All Over In The Blinkering Of An Eye

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)