NURSERY OF STARS
A host of exciting first-season sires are represented in the Inglis-backed Randwick race
Tony McEvoy is confident promising colt Blue Stratum (Blue Point) can open his highly-rated sire’s Australian account while checking the golden starts of two other first-season stallions – Tassort (Brazen Beau) and Exceedance (Exceed And Excel) – in today’s Inglis Nursery (RL, 1000m) at Randwick.
Blue Stratum is set to start favourite in the $500,000 second leg of the lucrative Inglis race series as he strives for an overdue smooth day as a racehorse.
First Light Racing’s $130,000 Premier sale purchase was entered for the Inglis Banner (RL, 1000m) on Cox Plate day, but despite impressive jump-out form which earned him race-eve favouritism he was an unused emergency, a situation McEvoy blamed partly on naming delays precluding official barrier trials.
Blue Stratum then debuted in the Maribyrnong Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) at Flemington on Melbourne Cup day but after appearing the winner at the 200 metres, started to wander about the straight and was beaten a neck by stablemate Dublin Down (Exceedance).
But McEvoy said the Yulong-bred colt had arrived in Sydney in fine order yesterday after an overnight stop in Albury and – provided he now copes with clockwise racing and a forecast heatwave of 39 degrees – was ready to fulfil his promise.
“He seems bright and happy, and he’s arrived into Sydney well,” McEvoy, who trains the youngster in partnership with his son Calvin, told ANZ Bloodstock News. “He’s worked clockwise at Ballarat, on the course proper and with a rail to follow, every day since his debut, and he’s handled that well, although obviously not at race pace.
“He threw the race away at Flemington. He was beaten by a good horse, but his rider Damian Lane said he had him beaten and he threw it away by running about. That’s what straight racing can do.
“This race is a bit of a lottery, with a lot of first-starters, but I know if our colt turns up at his best, he’ll be very hard to beat,” he said of the colt, who’ll jump from gate seven for Chad Schofield.
Blue Stratum, who bookmakers had as $3.70 favourite last night, will be out to become the first Australian winner for Darley Victoria’s $44,000 shuttler Blue Point (Shamardal).
Much has been expected of the four-time Group 1-winning sprinter in his first season of runners. The nine-year-old was leading debutant sire by averages at the Gold Coast and Easter yearling sales, and his 57 yearlings sold this year averaged $187,000.
He’s a runaway leader of Britain’s first season sires table and is set to also take its two-year-old crown, with 36 individual winners from 82 runners. His three northern hemisphere stakes winners include two at the top level, on either side of the Atlantic, in Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (Gr 1, 5f) hero Big Evs, and Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere (Gr 1, 1400m) victor Rosallion.
In Australia, however, Blue Point has so far had no winners from six runners and nine starts, with Blue Stratum’s Maribyrnong Plate second his highlight.
By contrast, two sires carrying perhaps more humble expectations will seek more early success in the Nursery, for which both hold a strong hand.
Vinery Stud’s Exceedance (Exceed And Excel) had 47 yearlings sold this year averaging $103,000, and he’s so far had two Australian runners for two winners, chief amongst them that Cup day hero Dublin Down.
And today he has a sparkling chance of glory in Jupiter Hills. The highest-priced starter in the 13-strong field – purchased by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott in association with Kestrel Thoroughbreds for $380,000 at the Inglis Easter sale – she was last night a $4.20 second-elect after two barrier trial seconds, as she seeks to continue her stable’s strong pre-Christmas two-year-old form.
“It’s very exciting for Exceedance,” Vinery’s bloodstock manager Adam White said. “His first runner was a Group 3 winner down the Flemington straight, and to get this race would be huge.
“He was a little bit quiet before this spring, going into his fourth season at stud, but after Dublin Down’s win he got an influx of mares. Hopefully we can get two wins in the Nursery in a row,” he said, referring to last year’s victory of Saltaire, the daughter of Vinery sire Star Turn (Star Witness) sold from the stud’s draft at Inglis Classic.
The seven-year-old Exceedance at least came off a regular stallion-maker conveyer belt by winning the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m). Tassort (Brazen Beau) has traversed a road less taken by sires, but his initial stud progress has him earmarked for the overachiever-of-the-year title.
The former Godolphin runner was restricted to only two starts before injury intervened, winning Rosehill’s prestigious Golden Gift (1100m) by almost five and a half lengths, before a second in the Silver Slipper Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m).
Yet the team at Emirates Park saw enough to target him as a stallion prospect, entering into a partnership to stand him at Newgate Farm. And after kicking off at just $11,000, and with his 44 yearlings averaging a modest $42,400 this year, he’s unfurled a remarkable beginning.
His first runner was Emirates Park’s Manaal, who landed Randwick’s Gimcrack Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m). His next was Astapor up north, who has won two-from-two – by nearly five lengths at Rockhampton and three lengths at Doomben. His third was in the west in Onemoretwomany, a gelding who’s won two from two in Perth.
Tassort is equal-top amongst Australia’s first-season sires with Alabama Express, going by their identical read-outs of three individual winners from six runners, with five wins. The Yulong stallion is top by earnings, and heads the two-year-old table, on which Tassort is fourth.
Today, Tassort has a three-pronged assault on the Inglis Nursery, via John Sargent’s debutant Tokyo Lady ($10), the Ciaron Maher and David Eustace-trained second-start colt Sacred Fort ($18), and Gary Portelli’s debutant filly Cashaway Gold ($23).
Tokyo Lady lines up off an impressive long-head win over Cashaway Gold in a 740-metre Warwick Farm barrier trial on November 30, but has to overcome gate ten under Zac Lloyd.
“I’m very happy with her,” Sargent told ANZ Bloodstock News. “She’s coming along good, right on top of her game, she’ll need a bit of luck from that draw, but she’s got a lot of early speed, so hopefully she’ll get up and across them.
“She was a good type at the sales who just stood out with a beautiful loose walk, and so far she’s living up to that.”
While Tokyo Lady was cheap buying at $50,000 at Inglis Classic, for Tricolours Racing in association with Sargent, Cashaway Gold makes her look precious, having been bought by relatively new syndicators Capri Racing for just $4,500 at last year’s Inglis Australian Weanling Sale.
“She looks alright, and looked good in her trial, although she’s a big girl who might take benefit from this run,” Portelli said.
Sacred Fort also comes from humble beginnings – a $21,000 weanling buy pinhooked for just $35,000 at the Premier sale. He debuted with a length and a quarter third over 900 metres at Newcastle behind one of today’s highly-fancied rivals, Deep Joy (Deep Field, $5).
While Deep Field (Northern Meteor) was retired by Newgate last year amid dwindling fertility, his old studmate Tassort could be at the pointy end of the future for the burgeoning stud.
“It’s been unbelievable, really,” Newgate’s Henry Field said of Tassort’s start. “He’s been the busiest horse at Newgate this season. He’s been incredibly popular, especially after Manaal won the Gimcrack. We’ve had to turn away the best part of 100 mares for him in the second half of the season.
“He had 130 mares in his first crop off a $11,000 fee, and it wasn’t like he was breeding to the best 200 mares in the Hunter Valley. He did it the hard way, and he’s kicked off in awesome fashion.
“He’s a very fertile horse, he seems to be getting runners out of good mares, and lesser mares. He’s had the Gimcrack winner, the dominant two-year-old in Queensland and the dominant two-year-old in WA. It’s a hell of an achievement for the cheapest horse we’ve stood at Newgate, and the only non-stakes winner we’ve stood at Newgate.
“Full credit to Bryan Carlson and Nasser Lootah at Emirates Park for having the foresight to go after him, and we at Newgate were incredibly fortunate to get the call to partner in the horse.
“Having three horses in the Nursery is a fantastic achievement and shows he’s doing a great job. It’s still early days, but they can’t start much better.”
The Maher-Eustace stable also have a strong, three-pronged contingent, in Sacred Fort, Deep Joy and Odinson (Night Of Thunder, $4.50), the British-bred, Australian-born colt who fetched $320,000 at Easter and debuted with a third behind Dublin Down and Blue Stratum in the Maribyrnong Plate.
Only two of the runners are facing off for the Inglis pink bonus, open to horses put through an Inglis sale who are at least 75 per cent female owned: Beer Baron (Cosmic Force), a colt passed in at the Classic sale by breeder (and now trainer) Neil Osborne of Mane Lodge; and Nymphadora (Yes Yes Yes), a filly bought for just $30,000 at the same auction by young Hawkesbury-based trainer Steve O’Halloran.
Nymphadora is a $31 chance after debuting with a seventh of eight in the Max Lees Classic (900m) at Newcastle last month. Beer Baron is at $41 after running second in a Canberra barrier trial and third in another at Randwick. Whichever of them is first home will earn connections the $200,000 pink bonus, along with any prize–money, which is paid to tenth place.
The weather could be a factor in the comportment of the young field. ATC chief steward Steve Railton told ANZ Bloodstock News that Randwick was yesterday under level 1 hot weather measures – with level 2 being the highest. Those steps will include shorter than usual pre-race parades, sooner hose-downs after each event, and mist-fans in the tie-up stalls.