Alpha Sofie
Dan Alford is in the food business, specifically a Melbourne factory that bakes treats like mudcakes, biscuits, jam tarts and snowballs.
It can’t be a bad place to work. At the very least, it smells better than a stable.
What the 68-year-old also likes to do is cook up pedigrees, and he has a particularly sweet one manifesting on the tracks of Melbourne this spring in the form of Alpha Sofie (Capitalist).
The three-year-old filly was bred by Alford, his wife Linda and their long-term friend and associate Mary Anne Holland. The trio stayed in when Alpha Sofie was sold to Brisbane owner Tosh Murphy at Inglis Classic last year, for $150,000.
Starting off with Deagon-based trainer Jason Edwards, she won her second and third starts at Eagle Farm in the winter before a transfer south to Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman, for whom she won her first start last Saturday in Moonee Valley’s Atlantic Jewel Stakes (Listed, 1200m).
Alford has been knocking around with shares in horses since 2006, but he “got serious” about it in 2015, with brilliant results.
He fancied Written Tycoon (Iglesia) might make it as a sire and so the Alfords bought a share in Winning Rupert, who rewarded them with three stakes wins and a stallion deal, initially to Newgate Farm.
Better still, the Alfords and Holland bought into another one named Capitalist, who brought them a Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) and a (far more successful) stud deal, also at Newgate.
From early on, Dan Alford pored over pedigrees seeking nuggets of gold, or at least signs of alchemy, often looking over the shoulder of a keen mare buyer in his family.
“When I was in my early 20s my brother-in-law would buy a mare from somebody that he’d know and breed from it,” Alford tells It’s In The Blood.
“He didn’t have much success. I’d look at the pedigrees, and I’d suggest this cross over this cross would work. He’d go, ‘Nah the bloke down the pub reckons …’”
Eventually, Alford grew comfortable enough from letting the people eat cake that he could afford to start breeding himself.
Again, he “mucked around with a few $500 mares” for a while but after the success of Capitalist and Winning Rupert, he took a more concerted approach. That’s resulted in him breeding a stakes winner from his first serious play.
In 2021, with Dan in the driver’s seat, the Alfords and Holland paid $150,000 for off-the-track mare Sofie’s Gold Class (Hard Spun). For a first mating they put her to Capitalist, in whom they’d retained a share for his stud career, and the result is Alpha Sofie.
It seems simple, but there was more to this recipe than merely supporting their own stallion.
Sofie’s Gold Class was an interesting case. She was essentially pinhooked – but from one yearling sale to another. She was bought at Magic Millions Adelaide for just $18,000, then – perhaps for being too lanky and unprecocious – was flipped at the Magic Millions National sale three months later for $35,000.
She’d have 23 starts for seven wins – four of those in Brisbane city class.
But all wasn’t what met the eye, partly because a clod of mud had met hers.
“First of all, when they bought her she kicked out and broke the tip of her pedal bone,” Alford said. “They had to put her in the paddock as a two-year-old and let her recover from that.”
The large and scopey filly in fact wouldn’t race until she was four. Eventually, she won three of her first six starts, from 1400 metres to 1600 metres, before being tried over middle distances.
“Because she was big and leggy, they tried her over trips like 2000 metres and 2200 metres. She failed at that, and they realised she was a run-on sprinter,” Alford said of Sofie’s Gold Class, who eventually won three on a bounce in 2020, from 1200 metres to 1350 metres.
“After those three wins, she was about to go to a stakes race, but she copped a clod of mud in her eye, got an eye infection, and again had to be put out.”
Sofie’s Gold Class never won again, but in her third try among four at Listed class, she cracked it for some black type – albeit somewhat faint – with a third in the Sunshine Coast Cup (Listed, 1400m) in January, 2021.
While a multiple city winner with black type makes appeal at a broodmare sale, there was a good deal more thought behind the purchase than racetrack performance, as Alford explains.
“After Capitalist had had probably three crops, I spoke to Jackson Biers,” Alford said.
Biers had worked closely with Capitalist, first at Peter Snowden’s stable, then as Newgate’s assistant stud manager.
“I said, ‘You’re in the breeding barn – what are you seeing in regard to the stallion?’” Alford said of Capitalist, who by official accounts stands 16.0 hands in his shoes.
“He recommended I buy a big, scopey, long-legged mare for Capitalist, because he throws a really good topline, but if you’ve got no leg and no stretch, he’s not going to throw leg and stretch.”
So Alford went to the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale of 2021 looking for type. He’d first made a short-list of three pedigrees he felt would go well with Capitalist, and it was Sofie’s Gold Class who best fitted the bill on physicality.
“You can have a mare who’s as small as a dog and she’ll throw a very small filly and you think, ‘Oh my god the horse is tiny!’, and you think ‘Well you sent the mare to a small stallion’,” Alford said.
Capitalist isn’t the biggest stallion, Alford notes, but has many alluring attributes such as his “huge arsenal and his huge girth”.
The consistent 12-year-old makes several compelling arguments, with 377 winners at 64 per cent of runners, 26 stakes winners including two at the elite level, and having just finished his fourth and fifth seasons with runners in ninth place on the general sires’ table.
That’s why Newgate moved to make him what its boss Henry Field calls “a no-brainer” choice for breeders this year by dropping his service fee from $66,000 to $44,000 (inc GST).
Sophie’s Gold Class also came with a star second dam in Victory Vein (Mr Henrysee). Australia’s Champion 2YO of 2002, she won Randwick’s elite two-year-old double of the Sires’ Produce (Gr 1, 1400m) and Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) in 2002, coming agonisingly close to landing the Triple Crown after a 0.2 length second in Calaway Gal’s (Clang) Golden Slipper.
After winning seven more stakes races, she went to stud. Two of her daughters produced Group winners, and now a granddaughter has a stakes winner.
For good measure, Sophie’s Gold Class’s fifth dam Ambasssadress (Idomeneo) produced two stakes winners.
These credentials were strong reassurance alongside Alford’s belief he’d bought the right shape of mare for Capitalist.
“You really have to match type first, then work on the pedigree and look at the nicks,” Alford said.
On that last score, Capitalist over Sofie’s Gold Class comes up singing, with Alpha Sofie’s pedigree a lacework of several intricate repetitions.
She has double Danehill (Danzig). That can put a breeder off, but at least this example is statistically the best way of the three – gender balanced.
And while double Danehill has been anathema to some, regular readers might have twigged that it’s showing up in many recent stakes winners featured in this column. Perhaps time, pushing it deeper into pedigrees, is diluting any negative impacts.
In this case Danehill is at 4f x 4m, through Capitalist’s second dam Compulsion, and Sofie’s Gold Class’s damsire Redoute’s Choice.
“They used to be breeding double Danehill at two-by-three and all that. It was ridiculous,” Alford said. “At four-by-five, or four-four it’s not so bad, and if you can sex-balance it, all the better.”
Having double Danehill of course brings a double of his sire Danzig (Northern Dancer), but in another piece of reinforcement Danzig is there two more times, for 5f, 5m x 3m, 5m in total. The first and third of those are Angel Fever, dam of Fushaici Pegasus (Mr Prospector), and Alpha Sofie’s damsire Hard Spun, who’s gone fairly in the top 25 of the US broodmare sires’ charts in most of the past five years.
At 4m x 5m is the great Mr Prospector (Raise A Native), a duplication which has, again, shown up in many class runners featured here. He’s the sire of Capitalist’s damsire Fusaichi Pegasus, and Victory Vein’s grandsire.
But what perhaps excited Alford the most was this mating would bring a doubling of the great American blue hen Best In Show (Traffic Judge), at 7f x 7f.
She comes in strong on the top line as the dam of Sex Appeal (Buckpasser), who’s at the start of the sireline that runs Try My Best – Last Tycoon – Iglesia – Written Tycoon – Capitalist.
In the bottom half, Best In Show is the dam of Show Lady (Sir Ivor), the third dam of Sofie’s Gold Class’s damsire, the great Redoute’s Choice.
“Best In Show was definitely in my mind,” Alford said. “When I saw her duplicated I was very keen.”
Deeper in, the whole is underpinned by the great Nearco (Pharos), with 21 appearances, 12 from Mumtaz Begum (Blenheim) and eight from that other great blue hen Natalma (Native Dancer).
Alpha Sofie is also powered by some strong Australian lines. Star Kingdom (Stardust) is there six times in generations seven through nine, via one daughter in Fairy Dream and three different sons in Biscay (thrice), Noholme and Kaoru Star.
The last of those, Alford reveals, brings up a terrific question for your next stallion-based trivia night.
“What do Stratum, Sebring, Shamus Award, Capitalist and Dundeel all have?” he asks.
The answer is Kaoru Star’s most famous son Luskin Star close up in their female line. He’s the damsire of Stratum (Redoute’s Choice), the second damsire of Sebring (More Than Ready) and Shamus Award (Snitzel), Capitalist’s third damsire, and the sire of Dundeel’s (High Chaparral) second damsire.
“Star Kingdom sirelines might have died out, but most of the good sires have him in their pedigrees,” Alford said, adding Zoustar (Northern Meteor), Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), Written Tycoon, I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) and Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) to that list, to name a few.
After Alpha Sofie was born, Alford sent Sofie’s Gold Class to another Newgate stallion he’d part-owned in Tiger Of Malay (Extreme Choice), again effecting a 7f x 7f duplication of Best In Show. The resultant colt, Hidden Tiger, is a two-year-old in training with New Zealand’s Lisa Latta.
Sofie’s Gold Class then had a filly by Satono Aladdin (Deep Impact) who Alford hopes to sell at next year’s Inglis Easter sale.
Rich Hill Stud’s Japanese shuttler Satono Aladdin, incidentally, is building a stunning – and somewhat bizarre – record. In New Zealand he has eight stakes winners from 68 runners at 11.7 per cent. In Australia, it’s four from 28 at 14.2 per cent. In his home country of Japan it’s nought from 269 – at zero per cent.
Back in the Hunter Valley, Sofie’s Gold Class missed to Capitalist last year, but will return to that stallion this spring.