Australia's “slipping’ to 6th place on the Olympic gold medal tally (5th in medals overall) is regarded as a disappointment or a dent to national pride.

With the exception of Jamaica and New Zealand (oh no! how did those words get in here?!!), Australia is the greatest, consistent, puncher-above-its-weight in international sport by a country mile.

But Australians are probably also world leaders in unrealistic expectation as far as their athletes and sportsmen are concerned - champions at aggressive nationalism.

Australia achieves what it achieves off a population base of 21 million people. It has little right to expect the success levels it attains. But it can be unforgiving when an athlete or team fails to reproduce the level of performance expected of them.

Money is the reason for that. On a per-head basis, sport is well funded in Australia so results are seen in terms of a return on investment. These sportsmen and women are expected to be accountable. We're quick to give them a bagging if they fail to deliver. The message about participation being more important than victory features a long way down the page.

Australia is a rich, fortunate, developed country with an equable climate which encourages an outdoors ethic but by no means the only country enjoying a superior standard of living, yet it still finishes a street ahead of its peers in the sporting realm. What’s not to be happy about?

To illustrate this, it may or may not be rational to divide the population base by the number of Olympic gold medals won in 2008 to see how many people it ‘took’ to produce each gold. Irrational or not, I’m going to do it. Here’s how the table looks:

Jamaica 466,000 people per gold medal, New Zealand 1.4 million, Australia 1.5 million,
Georgia (war and all) 1.5 million, Mongolia 1.5 million, Norway 1.6 million, Slovakia 1.8 million, Netherlands 2.3 million, Belarus 2.4 million, Denmark 2.7 million, Great Britain 3.2 million, Hungary 3.3 million, Czech Republic 3.5 million, Korea, South 3.7 million,Switzerland 3.8 million, Germany 5.1 million, Romania 5.5 million, Russian Federation 6.2 million, Ukraine 6.5 million, Kenya 7 million, Italy 7.5 million, United States of America 8.3 million, Spain 9 million, France 9.1 million, Canada 11 million, Poland 12.8 million, Japan 13.3 million, Ethiopia 19.5 million, Argentina 20 million, China 23.5 million,Brazil 62 million.

The likes of India (1.1 billion people) and Indonesia (234 million people) won a single gold medal each. Must be something to do with their names. And consider some of the countries which could not field a gold medal winning athlete - South Africa, Nigeria, Sweden, Greece, Chile, Venezuela and Malaysia.

Chris Dillow, writing in The Times (of London) in the wake of British euphoria at their medals haul, used an even better way of determining success, and his article, slightly abridged for relevance, follows:

There is another league table, published recently by the World Bank, which ranks countries by national income. And this bears a striking resemblance to the medals table.

Nine of the top ten countries in the medals table are in the top 15 of the World Bank table; the exception is the Ukraine. Across all 87 countries to have won a medal, the correlation between the medals ranking and the GDP ranking is 0.41 - far higher than you would reasonably expect by accident.

In this respect, the Beijing Olympics were not unusual. In a recent paper Hon-Kwong Lui and Wing Suen, two Chinese economists, showed that population and national income per person were “major determinants” of medals won in Olympics between 1952 and 2004.

The reason for this is trivially simple. The more people a country has, the more chance it has of producing a medallist. And the richer it is, the more able it is to invest in talent-spotting or in training facilities, and the more chance it has of its sports becoming Olympic events; as Matthew Syed pointed out in these pages, sailing gets lots of medals but kabaddi doesn't.

Big economies should therefore get more medals than small ones. And they do. This suggests a different way of judging Olympic success. We should compare a nation's position in the medals table to its position in the GDP table.

On this basis, Britain's performance was no better than respectable. Our fourth place in the medals table is just one place better than our position in the national income table. The notable fact about British Olympians is their underperformance in previous Games rather than huge outperformance in these.

By this measure, I'm sad to report, the Aussies did better than us. Their sixth position in the medals table is nine places better than their national income ranking. We can, though, take comfort in the fact that Germany - fifth in the medals table - underperformed relative to its economy.

So, who are the winners and losers by this standard? The winner is the Dominican Republic. Its one gold and one silver put it 47th in the medals table, while its puny economy is only the 179th in the world. Mongolia, Zimbabwe and Jamaica also did well.

The loser is Taiwan. It has the 17th biggest economy in the world, but came a mere 79th in the medals table.

There is a pattern here. The countries that punched above their economic weight in these games - which include North Korea, Cuba and Uzbekistan - are in many cases nations not renowned for their peace, political stability or respect for human rights; Jamaica is no place to be if you are a homosexual. Many of the losers have a better record.

This vindicates Harry Lime's theory. As he said in The Third Man, warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed gave us Michelangelo, da Vinci and the Renaissance while 500 years of democracy and peace in Switzerland (35th in the medals table and 22nd in the GDP table) produced only the cuckoo clock. (Even this was wrong; the cuckoo clock was invented in Germany.)

Excellence in the Olympics, then, is no sign of a wider flourishing of a nation. Gordon Brown might care to consider this before celebrating the British results.

There is an even stronger pattern. The 2008 medals ranking is similar to the 2004 ranking. The correlation between the two is a hefty 0.8. The ranking in the Athens games alone explains, in the statistical sense, three-fifths of the variation in the Beijing rankings. Of the countries to have “medalled” most - including team GB - moved fewer than ten places in the rankings between 2004 and 2008.

In other words, history matters. A nation with a culture of winning medals tends to continue doing so; nations with no such culture find it much harder.

There is a lesson here for anyone running any large organisation. Big groups - nations, firms, government departments - have history, traditions and culture that heavily influence their chances of success or failure. These cannot easily be overridden by the mere will of a leader.
You have probably got an objection to all this. When Chris Hoy sat on his bike on the starting line, he did not look at his rivals and think: “I come from a richer nation than most of those guys; this'll be a cinch.” Instead, he focused upon giving all he could.

And this is the point. From the point of view of the individual competitor, Olympic success is about skill, training and dedication - and, arguably, perhaps even natural talent. But from the point of view of the nation, success depends upon history and economics.

In other words, overall outcomes are not necessarily merely the result of individual motivations added together. Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

When the likes of Choisir, Starcraft, Haradasun, Miss Andretti and Black Mamba venture overseas and win races of high significance, we thump our chests and scream our heads off with pride. Yes, they have overcome the tyranny of distance, seasonal change and adjustment to alien styles of training and racing. But they come from the second biggest thoroughbred population on earth so they ought to be good enough.

By the way, nearly as many horses drug tested positive at these Olympics as did athletes.

Danehill Is Not Dead

2008-08-17T15:53:00.005+10:00

The name lives on ... at a furniture store in Chatswood, Sydney. Thanks to BR for sending the pic. Should be a stack of world-class chairs, beds and tallboys come out of this store, though by the look of the signwriting you wouldn't bet on it. Or perhaps it's named after the village in East Sussex which gave its name to the horse?

Totally unrelated to the above, what an embarrassment the Olympic equestrian coverage has been. One chance in four years ... oh dear.

I had to get my TV specially tuned to receive Channel 7 just for the Olympics. No mature person watches 7, 9 or 10 so I have a bar on my remote just in case I am ever tempted to have a juvenile moment. Channel 7's coverage overall hasn't matched the quality of the sport we've witnessed and they will have paid handsomely for the opportunity not to do better. If you flick on to SBS by mistake, where they show some of the more 'ethnic European' and non-mainstream sports, you might realise that countries other than Australia, the USA and China actually compete at these games. Another thing I'll be relieved to see the back of is the cycling ... after the Tour de France there's only so much more one can take of Phil Liggett.

My Other Life

2008-08-12T11:00:00.003+10:00

It's said we all have a double out there, somewhere. This fine man must be related to me. He was even born in the same year. Look here and here.

Their Cups Runneth Over

2008-08-11T23:18:00.014+10:00

Here’s the follow-up from last weekend’s bush carnivals (see post What Petrol Crisis, below).

I’ll bet a more ‘valuable’ horse hasn’t won a feature race in far north Queensland than Pure Silence who won the Cairns Cup on Sunday.

The seven-year-old Japanese-conceived son of the late, exalted Sunday Silence and Engraver (USA) was a $900,000 yearling when sold by Arrowfield at the 2003 Magic Millions.

Trained these days at Atherton on the tablelands above Cairns, Pure Silence beat the Brisbane raider In Rehearsal to record his second win from 10 starts up in the tropics. Overall, he’s now eight wins and $181,225, a bit shy of the $900k. Pity he lost his nuts years ago, he could have started a sire dynasty in Cairns, though the cursed blood of his damsire Miner's Mark would probably have let him down (see my post Archipenko Is Doubly Special, July 13). Pure Silence's best previous win was as a four-year-old in the 2005 Moe Cup. Other starts (unsuccessful) on his CV include the VRC St Leger, South Australian Derby and VRC Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

On the other side of the continent, in Broome (track pictured), the Perth visitor Great Destiny (5g Second Empire-Mars Lily) won the Cup by a head over the sometimes Perth competitor Tearinupthecountry (NZ) (8g Pentire-Gemscay). The latter has seen a darn sight more of the continent than I have; his previous racing life included stints in Victoria and Queensland. This pair finished in the reverse order in the lead-up, the Kimberley Cup at Broome on 26 July. Obviously the 1.5 kgs shift in the weights this time made the difference. Good to see weights mean something even in Broome. It's reported that about 8,000 attended the meeting with Broome Cup week pumping about $10 million into the local economy.

But form counted for nothing over at Roxby Downs in South Australia with their Cup going to the rank outsider from Strathalbyn, Venomous (5g Dangerous-Surprise Symphony) in front of about 2,000 fans. With a name like that he should have been the omen tip, considering Roxby Downs is uranium country. You had to go back 12 starts to find when Venomous last filled a place, a second at Broken Hill five months ago. Do they swab for plutonium? This fine beast has now won two of his 35 starts. I noted in my earlier post that there were two senior riders at this meeting and, lo and behold, they grabbed the quinella, Tamara Zanker beating Philip Crich. Ah, you can’t beat experience and doubtless readers of my blog took the tip and collected big-time at Roxby Downs.

Now to famous Louth. See David Houston’s comments attached to the post below. Sounds like a good time was definitely had by all 7,000 people, or was someone seeing double? !! I wonder if there was a booze bus outside the track. I wonder if there was anything outside the track, or if the pilots had to blow into the bag before taking their planes back home? (some of the Louth crowd, right - the queue for the loo?).

Greg Ryan’s following in the bush ensured $3.00 favouritism for Intheway (6g Intergaze-Getting Ahead) and the bookies were done over once again when the pair strolled home a length and three-quarters to the good of my old mate Rocking On (NZ), a one-time promising stayer who succumbed to a wind problem. The formline was strong – Intheway was coming off a resolute ninth of 10, beaten 8.5 lengths, in a 1465m handicap at Wondai, Queensland. Just prior to that he had finished second of six in the Cup at the Wean picnics, carrying the steadier of 69.5 kgs. Wean is a speck on the road between Boggabri and Manilla, in the north-west hinterland behind Tamworth. It’s post code 2382 and, according to the census, 1,487 people inhabit the area covered by post code 2382 of which 96% are Australian born and only 8% profess to have ‘no religion’. Trainer and part-owner Gary Popp obviously doesn’t mind a trip. He trains Intheway at Warwick. Wean is just next door, 497 kms south of Warwick, but Louth is a proper drive, 870 kms south. But what the heck, Queensland fuel is cheaper. The horse obviously returned to the form which won him a $50,000 handicap at Doomben back in February. The drive home, all 870 kms of it, must seem a lot shorter when you’ve got the chocolates. Even if you've had to fill the tank with extortionate 'fuel watch' NSW gas.

Someone whispered to me that there are carnivals about to kick off in Melbourne and Sydney. I'll try and pay attention.

What Petrol Crisis?

2008-08-08T17:25:00.008+10:00

Two of the more remote racemeetings in Australia have their big days tomorrow (Saturday 9th).
Louth, a speck on the map on the Bourke-Wilcannia road a mere 830 kms from Sydney, has its annual day. Several thousand will turn up by land and air, a la Birdsville. Stakeswinner Rocking On is topweight in the $16,000 Cup. He was placed last start at Enngonia (sounds like a disease), a dot on the map between Bourke and Cunnamulla. So was another ex-Waterhouse charge, Leewards, topweight in the Ratings 67. Probably the best-bred horse running out there is Let's Bat, a half-brother to Chuckle by Encosta de Lago. His only placing in six attempts has been at aforementioned Enngonia. Looks like Enngonia's the key form line.

It's Broome Cup Day over in WA. I'm picking a lot more people have been to Broome than to Louth, but stuck out where it is Broome is hardly the centre of the racing world. The Cup is worth $70,000 so things must be going good in Broome. Leading Perth trainers Neville Parnham and Adam Durrant have sent up runners, perhaps they're on one-way tickets? Broome is just 2,175 kms from Perth. The youngest horses in the field are a pair of five-year-olds, the oldest is nine. Former eastern staters Call Me Henry (Waterhouse again, 10yo, 20 wins), Stella Regale (9yo, 9 wins) and The Little Tacker (11yo, 13 wins) are in the feature sprint. Should be a pearler of a day.

Appropriately situated, for this weekend, on the Olympic Way (10 kms south of the world's largest known uranium deposit at Olympic Dam) is Roxby Downs which also races Saturday. However, this is much closer to town, only 530 kms north of Adelaide. It's a modern metropolis compared to Louth, with about 4,000 people, one-third of whom are under 15 years old. Roxby Downs was created from scratch in 1987 by a joint venture between the State Government and the Olympic Dam mining company. It draws on Strathalbyn, Gawler and Murray Bridge horses to fill the fields. There are only two non-claiming jockeys riding at the meet, Philip Crich and Tamara Zanker.

It's Cairns Cup on Sunday. Bruce McLachlan has sent up a team, including the Cup topweight In Rehearsal. It's only a leisurely 1,610 kms from Bruce's place to Cairns.

Snow Then Water

2008-08-08T01:36:00.007+10:00

Peter Snowden is a clear-cut favourite to take out this season's Sydney trainers' premiership, according to respondents to the recent poll on this blog. Darley's No. 1 trainer got 60% of the votes ahead of I'll-train-for-anyone Gai Waterhouse with 27%. Patinack's supremo Anthony Cummings and Bob Ingham's find Chris Waller polled 10% between them.

Sheikh Mohammed owns the first three finishers in the 3YO maiden at Gosford yesterday, all smart types making their debut. But it was the Waterhouse-trained The Flame (colt, Dubai Destination-La Flamina, by Selkirk) who sustained a strong all-the-way gallop to defeat the Snowden pair Borderline (Royal Academy) and Mignard (Strategic). By the aggressive manner of the win, from the outside barrier, I felt sure I could hear Gai back in Sydney saying, with a steely mien, "Your Sheikhness, anything Peter can do, I can do ...."

Completing this fairly remarkable Darley result was the fact that they also bred the fourth placegetter, Andretti. He was sold as a yearling for $120,000.

The race prizemoney swelled the Darley coffers by 51,238 UAE dirhams, equivalent to about five nights at the Burj-Al-Arab.

Now Is The Time To Be Thinking Keeneland November

2008-08-01T15:29:00.004+10:00

Frustrated with the cost of breeding prospects spiralling out of all proportion in Australia?

The Keeneland November Breeding Stock Sale represents the prime opportunity to acquire quality breeding stock. Advantages: a vast catalogue, a favourable exchange rate, a currently unsure USA economy.

Last November, I purchased for Australian clients five breeding prospects with impressive pedigrees, the oldest 6YO, at an average US$162,000 – a Group 1 winner, three Stakeswinners and a multiple winner from England.

If you are interested in having me represent you at this important sale, contact me by email at steve.brem@gmail.com. A limited number of commissions accepted.

There But For The Grace Of ....

2008-07-29T00:00:00.004+10:00

Did you see the Four Corners programme on the art auction world on ABC TV on Monday night? Heck, for a moment there I thought they were talking about the thoroughbred sales business.

Remember When A New Zealand Team Could Win Something?

2008-07-28T02:06:00.014+10:00

In between watching the rugby and the Tour de France at the weekend, I managed some recreational reading and was impressed with a quarterly publication coming out of Melbourne called “The Thoroughbred”.

Regarding the rugby, Robbie Deans has once again proved the wisdom of the old adage that a Kiwi exported to Australia raises the IQ of both countries. I was a notable example of that a decade ago. The All Blacks, who look blacker than ever these days, seem to have lost the killer instinct.

But back to the magazine. I found it a good read and nicely illustrated, plenty of fresh angles, well-researched and not just a bunch of sycophantic advertorial which is the usual diet served up these days. Because of the instant news delivery of the internet and TV, unless a magazine can find ways of saying something different it won’t have a long life. The Thoroughbred is put out by Geoff Slattery and features quality writers like Danny Power, Stephen Moran, Adrian Dunn, Matthew Stewart, Stephen Howell, Ben Collins, Peter Ryan and Rhett Kirkwood. They are all Melbourne based and the magazine at this stage has a strong Victorian bent but as it grows it intends to widen its horizons. They have a website, check it out.

One article of interest in the Winter edition traversed the progress of women in racing, focusing mostly on the progress/plight of female jockeys. I recall when I left New Zealand to come to Sydney, in 1997, the Auckland Apprentice Jockey School, of which I was the Director, had more female attendees than male. If New Zealand is slipping back in rugby one thing it can always claim to have been ahead in is equal opportunity for females in racing.

Those bastions of freedom, New Zealand and South Australia, lay claim to being the first places in the world to give women the vote, in 1893 and 1894 respectively. Around the time I came to Australia, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Leader Of The Opposition, Governor General, Chief Justice and Attorney General were all female.

I was around when there was the infamous yellow line at Trentham, the line the women didn’t step over, including the women trainers of the time. There was a hell of a stink one year when I recall a youthful Maureen Madsen had one of the fancied runners in the Wellington Cup and couldn’t watch the race in the same area as the other owners and trainers. Maureen was a good looker, a photographic model. I couldn’t imagine any bloke not wanting her to be in the same area. But there weren’t many blokes amongst the Wellington Racing Club officials back then, they were actually dinosaurs.

I came from the north. Auckland v Wellington is like Sydney v Melbourne. Crass and fast v The Old Money, and a touch more liberal. Being a racing journalist meant you turned up at the races, worked for maybe a total of a couple of hours during the day and spent the rest of the time eating and grogging, entertaining your mates who were eternally grateful if they were invited into the holy sanctum of the press room.

At Trentham there was this quaint convention in the press room that you weren’t allowed to open up the grog until “after the first leg of the TAB double” – usually about race five! Unaware of this local custom on my first visit to a Wellington Cup meeting, I copped a decent bollocking from the late John Golder, chairman of the press room, when I innocently began pouring a gin for a distraught visiting owner whose fancied runner, Wiremu, had had to be scratched on the morning of the race.

The main topic of serious conversation in press rooms was usually the quality of catering provided for the privileged hacks whose workplace it was. Complaints were made if it fell much below cordon bleu standard. Journos felt the clubs owed them a living because, after all, “they were giving racing space in the paper”.

The climax of the day was the draw to see who took home the unconsumed liquor after the last race. Liquor was very important. Many senior journalists seemed to attend racemeetings for no other reason but to drink. When I first met them, one or two almost-preserved individuals had been at it so long their hand-to-mouth coordination left a lot to be desired. It appeared to me, basically a non-drinker (so THAT’S why I was unpopular?!) that they spilt as much on the way up to their mouths as what went down their throats. Many clubs supplied copious amounts: half a dozen bottles of gin and whisky, beer by the cartons; you asked for it and most likely you got it. There wasn’t a hope in Hades we could consume it all without ending up paralytic. After the last race we put our names into a hat and did a draw, the winners cramming the unopened and partially full bottles into their briefcases, bags and under their coats so as not to be seen as they crept away from the track with their booty. The dried-up pies still sitting in the warmer went the same way. When I first began working in the press room, in 1968, it became apparent to me that if one remained there too long chances are one ended up dead, divorced or desperately drunk. I got out intact in 1976, though one of the d’s got me eventually whilst another awaits.

But enough of this diversion, back to female jockeys. It was the year after I got out of journalism that women were given their rights, finally, and allowed to ride against the men. As a precursor to open competition, the females had been riding against each other in specially designated non-betting races, euphemistically known as “Powder Puff Derbies”. Several of the pioneers didn’t make it all through to the professional ranks for one reason or another. I remember a few of them, such as Lyall Baird, Cheski Tibbetts, Linda Jones, of course, Debbie Stockwell/Healey and the trail-blazing Canadian jockey Joan Phipps who had been the leading jockey in Saskatchewan in 1972 and 1973. She was the first female to win against the males in New Zealand, on Daphalee in 1 November 1977, and Sue Day was the first professional New Zealand female jockey to win a race, exactly 30 years ago this week.

The Thoroughbred’s article doesn’t purport to be a history of the women’s movement but in passing it mentions the likes of Julie Krone in the USA who retired in 2004 after an 18 year career encompassing more than 3,500 wins, amongst them a Belmont Stakes and a Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. Ms Krone became the first female jockey inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall Of Fame.

Lesser known and not referred to in the article is possibly the first superior female open competition rider anywhere, the Argentinian Marina Lezcano. Originally barred from apprentice school because of her gender, Lezcano is regarded as one of the greatest female athletes produced in Argentina and was at her zenith through the late‘70s and early ‘80s during a 15 year career. Many Grade 1s fell her way but she became most celebrated through her association with the 1978 champion Telescopico (Table Play-Filipina, by Fomento) who won all four legs of Argentina’s Triple Crown equivalent – the Cuadruple Corona - and the Gran Premio Carlos Pellgrini by 18 lengths. Such were her feats that People Magazine (USA) ran a big feature story on her in March 1979.

No female jockey anywhere had previously won a Grade 1. If memory serves me correctly, Marina Lezcano rode Telescopico when he took on the 1979 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Telescopico features as the broodmare sire of Genereux (Arg), a Grade 1 winner which is standing his first season at stud in Queensland this year. Other important winners ridden by Lezcano which might be known here were the champion mare Bayakoa and the later fairly successful sire Fitzcarraldo. Lezcano, whose father was half South American Indian and whose mother was Irish, retired to have a family and is still a public figure. As recently as February this year a raceday in her honour was held in Argentina.

The first Group 1 race in Australia won by a female jockey was the Fourex Cup at Doomben in July 1982, the good New Zealand jockey Dianne Moseley partnering the New Zealand stayer Double You Em, carrying all of 49 kgs.

Those were the days when a New Zealand team could come here and win something!

Keep The Old Girls At Home

2008-07-24T17:58:00.004+10:00

Thinking back over the round of broodmare sales we had this autumn, I’m moved to make a plea to the auction houses – Inglis and Magic Millions – to bar entry to their sales of mares 20 years of age and older.

It’s not a big problem as such, but I just don't think it's a good look. Out of the many hundreds of broodmares which went through the ring this year, at major sales, there were only four 20+ mares. They made $6,500, $1,400, $500 and no bid with a $3,000 reserve. Convert This Price!Gerry Harvey nearly got in on the act, he accepted $5,000 for Donna Iris but she was only a juvenile 19. But what is it with the owners of these mares that they need money so desperately? As with humans in enlightened societies, we should take responsibility to care for our aged and infirm. (I hope my sons are reading this – I’m nearly 60). I feel we should have some minimum standards.

Give these old girls a decent home until the end of their days, or find a less publicly ignominious method of moving them on (the ignominy applies to the vendor, not the mare). Don’t reward them for their lifetime of effort with the stress and strain of going to market for what is usually just a pittance, playing Russian roulette with the dogger.

Ironically, the sales companies rip commission off the sale of these mares but not off Milanova and Divine Madonna! Go figure.

As the gap between commercially useful mares and ‘the others’ widens, the dogger is again becoming a fixture at sales.

At least 143 thoroughbreds sold at auction for $300 or less during the autumn/winter this year. I’m not suggesting all of them went to the dogger, they didn’t. But if you use $1,000 as a cut-off, the number not exceeding that price point is prodigious.

Several breeders were most upset to witness about 15 hapless mares being unceremoniously herded onto the back of a cattle truck and driven away, right in the middle of the Magic Millions complex, at the June sale. Doubtless the same might happen at Inglis, but we are spared the spectacle as their loading ramps are a little more discreetly situated.

In other news from the broodmare sales, I hear Arrowfield, Coolmore, Darley, Oaklands, Widden and Vinery – and even Bridgeview – have registered a whole bunch of variously named shelf companies to avoid being shunted off Day 1 at Magic Millions in future. They will pick a company name to sell under depending what the all-important starting letter is. Stunt Consultants Pty Ltd will have some opposition.

Size This One Up

2008-07-24T15:41:00.000+10:00

How far-fetched does this sound?

All-conquering John Size to train for Patinack Farm at the splendidly-developed Shipton Lodge complex (owned by his buddy Bob Ruttley) near Cobbitty, south west of Sydney.

My source is not an idle rumour-mongerer (unlike me) so I listen intently.

Conspiracy Theories Are Generally Just That

2008-07-15T11:42:00.004+10:00

Not being an Australian citizen and therefore not a voter, I haven’t had to concern myself too much with politics in this country.

The derisory attitudes many Australians have towards New Zealanders, just as prevalent, I have to say, amongst Australians in breeding as anywhere else, acts as a disincentive to becoming Australian. It’s a bit like the Germans and the war – never being allowed to forget they lost it, contribution to everything else overlooked.

Why Australians have this attitude towards their poor, little defenceless cousins across the ditch, possessors of someone else’s land just like them, I can only wonder. I’ll read some Freud and perhaps find the answer.

(As for the sheep jokes, there are far more sheep in Australia than in New Zealand. The reason that's not widely appreciated is because the Australian sheep are camouflaged - they are the same colour as Australian grass).

I might be on the first plane back ‘home’ (I wasn’t born there, either) if it wasn’t for the hapless political system in New Zealand. Can you take seriously a country of 4 million people with 120 representatives in Parliament, 60 of whom aren’t even elected and seem to turn up just whenever they please?

I like the robustness of Australian politics and its characters even if, in this media-driven age, so much of it is reduced to image, spin, perception and superficiality.

Something I’ve kept a distance from, because I’m only a fringe dweller, is racing politics in NSW. How hard it must be to make progress in organizations that are inherently factional and sectional-interest driven.

So I look on from the sidelines at the latest attempt at reform of racing’s management in this state. The Board of RacingNSW will be an all-powerful body. There’s nothing it won’t control or influence the direction of, from money to programming and all points in between. In this climate, conspiracy theories grow like mushrooms. Even a mug punter like me is entitled to have one. But I'll get in before anyone else, I may not have a good grasp of the fine print so welcome anyone taking the opportunity here to set the record straight and paint the correct picture.

What guarantee is there that the composition of the soon-to-be appointed five person membership of the independent Board of Racing NSW is not already a fait accompli?

As I read it, under the recently passed Thoroughbred Racing Amendment Bill, the Appointments Panel consisting of nine industry representatives appointed by the NSW Minister for Racing, decides who the five Board members will be, “on skills based criteria”.

The Panel’s composition is subject to Ministerial approval but their nominations for Board membership appear not to be. Is that correct?

The Panel is “assisted” in finding potential members of the Board by an external recruitment agency which has already called for nominations.

This could be shadow boxing. It is not incumbent on the Panel to act on the advice of the external recruitment agency.

Votes of six of the nine Panel appointees are required to approve the nomination of a Board member. I believe originally seven votes were required, but the number has been cut back.

How do we know that there hasn’t already been, or will not be, horse-trading to secure votes between some proposed applicants who might come from strong vested interest backgrounds determined to spread their influence, and some Panel members?

The new Board’s existence depends on the continued approval of its performance by the Appointments Panel. If those natives get restless, it will take a 75% vote for the Minister to dismiss the Board.

Is there any step in this process which assures all industry stakeholders, big and small, that personal merit and that alone will be the criterion on which Board nominees are assessed?

It seems to me that the Board may be “independent” only in the sense that it has been given unfettered power to act on almost all issues affecting the welfare of racing on NSW, but that is not the same as having an “independent” membership. It is quite possible that persons may get on this Board who are there to do the bidding of the Panel voting blocks which put them there.

I don’t regard this as particularly transparent. What are the checks and balances on the conduct of the Appointments Panel? If there are none, there are presumably no checks and balances on the nominations to the Board.

Someone also explain to me why the Appointments Panel is composed of nine industry representatives, appointed by the Minister, while the Racing Industry Consultation Group, set up under the Bill to consult at least on a monthly basis with RacingNSW, has the same composition but different personnel? Is this to make it look like the members of the Appointments Panel would have no influence on the Board once they’d made their appointments? Really?

Grass roots racing people fear breeder domination of the policy-making instrument in racing. Will our racing become less multi-dimensional and just a vehicle for the sale of stallion noms and promotion of the commercial end of the breeding sector as if nothing else in the sport is important?

And without any doubt whatsoever, racing does not need a dictator, neither here in NSW nor anywhere else. Are there any examples of dictatorships which have been benign, enlightened and for the good of all? It’s a dreadful form of government which millions have given their lives to topple.

Those Nasty Rumours!

2008-07-15T09:03:00.006+10:00

Heard downwind from the Hunter chattering classes ... a high level defection from the Patinack team? Possibly over disagreement with purchasing decisions and things like areas of responsibility. Not necessarily related, a suggestion one well known yearling buyer has received a substantial 'gift' from a well known breeder, too large to fit in a mailbox? One hears these suggestions all the time! I need a bigger mailbox.

I understand Patinack were guests of Shadai at the Japanese sale. There are some strong, tough bloodlines up there, good to see them get amongst it. Talk is that the hitherto impregnable wall around racing ownership in Japan is soon to be breached.

I notice one of the mid-range buyers at the Japanese sale goes under the name "Carrot Club". Mind boggles.

Archipenko Is Doubly Special

2008-07-13T01:09:00.003+10:00

Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa al Maktoum – yellow with the blue yoke – has had mixed fortunes since he began making heavy investments in Australian bloodstock about six years ago.

He has spent squillions aiming for the big time here without really hitting the jackpot. Murtajill was a colt with high ability but through bad luck mostly appears to have missed the bus, Perfectly Ready got a soft G1 after he bought into him and he bred but sold Von Costa de Hero as a yearling. It’s now owned by his cuz. There has been the odd success at a reasonable level but they pale into insignificance compared with what he’s spent. A big day in the sun still awaits him.

Overseas, he seems to have fared rather better, sourcing tried horses from all ends of the globe which have subsequently raced well for him at Group level, including Asiatic Boy.

One of the most recent is Archipenko which won the G1 Audemars Piguet Queen Elizabeth II Cup in Hong Kong in April and added the G2 Summer Mile at Ascot in England this morning.

Archipenko who, as a three-year-old ran last in the English Derby, is these days trained by South African Mike de Kock who knows no borders in his pursuit of racing’s big prizes: he has to be one of the universe’s great organizers, this bloke.

Named for a celebrated Ukrainian sculptor of the cubist school, Archipenko is a four-year-old with one of the most exalted pedigrees imaginable – by Kingmambo out of Bound, by Nijinsky out of Special. That’s so exciting it could cause incontinence.

Surely one day Kingmambo is going to leave a superior sire son? It’ll be a tragedy if he doesn’t. He is a great sire and it should be noted that he has achieved that greatness, albeit with the help of many fine mares, but with foals crops which have exceeded 80 in number only once.

I first saw the horse in 1996 when I went to Lexington, Kentucky, with Peter Keating to finalise the shuttling of another G1 winning son of Mr Prospector by the name of Miner’s Mark who was just retiring to Lane’s End.

We took one look at Miner’s Mark and knew he wasn’t the horse for us. He was as big and as ugly as Kingmambo was neat and attractive. Only half-jokingly we suggested Lane’s End might like to consider shuttling Kingmambo, then only in his third season. The answer we got reminded me that even Americans think we are just a bunch of colonials, except when it comes to fighting their wars.

Miner’s Mark turned out to be worse than bad. Later, he had a brother named Traditionally who shuttled to NZ but he has been a rank failure in both hemispheres, though his two-year-old colt Firth Of Fifth scored an upset win in the G2 Superlative Stakes at Newmarket on Friday.

The stallion we ended up shuttling from that trip was the great sprinter Housebuster (by Mt Livermore) who was received with mild enthusiasm in NZ, shuttling twice and leaving just over 100 live foals. The one thing Housebuster forgot to do in NZ was leave his own speed; his best winners liked a middle distance. On bald figures he didn’t do a bad job with nearly 66% winners-to-runners and five stakeswinners, 7.5% of his starters. He is the sire of the dam of this season’s highest earning NZ juvenile, Vincent Mangano but I go on too much, I am only trying to justify the decision!

Back to Archipenko. He is the 11th and final foal of Bound who was 20 when she foaled him. Bound is out of the very special Special from whom descend nearly three dozen of the best-known stakeswinners of recent decades. She is the dam of Number and of Nureyev and the grandam of Sadler’s Wells and Fairy King.

Kingmambo is out of the peerless miler Miesque who is by Nureyev. Nureyev and Bound are three-quarter siblings. Rasmussen Factor to die for (more about Rasmussen some other time). Nine of Bound’s 11 foals were either by Mr Prospector or a variety of his sons and until Archipenko came along none of them was a stakeswinner. Persistence is hard to beat, if you can afford it.

July Cup Winner Inbred To Kenmare

2008-07-12T01:52:00.004+10:00

Australian-bred War Artist (Orpen-Royal Solitaire, by Royal Academy), a favourite of mine from the 2005 Magic Million Yearling Sale, made a fine attempt to lead throughout this morning’s G1 July Cup at Newmarket only to be collared by a head and half a length.

The July Cup has a history of unearthing stallions of future influence. Winner Marchand d’Or and War Artist certainly won’t be amongst the sires of the future as both are geldings. The future prospect this year might be second placed US Ranger, a son of Danzig out of a Red Ransom mare from the family of Dynaformer, not forgetting that another son of Danzig, Danehill, once finished third in this race. (US Ranger’s grandam is by His Majesty, also broodmare sire of Danehill, which opens up some interesting breeding scenarios!).

Winning favourite, the French-bred and trained Marchand d’Or, has an intriguing pedigree for a horse who is clearly one of Europe's elite sprinters. The July Cup was the five-year-old’s sixth win from 1000m to 1400m in 10 career starts. He finished fourth in the July Cup last year and his victories include the G1 Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville, twice, and the G3 Prix de la Porte Maillot at Longchamp, twice.

His 18-year-old sire Marchand de Sable won only three of 18 races, the G1 Criterium de St-Cloud over 2000m as a two-year-old being his only stakes success. His other wins came as a five-year-old over 2400m and 4000m at Nantes. At stud he has produced just one other G1 winner, the filly Commercante, who won Canada’s E.P. Taylor Stakes.

Marchand de Sable is an American-bred by Theatrical out of a French Listed winner Mercantile who won from 1800m to 2400m. He has a three-quarter sister at stud in Australia, Magicienne (by Nureyev) who is yet to leave a winner from four foals of racing age. She has been through the sale ring a couple of times here, most recently as a supplementary entry at the Magic Millions Gold Coast last month. In foal to Holy Roman Emperor, she was passed in well short of the $80,000 reserve placed on her by the Wadham Park/Woodside Park outfit which owns her. Mercantile was a half-sister to Exceptionnel (Ire), ironically a Listed winner at Nantes and third in the G1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud, almost mirroring his later relative Marchand de Sable. Exceptionnel stood in relative obscurity at a small stud near Matamata, New Zealand, entering service in 1977 and leaving four stakeswinners amongst his 195 foals. The most notable of these was Kotare Chief who scored a spectacular win in the G1 Auckland Cup, 3200m, and also placed second in another renewal of that race. Exceptionnel was by the stayer Exbury, briefly fashionable around that time when his son Zamazaan (Fr) emerged as one of New Zealand’s best sires, but the male line didn't survive down here.

Marchand de Sable’s dam Mercantile is by Kenmare (Fr) and the interesting aspect of Marchand d’Or’s pedigree is that he is 3f x 3m to that horse whose grey coat colour he carries. Kenmare was a prestigious early shuttler being an already successful sire in France when he first began visiting Arrowfield on a seasonal basis in 1988. I always found him somewhat enigmatic in Australia though he wasn't unsuccessful, siring 18 stakeswinners. It was their lighter-boned, lighter-framed type I had difficulty coming to grips with. His six highest earners were Lahar, Brave Prince, Kenbelle, Baryshnikov, Keltrice and Silver Flyer. His performance as a broodmare sire is similar: 19 stakeswinners to date out his daughters include the likes of Pillaging, Virage de Fortune, No Questions, Here de Angels, Faith Hill (dam of Black Minx), Palia, Just Awesome and Written Tycoon.

The double-up to Kenmare comes through Marchand d’Or’s dam Fedora, a daughter of Kendor (Fr) who also stood in Australia, just one season, 1990. He attracted 62 mares who produced 45 live foals. One of them was a Listed winner, Twitter, the grandam of this season’s G1 winning three-year-old filly Serious Speed.

Kenmare won from 900m to 1600m and Kendor from 1200m to 1600m, so it’s reasonable to postulate this pair have much to do with producing the speed possessed by Marchand d’Or as his own sire’s progeny have a winning distance index of 2155m.

Marchand d’Or’s immediate family is fairly undistinguished, though his third dam Kesar Queen was a smart European filly of the mid-seventies. He has a distant Australian relative, this season’s modest two-year-old Listed winner Gold In Dubai (by Desert Sun) whose third dam Meadow Saffron is Marchand d’Or’s fourth dam.

With the likes of Dr Green (out of Palia), Markane (out of Palia’s dam Kew Gardens), Casino Prince (grandson of Kew Gardens), Purrealist (grandam by Kenmare), and Written Tycoon at stud, owners of Kenmare-line mares in Australia can play around with inbreeding to Kenmare if they fancy their chances of breeding themselves a Marchand d’Or.

Dream Teams

2008-07-06T00:47:00.006+10:00

Barack and Hillary. Kevin and Julia. John and Belinda. Blake and Nash. The Diva and Glen. Aidan and Johnnie. Robbie and Gai. Morris and Michael. Richard and Caroline.

What about the dude giving the TV comments from the Haydock Park UK races last night - a fine imitation of Mel Blanc's Bugs Bunny on speed - paired with the commentateurrrrr from Greyville racetrack in Durban? No wonder people are leaving South Africa in droves. How would you like that pair doing coverage for you every day!

We have our own doozies in Australia - a nasal one in Victoria and a shrill one in NSW in particlar.

A great invention, the mute button.

This Will Help You Pick A Winner - Oh Sure!

2008-07-05T23:30:00.005+10:00

Having glanced over the Australian black-type races from the beginning of the Melbourne autumn carnival (1 February) to the end of the Queensland winter carnival (about 270 winners), I have a few observations based on this sample.

(The first half of the 2007-08 season will always be an aberration because EI suspended racing in NSW and Queensland. But things were back to normal by February, so that’s the start of my sample).

=If you think you own a potential stakeswinner, it’s most likely to be one of the first four foals of its dam.

=If the mare produced the foal after an ‘empty’ year, then it’s not likely to give you an edge.

=If the mare’s had a few foals and none of the earlier ones has been a stakeswinner or stakes-placed, don’t worry too much – only one-third of the dams of stakeswinners have had any previous black-type record.

=Your horse has nearly twice as good a chance of being a stakeswinner if its dam won a race.

=If you bought your horse at auction, it has a better chance of being a stakeswinner than if you didn’t.

=If you did buy it at auction, the more you paid the better your horse is likely to be.

Looking at these sweeping generalisations in order:

If you think you own a potential stakeswinner, it’s most likely to be one of the first four foals of its dam.

The average foal number of Group 1 winners was 3.31, dropping down to Listed winners at 4.08. Narrowing it even further, just over half of all black-type winners was a first-three-foal, with a marked 65.5% in Group 1. This fits with a study I did a couple of years ago which suggested to me that the higher the foal number out of the mare, the lower the status of race the progeny are likely to win, on average. (I'm aware Fields Of Omagh was a 12th foal, Secretariat etc, the exceptions which prove the rule). I guess that’s why we cull mares when they get older!

In the period I’ve looked at, the most ‘senior’ Group 1 winning foal was Shadoways (Encosta de Lago-Be My Pride) who is the 9th foal of his dam and won the G1 SAJC Goodwood Handicap, hardly the most exalted race on the calendar. It was his only black-type success in 10 starts this term and his only previous stakes success was at Listed level. As yet unbeaten three-year-old Light Fantastic (Danehill Dancer-Leica Or Not) did his ageing mother proud as he is her 8th foal. Right behind him is the G1 leviathan Apache Cat (Lion Cavern-Tennessee Blaze) and leading filly Zarita (Pentire-Gin Player) who are both 7th foals. Six (21%) of the 29 G1 winners were first foals. This is a higher figure than for the other divisions and seems to support my belief that when you get a good first foal it can be outstanding.

There was also only one 9th foal amongst the 39 G2 winners, Serious Speed (Royal Academy-Twitter), also a G1 winner earlier during the restricted Melbourne spring. Light Fantastic and Zarita also won at G2 level and there were three other successful 7th foals: Gallant Tess (Galileo-Dragoncello), El Cambio (Commands-Chaparra) and Portillo (Red Ransom-Snowdrift). There were only four (10%) G2 winning first foals.

The 58 Group 3 winners also had a fairly youthful profile, with a lower average foal number than Group 2. The ‘oldest’ foal was an 8th, Lucky Diva (Perugino-Lucky Witch). She is a rising seven-year-old, a sterling winner of 11 races, but apart from a Listed win as a two-year-old in Adelaide (no offence) this is her only other black-type victory. Apart from El Cambio, also a winner at G2 level, above, there were three G2 winning 7th foals: Musidora (Rock Of Gibraltar-Nice Dancing), recently sold for $1 million; Hoystar (Danzero-Professionelle) and Rezone (Electronic Zone-Lochrene), an honest horse but no threat to Rising Fast. Seven first foals (12%) were G3 winners.

The old-age pensioners figured better at Listed level, a much bigger sample with 135 individual winners. Taking the Gold Medal for longevity is the American-bred mare Waterford Fair whose 14th foal is Single Rose (by Irgun) who reeled off 1200m in 1:08.76 to win at Eagle Farm in March. It is the rising six-year-old’s only piece of black type and none of the previous 13 foals out of her dam has any. In hot pursuit with their Zimmer frames are two mares successful with their 13th foals: Verte Moss (by Twig Moss, dam of Sir Sensible, by Intergaze), and On The Rise (by Crested Wave, dam of Ready To Lift, by More Than Ready). On The Rise, whose career I was involved in during my Haunui Farm days, has bred four black-type horses but Verte Moss is distinguished only by Sir Sensible, winner of the Toowoomba Cup no less. The only other double-digit producer at Listed level was Hot Spice who churned out the good Perth gelding Yuro (by Fusaichi Pegasus) as her 10th effort, and her 4th black-type result. First foals really didn’t do much better at Listed level with just 12.6% (17) of the winning individuals.

If the mare produced the foal after an ‘empty’ year, then it’s not likely to give you an edge.

This seems to fly in the face of a widely held view (probably supported by a wider study than mine) that foals produced the year after a mare has been rested or barren are often superior. In the sample I’ve looked at, there’s a sliding scale, from just one G1 winner so produced (4.3%), to 26 Listed winners (22%). [Obviously, I have deducted all the first foalers from the sample]. Stud Book figures for the last five years show the percentage of registered mares not covered each season in the 20 – 23% range, so even allowing for some non-commercial distortions in the figures, do the results this year suggest this may be an over-rated theory?

If the mare’s had a few foals and none of the earlier ones has been a stakeswinner or stakes-placed, don’t worry too much – only one-third of the dams of stakeswinners have had any previous black-type record.

Looked at another way, a mare which has already left a stakes-placegetter or stakeswinner is a reasonably good chance to provide further stakes production. In arriving at the above generalisation, the figures are skewed by the large numbers of mares in the sample which have only had one or two prior foals before the stakeswinner itself, so she hasn't had a big opportunity by that stage. It might be better to say, for example, that if you’re looking at a 4th foal or later, and if the mare has already had a black-type performer, there’s an increased chance she will have another – you might be looking at it!

Your horse has nearly twice as good a chance of being a stakeswinner if its dam won a race.

64% of all the black type races were won by horses whose dams had won a race of some description. 36% of the race winners had non-winning dams. 12% of G1 winners had Group winning dams, the highest percentage of Group winning dams in any category. Some notable G1 winners had unraced dams, e.g. Weekend Hussler, Sarerra, Zarita, Samantha Miss.

If you bought your horse at auction, it has a better chance of being a Group winner than if you didn’t.

That’s the evidence so far this year. I expect gift vouchers from Magic Millions and Inglis for pointing this out. The highest proportion is in G1 – 21 of the 29 winners (72%) are in the official records as sold at auction. In G2 and G3 it’s 61.5% and 62% respectively, then it drops to 56.3% amongst the Listed winners. What does this mean? I interpret it as suggesting most of the best horses have been going through the auction system. Comforting. What of the future?

If you did buy it at auction, the more you paid the more likely your horse will be a Group winner.

I found this one interesting. Again I expect to receive a couple of paid luxury holidays from the auction houses, for encouraging future trade! David and Mark, my address is ….

But back to reality – the average prices paid for this year’s G1, G2 and G3 winners were $218,523, $258,395 and $220,520 respectively. But the Listed winners cost only $104,720 on average. The medians were $130,000, $150,000, $80,000 and $60,000. Plenty of scope for buyers at all levels but, by and large, you get what you pay for. Price is usually determined by strong catalogue page and good physical type which in turn seem to have a direct link to future performance.

The most expensive G1 winner this year has been Samantha Miss (Redoute’s Choice-Milliyet) at $1.5 million, followed by Forensics (Flying Spur-Prove It) at $900,000 and Shinzig (Danehill-Shindig) at $400,000. At the other end of the scale were Grand Journey (Good Journey-Grand Prospect) costing just $6,500, Heavenly Glow (Spinning World-Starsphere) $10,000 and Eskimo Queen (Shinko King-Cold Type) who went, remarkably, three times through an auction ring: for $2,500 as a weanling, $10,000 as a yearling and $25,000 as a two-year-old. What did I tell you? He who paid the most got the most!

Von Costa de Hero (Encosta de Lago-Piavonic) was the most valued G2 winner at $1.2 million, followed by Forensics then Portillo (Red Ransom-Snowdrift) $850,000 and Fravashi (Falbrav-Angelic Smile) at $550,000. Note three of those were found by the former Woodlands team - well, I should say found by several but afforded by only one. Geniuses were those who paid $2,000 for Acey Ducey (Xaar-Deduce), Swiss Ace (Secret Savings-Rapid Serve) $8,500 and Belong To Many (Belong To Me-Foil) at $20,000, but the gold standard is Racing to Win at $40,000 ($3,350,335 and counting).

In G3, Viennese (Redoute’s Choice-Snippets’ Lass) set them back $1.4 million and for those with long memories Offenbach (Danehill-Push A Venture) was knocked down for a cool mill. The next highest-priced G3 winner this year has been Wilander (Exceed And Excel-Scandinavia) at $625,000. At considerably less cost but achieving the same status have been the likes of Action Pak (Star Pak-Mixed Affair) $5,750, Translate (Love A Dane-Secret’s Out) $6,000 and Coniston Gem (Greig-No Telling) $9,000.

Tops of the Listed winners’ table are the aforementioned Portillo $850,000 and Hoystar $400,000 who also won at a higher grade, followed by Delta Girl (General Nediym-Etoile Centieme) at $380,000 and Victory Chant (General Nediym-Classic Status) at an Adelaide sale record-setting $340,000. The el-cheapos included Racer’s Run (Racer’s Edge-Jolimont) for $4,500, Pentacity (Pentire-Insistant) for $5,000 and Devil Inside (Langfuhr-Pink Moccasion) for $8,000.