Tangent latest winner for N.Z. in U.S.A.

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 29

Tangent latest winner for N.Z. in U.S.A.

By

J. J. BOYLE

Last year the New Zea-land-bre’d Pride of Rosewood won a Grade One race in the United States only nine days after she got off the 'plane. Two weeks ago Tangent flew the flag for New Zealand with an impressive neck victory at Santa Anita at only her third start on American soil.

And this prompted one writer to comment that a handful of New Zealandbreds with assistance from Australian and South African-breds are developing a strike rate too far above average. The writer observed, perhaps with mock ferocity: “God dammit, we saw off the best of them, Phar Lap, way back in 1932, and we’ve successfully assimilated Noholme and Hawai so that no-one remembers where they came from; we’re not having anyone wake up to the fact that these breeding industries exist this late in the game.” The writer allowed that the Southern Hemisphere can be very pleasant at certain times of the year “providing you don’t get too near the South Pole.” But while he realised things were not all rosy in the economic gardens in the Southern Hemisphere this latest form of aid in the shape of Tangent’s win “was going a bit far.”

Tangent, winner of five races from nine starts as a two-year-old from Bill Winder’s stable last season, won the Monrovia handicap at Santa Anita, going out as favourite after a second and a win from two allowance runs beforehand. She gave weight to all but one of her nine opponents and gave age away to the entire field. It was a race for four-year-olds and up, but Tangent, of course, is a three-year-old by Southern Hemisphere time. Tangent recorded four successive wins in New Zealand last autumn, one of those wins being in the Matamata Breeders’ Stakes. Then after a second to Nordic Seal in the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes she

triumphed in the Great Northern Champagne Stakes.

Tangent’s conqueror in the Awapuni race was also secured for racing in the United States at about the

same time, but he, along with Our Flight have yet to race in that country. Tangent a daughter of Last Tango and the Idomeneo mare, Baby Bear, carried 56kg or 4.5 kg more than her conqueror in the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes. Tangent’s sire, Last Tango, was bred in Ireland and brought to New Zealand after winning five races including the 6f Ayr Gold Cup as a five-year-old. Baby Bear won only once for her breeder, Mr Jack Macky, but this family abound in good winners, and counts the famous Defaulter as one of its most distinguished representatives.