Montini Royal, latest juvenile star

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 36

Montini Royal, latest juvenile star

By

JEFF SCOTT

Both the sire and dam of Canterbury’s latest juvenile pacing find, Montini Royal, have died within the last 12 months. Just as the gelding’s sire, Montini Bromac, was gaining some prominence from limited opportunities, the Timely Knight rig developed cancer and his only testicle was removed last year. On veterinary advice, the 13-year-old son of Timely Knight was humanely destroyed within a few days of his two-year-old son, Small Wonder, winning the Group Two Morrinsville Juvenile Stakes last September.

“It was very sad to lose him,” said Bob McArdle, who owned Montini Bro-

mac with his wife, Denese.

“Every other horse I’ve had had been a business proposition but there was always a fair amount of sentiment attached to Monty,” he said of the pacer from the same family as the dual InterDominion champion, Hondo Grattan (58 wins). "His dam, Roseland Beauty, was the first horse I sent to North America to break 2:00 back in 1967, but she broke down and I bought her back and bred her with Timely Knight (the ill-fated sire of New Zealand Cup winners Armalight and Camelot) to get Montini Bromac;” Racing at two and three years in New Zealand against the likes of Lord Module, Haughty Romeo

and Roydon Scott, Montini Bromac started 16 times for eight wins and five placings. He recorded a hat-trick of wins leading up to the Great Northern Derby for trainer Reg Curtin but kicked a rail and missed that event before being exported to North America where he won six times, including one at the Meadowlands.

“He was a very good horse and had a lot to do with getting mares to Nevele R. in those days,” said Mr McArdle, a coproprietor of the Nevele R. Stud at Prebbleton.

Taking a 1:59.2 record in North America, Montini Bromac was returned to New Zealand for stud duties and left crops of 27, 50 and 53 in his first three seasons at the Kia

Ora Stud at Sheffield. This season, with his oldest crop now four, he has left 10 individual winners of 13 races including Small Wonder, Twilight Time, Even Time, Mark Bromac, Just Hope, As Always, Montini Lopez (two), Rittson's Pride, Beryl Bromac (2:00.1 three-year-old filly) and Montini Royal, now the winner of his last three on end.

Other starters by him at Auckland last Saturday included Ned Bromac, third in a maiden two-year-old pace, Dreamy Bromac, an unlucky fourth against the juvenile fillies, and Montini Lopez, fourth in the Curtins Farm Ladyship Stakes. He has also left three Australian winners this season, Youumie Bromac,

Nicole and Montini McArdle.

Montini Royal’s dam, the Lordship mare Idle Maid, was humanely destroyed last spring, aged 11.

“She reared her foal by Flying Down (a son of B.G.’s Bunny) but had a haemorrhage and we had to put her down,” said her owner, Peter Yeatman. “I sent her to Montini Bromac on the advice of Reg Curtin, who I’ve been great mates with for years. Whenever I saw him he’d keep asking me whether I had sent a mare to the horse and eventually I did.” Idle Maid was a halfsister to the useful pacers, Paul’s Express (1:56.8) and Drifted In (2:00.6), while her grand-dam,

Keff, won five races including a triple dead-heat at Westport in December, 1957.

Keff was a half-sister to other useful winners in Kuhla (five wins including two in a day at Hutt Park in 1954), Kola (three wins) and Solemn (seven wins). Their dam, Castleton Maid, was by Winthrop from another mare called Idle Maid, by Re de Oro from a mare (unnamed) by Sungod. Yeatman also expects Montini Royal to race well over the mobile 2400 m of the $25,000 New Zealand Sapling Stakes on Saturday week. “He’s improving all the time and stays well. Others from the family have been good stayers too,” he said.