Paritai Stud optimistic for future success

Press, 27 July 1989, Page 38

Paritai Stud optimistic for future success

By

DAVID McCARTHY

Paritai Stud, the breeding agistment and farming complex which some critics suggest has an uphill battle to succeed, is there “for the long haul” according to one of the directors, Eric Thompson.

Mr Thompson is now based at Paritai and overseeing further developments in a property in which more than $1 million has already been invested.

The 300-hectare property has recently become the home of the classic winning sire, Melyno, from Gainesway Farm in Kentucky and has Musical Phantasy and Little Brown Jugs as associate sires this season.

In addition agistment and pre-training facilities are in an advanced stage of development turning Paritai into what its backers hope will one day be a thoroughbred showplace. Transferring the dream to reality is not an easy task and Eric Thompson acknowledges there have been problems, but that most of them have been overcome or are in the process of being so.

“I tell people we are here for the long haul and when that time is up we’ll still be here/’ he said of the property which was a sheep farm in a picturesque setting before Thompson and associates Reg Brown, Keith Miles and Michael and lan Silver decided Canterbury was the ideal place to establish a truly professional and commercial breeding complex. “The project had its beginnings in the Terrace

Bloodstock Partnership which was one of the first of its kind,” Mr Thompson recalled.

“We wanted to develop our own stock but when we investigated doing so in the Waikato the cost was prohibitive for the land alone. So we looked elsewhere and Amberley was an ideal spot.” The site was selected by Rod Fulton who is no longer associated with Paritai and the size and suitability of it is considered one of the keys to Paritai’s success. “There will be over 150-hectares of the property in oats, barley, lucerne and tic beans this year. The crops represent a substantial cash flow quite apart from the horses and yet the place is still self sufficient. Also we are grazing sheep commercially and that is another arrow to our bow,” Mr Thompson said.

For all that it is the horses on which the ultimate popularity of Paritai will depend.

Mr Thompson estimates over $300,000 has been spent on development of the breeding side of the venture in the form of fencing, landscaping, stallion and service barns and an administration building, in addition to the farm buildings which were already on the property. A woolshed has been converted to a barn for young horses being

educated and prepared for sales. Two of the three Paritai stallions have left Group One winners this season, but the one which hasn’t yet, Melyno, is likely to attract the most interest this spring. Melyno won the French Two Thousand Guineas and is one of the few European classic winners ever to stand in the Soutii Island. He is also a halfbrother to Pharly whose stock have won nearly £3 million and which has a top juvenile performer this season in France, Ecossais. Another half-brother, Comeran, was a leading first season sire in Australia.

Melyno stood with thirty four other stallions at Gainesway Farm to where he went after serving one season in France and he vied for patronage among horses like Blushing Groom, Lyphard, Riverman, Sharpen Up and Vaguely Noble at one of the most impressive studs in the world.

While he was not a big success there, two factors are much in his favour in his new home. One is that his stock are improving with age in the United States (they have won much more than SNZI million), and the other is that his best performers have been on turf. Like many European sires, his stock were not seen in

their best light on the dirt tracks which dominate American racing. “We expect him to do over 60 mares this season. We own the horse and have already syndicated some shares. We are confident he will make the grade,” said Mr Thompson of the son of Nonoalco, a brilliant son of Northern Dancer’s sire, Nearctic.

Musical Phantasy is expected to be bred with at least forty mares. Hidden Rhythm’s wins in the Queensland Derby (Gl) and the Grand Prix Stakes (G2) have boosted Musical Phantasy’s siring career.

Little Brown Jug is the third horse and his stud fee has been reduced to $2750 by Paritai directors in the hope that he will get the support he deserves. Little Brown Jug is the sire of Magdelaine which won five of six races in. America at one stage last year including the SUSIOO,OOO Matchmaker Stakes (G2) when she became the first New Zealand horse to win a major American race for more than five years. Her sister, Stapleton Lass, won the Ausralian Oaks (Gl) in Adelaide last February.

“LBJ,” once the toast of Canterbury racing, the “Horse of the Year” during 1979-80 and still a horse with presence, has left three individual Group winners in the last

twelve months though he had virtually hatfulls of foals from the moderate patronage he received in the north. “Interest in him is a little bit slower than the others. But there’s no reason for it to be,” Mr Thompson said.

Paritai is anxious to build up a steady clientele of the sort which makes established Canterbury studs like Riccarton and Inglewood the envy of any newcomer to the industry. "We’ve got the horses, the staff, the facilities and the environment. We reckon we can do it” is Eric Thompson’s optimistic view. Whether or not Paritai becomes the breeding force it wants to be hinges on several factors and fortune is one of them. But should the unthinkable happen and it fails, it won’t be the only loser. The Canterbury breeding industry, anxious to establish and maintain interest and financial viability in the development of thoroughbred horses, will lose something too and there is a good deal of good will for Paritai even among those who have harboured reservations about aspects of the enterprise.

Eric Thompson has no doubts. Short haul or long haul it is just the same to him and his partners. Just as long as one day it all comes together.