Cup winner bred, reared at Parnassus

Press, 22 October 1984, Page 22

Cup winner bred, reared at Parnassus

By

J. J. Boyle

Move over Wyllie and Deans: make room for another famous North Canterbury product. Affinity, the winner of the rich Caulfield Cup on Saturday, was bred and reared at Parnassus by Mrs Marie Rutherford and her son, Richard, and is rugged, splendid material for his bid to complete Australia’s most famous double in the Melbourne Cup two weeks tomorrow. Affinity was selected out of the 1981 Trentham catalogue by the long-experi-enced Melbourne trainer, Jim Monloney, acting for the A.N.Z. Bloodstock syndicate, and cost no more than $14,000 or about $7OOO below the average for that year’s sale. “They were looking for a

Melbourne Cup horse, and I suppose you could say, they have got half way there,” Richard Rutherford said yesterday. Mr Rutherford said he regarded the Caulfield Cup result as a triumph for the whole South Island as well as a spectacular result for the Rutherford-owned Beltana Stud. “Affinity first and the Otago-bred Alibhai a very good fourth, so much for that Sydney trainer who went into print the other day saying that the South Island does not rate.” The Rutherfords bred Affinity (by Zamazaan) from Geraniums Red, a daughter of the distinguished Brigadier Gerard they bought as an out-of-trainihg three-year-old filly in England. Geraniums Red’s dam

Celina (by Crepello) won the Irish Guinness Oaks, the next dam Rose of Medina (by Never Say Die) won up to a mile and a half and was third in the Oaks, and the family has also produced an Irish St Leger winner in Ommeyad. Affinity was Geraniums Red’s second foal. The first foal, by Red Lord, won from Tommy Smith’s Sydney stable. Last year Geraniums Red foaled a filly to Beaufort Sea and this youngster will be one of three yearlings from Beltana Stud to be offered at Trentham next January.

Geraniums Red was not covered last spring because the Beanfort Sea filly was a late foal, but her ■ consort this year is the champion stallion, Noble Bijou.