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A.P.Arrow and Admire Main in action

“More Bulldust Part 6”
Extract from Summerhill Sires Brochure 2009-2010

Let me start with a confession. At Summerhill we’re optimists. There seems little point in being anything else. In tough times, the virtues that inspire us are old-fashioned and unglamorous, and it’s good to discover there are hidden reserves of majesty and honour, genius and luck.

At last, we can retire the analogy between our financial circumstances and the Great Depression. Whatever had to be done has been done, and we must now get on with our lives. In the horse business, for a change, we’re the lucky ones. There are still Julys, Mets and Summer Cups to be won, and decisions taken now will only be judged in 2012. The world will be much wiser by then.

Twenty years ago, in similarly dire times, we went out and courted the patronage of Dubai’s Rulers. That changed our lives, as well as the local racing landscape. Times like these call for responses like this, and on this occasion we’ve looked to Japan for salvation. The Japanese changed the world with Toyota, and the Yoshida family have made a similar impression on the realm of the racehorse.

Many people have given up on breeding the Classic racehorse. The horse with the aptitude to excel at the distances of our best races, and then travel abroad, and do the same at distances beyond, if necessary.

Most people may have given up, but not the Yoshidas. And certainly not Summerhill. Relationships like these can define the life of a farm, and we’ve kicked ours off with a horse that took just three starts to become one of the household names of his generation. Three wins from three starts, two in Graded Stakes, and a combined victory margin approaching sixteen lengths, left many a fan with the idea that in ADMIRE MAIN, here was the heir apparent to his own phenomenal sire, Sunday Silence. His effort in his country’s biggest race for the Classic generation suggests they may have been right, but the intrusion of injury robbed us of the opportunity to judge him properly.

We simply don’t know what extraordinary feats he may have been capable of, but from what he’d revealed so far, he was certainly out of the ordinary.

Barry Irwin is a remarkably astute judge of a racehorse. When Barry speaks, we listen. Not long ago, he was asked to value a son of the “Emperor” of American stallions in the hope he might be secured for South Africa. His response was such, the hope was abandoned. Events since then have conspired in our favour, and when A.P.ARROW finally came within range, it was time for action.

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Click below to read “Bulldust”
Part 1 to Part 6