Revelare
There’s a little twist of irony for Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) tragics Colleen and Kevin Bamford as the well known owner-breeders head towards this year’s edition of Australia’s greatest race.
Back in 2000, the Victorian couple took the bold step of bringing out English horse Far Cry (Pharly) to target the Cup – one of the very early examples of European stayers being imported to Australia, in an idea that would catch on in no uncertain fashion.
Far Cry ran in the Cup, well fancied at $9, but jarred up on a good 3 and finished second-last, as Mike Moroney’s Brew (Sir Tristram) triumphed.
A trickle of European stayers became a torrent which became a deluge. The Bamfords reaped success from it too, co-owning French stallion Americain (Dynaformer) for his 2010 Cup victory and into his stud career.
They also part-owned English raider Jardine’s Lookout (Fourstars Allstar), who ran third in Makybe Diva’s (Desert King) first Cup in 2003, a year after running seventh.
But now, a quarter of a century after Far Cry, the Bamfords are lining up for the Cup with a stayer who’s every inch Australian born and bred.
They bred Revelare (So You Think) themselves, and after booking his ticket in becoming a stakes winner in last Saturday’s Archer Stakes (Gr 3, 2500m) – his eighth win in 11 starts – he’s an $11 chance for the big one.
For all of the European stayers dotting the landscape, and the visitors from the same part of the world who come to raid the race, Australians haven’t been doing too badly in the Cup. One won it last year in Knight’s Choice (Extreme Choice), and another in 2019 in Vow And Declare (Declaration Of War).
But the significance of having an Australian-bred winner in the modern age would not be lost on the Bamfords.
“I’m extremely proud of it – this horse we’ve bred being in the Cup,” Colleen Bamford told It’s In The Blood from her farm at Doreen, on Melbourne’s outer northern fringe.
“We’ve had half a dozen or so Melbourne Cup runners, and we’ve won the Melbourne Cup, but this is different. I bred this horse, he was born on this farm – a hundred metres from where I’m sitting now. There won’t be many Australian-bred horses in the race, so for him to win it, it would remind people that it can be done.
“We were some of the groundbreakers in importing stayers here. But now it’s like we’ve come a complete circle.
“Revelare was born a hundred metres from where I’m sitting now. It’s a little bit surreal, but it’s very exciting.”
For full disclosure, it should probably be pointed out that while Revelare is Australian bred, only two of the 62 names in his first five generations carry the (AUS) suffix: the New Zealand-bred So You Think’s third dam Pak Bun Bay, and her sire Matinee Idol. But in this day and age, let’s not split hairs.
Colleen Bamford grew up in inner urban Fitzroy, but in a family steeped in racing, with a grandfather who was an SP bookie, and a father and uncles who’d gather around the wireless on a Saturday afternoon, if they weren’t at the track.
From early on Colleen was involved with horses, owning a pony in Fitzroy, later training gallopers in the 1970s, while also preparing pacers.
“The Melbourne Cup was just the race, always, from when I was a child,” she said. “The dream was, if you had a racehorse, it didn’t matter where it was racing, you just wanted to have a horse in the Melbourne Cup.
“I’ve always had a great fascination with the race. And now we’re in it again with Revelare. Somebody asked me if he can win. I’d like to think he can. He’s in with a light weight (51.5kg), and his jockey [Declan Bates] thinks he can win.”
The Bamfords were all too happy to stay in the ownership when Revelare went through their local neighbourhood sale – Inglis Premier – for $130,000, and happier still that the buyer was trainer Robert Hickmott.
He’d won two Cups with another first Tuesday obsessive, leviathan owner Lloyd Williams, via Europeans Almandin (Monsun) in 2016, and Green Moon (Montjeu) in 2012, and knows his way around stayers.
“He was a beautiful colt – big, but not overly big,” Bamford said. “But the thing is, Rob took his time with the horse. That’s what’s made him.
“He didn’t race until he was a late three-year-old, and that suited me. I wasn’t in a hurry. He had a great education – he just goes around with a bridle on, no special gear. He’s a lovely, big relaxed horse, and he hasn’t been cooked.”
Revelare didn’t debut until he was a June three-year-old, and scored second-up on the Ballarat synthetic over 1500 metres. Put away for more maturing, he returned for a second at Seymour before winning his next five, as a short-priced favourite each time, capped by back-to-back autumn wins at Flemington.
Brought back in, he scored second-up at Caulfield last month over 2000 metres, then handled his rise to 2500m for the Archer like a Cup horse, easing to the front at the 200 metres and coasting home by 0.4 lengths.
“One commentator said he looked like the 2500 metres was about his limit, but I don’t know about that,” Bamford said. “When he gets to the front he thinks ‘I’ve done my job now’; he’s such a relaxed animal. Will he run 3200 metres? I think he will.
“We don’t really know how good he is. I don’t believe we’ve tested him to his limits yet. We keep putting the bar up and he keeps reaching it.”
Breeding a Melbourne Cup winner was the dream, but breeding a stayer was the definite expectation when the Bamfords bought Revelare’s dam Reveal The Goddess (Zabeel) for $62,500, at the old Inglis Sydney Easter Broodmare sale in 2013.
Bred in New Zealand but raced in Australia, she’d only won a Bendigo maiden among six starts, though it was over 2400 metres, but her sire Zabeel (Sir Tristram) was of course a New Zealand staying byword, with three Melbourne Cup winners in Might And Power, Jezabeel and Efficient.
Reveal The Goddess’s female side was also stamina-rich. Her dam was Honor Babe (Honor Grades), New Zealand’s Champion Stayer of 2002-03 after taking the Sydney Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) among five wins that season.
The main aim in her purchase was to put Reveal The Goddess to the Bamford’s change to Bamfords’ own stallion, Americain. They did this for three of her first four matings, and to Puissance De Lune (Shamardal) on the other, but to no great success. A fifth cover to more precocious blood, in the form of Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Vancouver (Medaglia D’Oro) also failed.
Finally in 2019, helped by advice from the trainer Robbie Laing and another friend and associate Mark Hoare, sadly both now departed, they went to the stallion the Bamford’s Americain had beaten into third as favourite in the 2010 Cup, So You Think (High Chaparral).
“Robbie was a pedigrees oracle,” Bamford said. “And Mark had also done some investigation into the breeding and he also said to put her to So You Think.”
Up close, which is where most of Colleen Bamford’s attention is focused, putting So You Think over a Zabeel mare enacted some breeding gold.
Zabeel is easily So You Think’s best nick (of more than 11 runners), with 29 winners from 42 starters including seven black type victors at 16.6 per cent, with its best product being triple Group 1 winner Think It Over.
Just as good is So You Think’s sire High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells) over Zabeel mares, with 35 winners – eight in black type – from 49 runners.. The best of them is Dundeel, who along with So You Think and Toronado is one of three High Chaparral sons currently in the top nine on the Australian general sires’ table.
“I’ve always loved So You Think as a stallion, and the High Chaparral over Zabeel mares has been a great cross,” Bamford said.
A little further back, Revelare’s pedigree brings some intrigue through two pieces of fifth generation inbreeding.
Influential US mare Special (Forli) is gender balanced through her two most famous offspring – Fairy Bridge (Bold Reason), dam of So You Think’s grandsire Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer), and Nureyev (Northern Dancer), Zabeel’s damsire.
And US stallion Round Table (Princequillo) is there through two daughters, though a little tucked away. Dancealot is the dam of So You Think’s damsire Tights (Nijinsky), and Isolt is the dam of the mighty Sir Tristram (Sir Ivor), Zabeel’s sire.
Further back, Revelare may draw some strength from duplications of two key mares from early last century: Plucky Liege (Spearmint) is at 9m x 9m, 9m through three of her four famous sons in Bull Dog (Teddy), Admiral Drake (Craig En Eran) and Sir Gallahad (Teddy); and La Troienne (Teddy) is at 9m x 9f.
And the influential mare underpinning the whole is Selene (Chaucer), who makes 12 appearances, nine from her star son Hyperion (Gainsborough), two from another son Pharamond (Phalaris), and one through All Moonshine (Bobsleigh), Sir Tristram’s third dam.
Nearco (Pharos) is probably the most influential stallion across the older base of the pedigree, with 14 mentions from generations six to nine, while Gainsborough (Bayardo) is the most represented sire of the first nine columns, mostly through Hyperion but also through two other sons and two daughters.