Frontal to stand at Otaki stud

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 10

Frontal to stand at Otaki stud

t Special correspondent Wellington The young Vaguely Noble stallion, Frontal is to stand at Otaki next season. Frontal has been lea by Anton Koolman. A trainer for the last 10 years, Koolman will cut back these

activities to launch his Gressier Lodge Stud. Koolman, who has leased Frontal from his American breeder N. B. Hunt, operates Gressier Lodge in partnership with his mother-in-law, Mrs G. P. Hodgson, of V aikanae.

The partnership has been breeding horses tor some 15 years and currently has shares in several highly rated young stallions — Roi Lear, Zaniazaan, Karayar, Barcas. Ruling, Brigand and Sea Anchor. Koolman, in his late 30s, was a successful amateur horseman before setting up as a trainer. He won a three-day event in Sydney in 1965 as a member of a New Zealand team and was tipped as a prospect for the Mexico Olympics before lii« mount went amiss.

His property comprises GO acres on the Te Manuao Plateau overlooking the Otaki racecourse and adjoins those where several top gallopers including Commanding, Castlerae and Apa were bred. His training successes include a Waikato Steeple with Baudelaire and others

he has had through his hands include Tipperary Tom, Togo, Hamua, Poppa’s Gold and K . nta. The ’ er which Koolman trained for Mr Hunt, ran seven stakes placings.

Koolman’s stable usually numbers a dozen to 15 but this figure will be cut down to about a half-dozen to accommodate his breeding commitments.

Frontal will stand at $750 and his first book of mares in Otaki will include Gressier Lodge’s Sundette, a sister to Apa and half-sister to Lord Sasanof, and possibly Tel Aviv, dam of one of the season’s leading three-year-olds, Disraeli. Frontal is a good-looking, six-year-old, unraced because of a tail injury he received at birth. He is a three-quar-ter brother to Empery. 1976 winner of the Derby. Empery and the Hunt-owned French Derby winner of the same year, Youth, were syndicated for $l2 million a few months after their classic victories.

Frontal has spent his first four seasons at Mr Hun’s Waikato Stud. He covered

60 mares this season and according to his Waikato manager, Peter Keating, with a few tests to be confirmed has a fertility rate of 75 per cent.

The mares he covered this season included Vaporetto’s half-sister Dolce Vita, a stakes winner of seven races, other stakes winners in the dual classic winner Aquarelle, Bo Allen, Wave Queen and Kalott, Sir Garland’s half-sister Gliegh, Miss Tod’s dam Miss Trust, Ernader’s sister Bar Crystal, Dark Isle, an unraced halfsister to Top Secret and No Secret, from Taras Bulba's family, and the good Australian .illoper Pavement’s half-sister by Summertime, Andiamo.

Though Frontal did not race his family is sucl. that Adelaide's Bart Cummings naid $400,000 for his yearling brother at K«>eneland in >976 on behalf of an Australian syndicate. The colt went into training in England but died before racing.

Cummings sent mares to Frontal in each of his first three seasons but this sea son took nearly all his New

Zealand-based mares home to breed to his own Vaguely Noble horse. Frontal has had three runners in New Zealand — Organdi, Roanoke and Bouton D’Or. Roanoke and Bouton D’Or have both been placed at Ellerslie a d in December Mr Hunt sold Bouton D’Or to Australian interests for a substantial sum.