Blue Denim may retire

Press, 29 April 1981, Page 27

Blue Denim may retire

PA Auckland The New Zealand mare, My Blue Denim, could have run her last race when she finished second to the former New Zealand colt, Our Paddy Boy, in the $150,000 Sydney Cup at Randwick on Saturday. Her triliner, Dave O’Sullivan, indicated this on his return tQ his stables at Matamata yesterday. “There is talk of her being retired to stud next spring,” O’Sullivan said. “I can not really say what the future holds for her.” “The trouble is she is now so high in the weights. If I took her back to Australia in the spring she would have to get at least 56kg in the Melbourne Cup. “That is an awful lot of weight for a little mare.” O’Sullivan said that, irrespective of the future, My Blue Denim would now be brought hdme from Sydney, probably next Monday, for a spell. “She will go out for about six weeks. We will see how she comes through that, then decide whether she should race again,” he said. “The Tancred Stakes is the best race in Australia or New Zealand for her. That is at weight-for-age over 2400 m. It is made to order for her. “You wouldn’t credit the ease with which she won that race a fortnight ago. Peter Cook did riot even have to move on her.” A O’Sullivan said he was not blaming Cook in the slightest for the mare’s six-length defeat by Our Paddy Boy in the Sydney Cup on Saturday. He said My Blue Denim had had “a bit of a joint problem.” She had also clipped the heels of Airman near the 800 m mark. An inspection of the mare on Sunday morning revealed a nicked hindleg and a sore joint, O’Sullivan said. “The Sydney Cup was to have been her main

mission,” he said, “and she was beaten in t.iat, but she picked up two prime plums from only three starts on the trip. “Altogether, her earnings from the Tancred Stakes, the Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Sydney Cup were sAust.lBs,ooo. “That’s close on a quarter of a million dollars in New Zealand money,” O’Sullivan noted. “When you add that to the money she earned for second in the Melbourne Cup and her other placings this season, she has not done too badly at all.” O’Sullivan said that his other runner at the Sydney Cup carnival, Golden Rhapsody, had run a “slashing second on Saturday to Brighten, a definite up-and-comer to which he had conceded a lot of weight.” Plans were to leave Golden Rhapsody in Australia -in the care of O’Sullivan’s son, Paul, until the winter. “Golden Rhapsody looks fantastic,” O’Sullivan said. “I have never seen a horse thrive the way he has done over there. “He is racing again on Wednesday in the Gosford Cup, a $30,000 race over 2000 m with 56.5 kg. He will then travel up to Queensland. His first race up there will be tl- Prime Minister’s Cup (about 2000 m) at Southport. He ran second in that race last year,” O’Sullivan said.