Breeders look closely at racetrack credentials

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 23

Breeders look closely at racetrack credentials

The increasing emphasis on race performance by horses selected for stud duties in the South Island is typified by the decision to import Antic Boy to stand at Broadfields Lodge near Templeton this season.

Antic Boy was a Group winner as a two-year-old in Ireland taking the Leopardstown Stakes and beating Bluebird, which was subsequently the champion three-year-old sprinter in Ireland and which now stands at stud at Colin Hayes’s Lindsay Park in Adelaide.

Tim Corcoran, a principal of Canterbury Stud Ltd, which brought Antic Boy here, firmly believes horses which have racetrack credentials to go with their breeding is an

essential these days and there is much in distant and recent history of breeding to back up the contention.

The disposition of breeders to patronise unraced horses has been increased greatly in the South Island by the success of Mellay and Noble Bijou at the White Robe Lodge Stud at Mosgiel.

Neither horse ever saw a racecourse, and Noble Bijou’s conformation was criticised by overseas experts, but both horses proved goldmines to their owners at stud. While it is true that not all of the most successful sires have been outstanding racehorses it is also true that few unraced horses make successful sires.

The reasons for that can be argued interminably. It could be for example that in more competitive environments overseas unraced stallions do not get the opportunities which could push them into the big time.

On the other hand horses which were not outstanding on the track, such as Sir Tristram, seem to be able to push their way to the forefront in any case by their sheer potency.

The success of Noble Bijou and Mellay has probably encouraged other studmasters to try well-bred but unproven

horses in the South Island, but results have been mixed.

A return to race performance as a criterion in stallion selection has become apparent as a result and is also a noticeable trend at North Island studs.

Antic Boy would seem a typical example of the trend, the first European Group winning two-year-old to stand in the South Island for many years. Antic Boy won the Leopardstown Stakes, over 1400 m, at his second start and had only one start the following season before a broken pedal bone brought his career to an end.

Ridden by this year’s leading rider in England, Pat Eddery, in his win, he looked likely also in that lone start at three, mounting a big run from well back to finish third to Seattle Dancer, a multiple group winner.

The obvious retort by critics to well performed horses like Antic Boy appearing in Canterbury is to look for pedigree flaws. Antic Boy’s pedigree is different, certainly, but probably all the more interesting for that. His sire, Nebos, was the second-best horse in Germany at two years, equal best at three years and Horse of the Year there at four and five years. Unlike some top horses in the smaller European

countries Nebos was tried against the best and was not disgraced finishing fifth, less than two lengths from the winner, Detroit, in the Arc de Triomphe.

Nebos is the best son of Caro in Europe and that is a plus as Caro has been a remarkably enduring success as a stallion in an age when fame can be fleeting for the top stud horse.

Caro topped the French sire list in 1977 and was then shipped to the United States. Last year he was still represented by top racehorses such as the Kentucky Derby winner, Winning Colors, and already he has made his mark this year with further stars in Group One events in Canada and the United States.

Antic Boy is from a traditional German family tracing to an English taproot and the performances of Star Way’s sire Star Appeal, Slip Anchor and Don, which all have similar backgrounds, has broken down some of the “consumer resistance” to maternal families based outside England, Ireland or France in recent years. Another highly performed racehorse standing at stud here is Barbery which stands at The Oaks stud in Rangiora. Barbery, foaled in 1981, won $U5544,027 and finished in the first two in 14 stakes races — an achievement few stallions

in this country could match.

Barbery showed remarkable speed in his races and was the fastest horse in the United States over 1700 m on the turf in 1986.

In the Group Two Bay Meadows Handicap in San Francisco Barbery led most of the way and ran a close third to Palace Music which is considered one c' the best credentialled horses to come to this country in recent years.

Barbery is by one of Vaguely Noble’s best racing sons, Empery, which won the English and Irish Derbies.

He won three Group One races from eight starts and his breeding was of South American origin. His dam Pamplona was the Peruvian champion and the first mare in that country to win the Triple Crown.

Just to prove Empery was no fluke she also left Pampered Miss which won the French One Thousand Guineas. There is an international flavour, too, about Barbery’s associate sire Fast Screen. A horse with a real speed pedigree, Fast Screen is by Silent Screen, the champion North American two-year-old of 1969. Even in those days you needed to have a fast horse to earn that title.