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.
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