PIERRO LANDS GUTSY GOLDEN SLIPPER WIN

Click above to watch Pierro winning the Golden Slipper (G1)…
(Image : Sportsnews - Footage : Sky Racing 1)

GOLDEN SLIPPER (Group 1)
Rosehill Gardens, Turf, 1200m
7 April 2012

Gai Waterhouse gave early warning that Pierro (Aus) (Lonhro) would prove a force to reckon with in the world’s richest race for 2-year-olds after he won the Listed Breeders’ Plate on debut in October, and the legendary conditioner once again proved right on the money as the unbeaten colt captured the Golden Slipper Stakes (Group 1) Saturday at Rosehill Gardens, Sydney.

Sitting in the pocket behind Snitzerland (Aus) (Snitzel), the bay came through gamely on the rail to collar the front-running filly and score by a half-length. Favored female phenom Samaready (Aus) (More Than Ready) put in a late bid, but did not seriously threaten for the top slot and had to settle for third.

“Gai Waterhouse said six months ago this horse was going to win the Golden Slipper,” winning jockey Nash Rawiller said. “At the time I shook my head and walked away. She’s a genius.” “Today I ended up getting a perfect run,” he continued. “I knew if he got a trouble-free run he would be hard to beat.”

“He’s a dominant colt. A very special colt,” said Waterhouse. “It was a fantastic finish. The filly shot to the front and it took his tenacity to run her down. He’s such a gutsy horse. It was really exciting.”

Pierro’s win gave Waterhouse her fourth win in the $3.5 million headline act of Sydney Carnival and winning jockey Nash Rawiller his first.

GOLDEN SLIPPER (G1)
Final Result

#	Margin (l)	Horse	Weight (lb)	Dr	Jockey	Trainer
1	0	PIERRO	56.5	1	Nash Rawiller	Gai Waterhouse
2	0.4	SNITZERLAND	54.5	7	Corey Brown	Gerald Ryan
3	1.9	SAMAREADY	54.5	11	Craig Newitt	Mick Price
4	3.3	DOUBTFILLY	54.5	6	Damien Oliver	Stuart Kendrick
5	3.4	RACEWAY	56.5	9	Hugh Bowman	Gai Waterhouse
6	3.6	DRIEFONTEIN	54.4	8	Tommy Berry	Gai Waterhouse
7	4	SHELFORD	56.5	15	Brett Prebble	John O’Shea
8	4.1	CAVALRY ROSE	54.5	5	Christian Reith	Gerald Ryan
9	4.3	AMORINO	56.5	2	Steven Arnold	Gerald Ryan
10	4.4	NO LOOKING BACK	54.5	3	Craig Williams	Gai Waterhouse
11	4.5	FAUSTUS	56.5	13	Jim Cassidy	John O’Shea
12	4.6	ASHOKAN	56.5	14	James McDonald	John O’Shea
13	5.1	NARCISSUS	56.5	12	Peter Robl	Peter Snowden
14	5.2	LATE GATOR (NZ)	54.5	13	Luke Nolen	Gai Waterhouse
15	5.6	JADE MARAUDER	54.5	16	Glyn Schofield	Chris Waller
16	5.7	EPAULETTE	56.5	4	Kerrin McEvoy	Peter Snowden

Extracts from Thoroughbred Daily News and Racenet

MORE THAN READY : HEIR APPARENT

More Than Ready (USA)
(Photo : Vinery Stud)

GOLDEN SLIPPER (Group 1)
 Rosehill Gardens, Turf, 1200m
7 April 2012

If you’re a horseman on a visit to Australia, you can’t help but notice their deep infatuation with the progeny of Fastnet Rock. Spoilt for choice, Australians will admit that they flit from one fashionable horse to another, yet no-one can quibble with the fact that Fastnet Rock, who started out life at a relatively modest fee, has earned his place at the top table, displacing for the moment, Danehill’s other remarkable son, Redoute’s Choice in terms of “fashion”.

But the horse who’s really earned his stripes, who’s come along the hard way because he represented a somewhat “off-beat” lineage, prized greatly by Americans but not particularly in other realms, is More Than Ready. The son of 9-times South American Champion stallion, Southern Halo, is already sire of two winners of the world’s richest two-year-old race, the Aus$3 million Golden Slipper, which takes place in Sydney this Saturday. Whatever the rest of the world beyond America may have thought of the Hail To Reason tribe (which exists today through Halo / Sunday Silence and the various scions of Roberto), Australians have a healthy respect for More Than Ready, to the degree that his son Sebring was syndicated for Aus$30 million (close on R250 million) as a two-year-old on the back of his victory “in the Slipper”. To put it into context though, you should know, Australians have an absolute fetish with the outcome of the Golden Slipper, fabled by the long list of outstanding sires its winners (and placed horses) has produced.

It’s easy to understand More Than Ready’s dramatic escalation to the top of the stallion mountain. He has two winners of this race in recent times (Sebring 2008 and Phelan Ready 2009), he’s already annexed a couple of Australian Juvenile Sires’ Championships, he’s well on his way to a third, and he has the hot favourite, the unbeaten filly Samaready in Saturday’s line-up. But she’s not alone. More Than Ready has almost a third of the field (five of the sixteen entries), which tells you just how useful he is, and his success is by no means limited to Australia. Both 2010 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile turf events in America fell to his progeny, one to the filly More Than Real, and the other to a South African-connected colt, Pluck, (out of Prix du Cap heroine, Secret Heart (by Fort Wood)), who, on a day which celebrated several memorable finishes, produced the best of the lot.

DAZZLING DANEHILL

Danehill
(Photo : Racehorse HK)

DAZZLING DANEHILL

The dust has finally settled on Australia’s Magic Millions Premier Yearling sales marathon week, and once again it was a triumph for the greatest stallion in Southern Hemisphere history. If you did any advance work on the catalogue, you couldn’t help but notice the plethora of entries descended from Danehill in the first or second generation, to the point of virtual saturation. With the enormous books Australian stallions are serving these days, the catalogue is obviously dominated by his male descendants, and there’s no shortage of those who carry his influence on the distaff side, an amazing reflection of how quickly he has supplanted Star Kingdom as the principal source of quality racehorses Down Under.

Who would’ve thought that within little more than a decade, a stallion of the pervasive presence in their pedigrees such as Star Kingdom, would face the prospect of extinction as a male-line provider, given that for decades he carried that burden and shaped the Australian breed almost singlehandedly.

Students of the Danehill story would’ve been forgiven in the early years of his life as a “shuttler”, for believing that it was the suitability of his mates in Australasia that set him up for immortality, and especially those descending from Star Kingdom. In his initial years, Danehill’s mark as a stallion was undeniably Australian. The truth though, probably lies more in the fact that as a horse with obvious physical flaws and perhaps a little suspect on the performance side, he was considered surplus to requirements in Europe. His breeders, Juddmonte, do not lightly let a prospect go and it certainly wasn’t money that induced the sale. Juddmonte’s principal, Prince Khalid Abdullah, a first cousin to the King of Saudi Arabia, is not a man in need, but is one of the world’s foremost breeders of racehorses, and he was astute enough to retain a breeding interest in the horse he was parting with. In the end, Danehill was just as successful in the Northern Hemisphere, but only once European breeders came to appreciate his value, though in sheer numbers, his recognition there came much later in the day, and was therefore somewhat short-lived, as he died prematurely in 2003.

Anyone who knows Arrowfield’s John Messara as well as we do, would count him among the rare international visionaries of our sport, and when it comes to analysing and spotting a prospect, his record stands alone. This man bred Zabeel, he made Danehill and his three champion sons Redoute’s Choice, Flying Spur and Danzero, and his record as a “kingmaker” rivals that of Lord Derby, Federico Tesio and “Bull” Hancock. It didn’t take him long to identify the merits of this European champion sprinter of 1989, and it didn’t take Danehill long to sire the winner of the world’s richest two-year-old contest, Australia’s Golden Slipper. Indeed, it didn’t take him to long to sire his first three Golden Slipper winners; he did so in each of his first three crops, and while he did that in short time, his time at the top of Australia’s sire premiership was enduring.

No-one was surprised then, that the top lot at Aus $960,000 at last week’s Gold Coast sale, was a colt by Danehill’s son, Fastnet Rock, who in the same week, sired the winners of the New Zealand and Australian 1000 Guineas to boot. Neither was anyone surprised when the famous “split” between the original owners of Danehill, Messara’s Arrowfield and John Magnier’s Coolmore, made him the most valuable stallion in Australian history. The matter was settled in a Dutch auction before a former Chief Justice of Australia, and the horse was turned over at a reported $24million. That was a helluva lot of money in those days, but in retrospect, it was peanuts.

Read more about Danehill…

HOW THE WEST CAN BE WON

Way West
(Photo : Greig Muir)

WAY WEST (AUS)
Danehill (USA) - Prospect Fever (USA)
by Mr. Prospector (USA)

As underrated a sire as there is in the land right now, Way West quietly gets on with his business at Summerhill with little fanfare. His quiet demeanour belies a prince’s pedigree, and a record of performance which hinted at a destructive talent betrayed by the sort of injury only racehorses can inflict upon themselves.

Carrying the looks of a champion show horse, Way West is statuesque, but he’s a little fellow. Attracting the patronage of local breeders has not been easy, yet from two small crops at the races to date, he has two Group One performing fillies, the Highveld Juvenile Champion, Waywest Goddess, and Extra Zero. The latter who followed an excellent third to the much-heralded Princess Victoria in the Golden Slipper (Gr1), with an astounding runner-up performance against the colts in the R2million Emperors Palace Ready To Run Cup.

Now we find our man sitting in 5^th place on the National Sires’ Log, measured by average earnings per runner : the stats tell us he’s in great company, while he has several of the nation’s most illustrious stallions behind him.

Leading Sires by AEPR
1 August - 4 December 2011

Sire	Stakes	Rnrs	AEPR
MODUS VIVENDI	1,630,130	35	46,575
ANNOUNCE	1,063,185	30	35,440
RIGHT APPROACH	1,945,410	63	30,880
TIGER RIDGE	1,558,998	53	29,415
WAY WEST	996,525	34	29,310
VICTORY MOON	2,648,328	92	28,786
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY	1,342,840	47	28,571
SARGE	690,550	25	27,622
MELLIFONT	644,865	24	26,869
KAHAL	3,308,561	127	26,052
PARADE LEADER	1,198,403	47	25,498
VAR	2,181,189	86	25,363
DUPONT	843,893	34	24,820
JET MASTER	3,521,029	144	24,452
WESTERN WINTER	2,611,295	107	24,405
CAPTAIN AL	3,275,357	135	24,262
SILVANO	3,442,901	145	23,744
QUI DANZIG	733,937	31	23,675
TOREADOR	1,318,681	56	23,548
DYNASTY	1,740,438	74	23,519

*Summerhill Sires denoted by bold

Enquiries :
Linda Norval 27 (0) 33 263 1081
or email linda@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za

SEPOY : BIG BRAVE SOLDIER WINS BLUE DIAMOND

Click above to watch Sepoy winning the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr1)
(Photo : SMH - Footage : TVN)

BLUE DIAMOND STAKES (Grade 1)
Caulfield, Turf, 1200m
26 February 2011 

The outcome of Saturday’s Blue Diamond (Gr1), one of Australia’s defining juvenile events, had racing fans clutching for their Thesauruses, as they grappled with the name “Sepoy”. Apparently it belongs to a category of Indian solider or warrior, but whatever the definition, on Saturday it belonged to one of the best juveniles Australians claim to have seen in decades.

The Aussies are a sentimental lot when it comes to their racehorses, and the manner of the son of Elusive Quality’s victory (by 4,50 lengths) evoked comparisons with Biscay (1968,) Vain (1969,) Manikato (1978,) Zeditare (1988) and Courtza (1989). Now the red hot chalk for the richest Juvenile race in the world, (the $5million Golden Slipper, for which he appears a “shoe in”, forgive the pun!), the son of the sire of international standouts Smarty Jones, Raven’s Pass and Quality Road is out of a Danehill mare, from the immediate family of Golden Slipper hero, Canny Lad. If ever there was a “Slipper” pedigree, Sepoy has it.

And by the way, the highest scoring physical among the Summerhill draft for the National Yearling Sale (15-17 April,) belongs to a son of Sepoy’s sire, Elusive Quality.

For more information please visit :
www.summerhill.co.za

or contact Linda Norval
+27 (0) 33 263 1081