Gangsta Granny
That wily old desert fox Stuart Ramsey has been at it again, breeding another stakes-winning mare with a pedigree that sounds as Australian as he does.
Gangsta Granny (Written Tycoon) took Saturday’s The Nivison (Gr 3, 1200m), breaking through for a deserved black-type win after a second and a third in a Group 3 and a Group 2 in her previous two runs.
Speaking of breeding and genetics, it was a successful – almost huge – weekend for the Ramsey family’s line of breeders. Twenty minutes after Gangsta Granny’s win, Planet Red (Admire Mars) – a horse bred by Ramsey’s son John, who trains at Scone – ran a superb second in the Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
Ramsey Snr, the beef baron who’s as good at creating racehorses as bulls and cows, was on Wednesday herding some loose cattle on his vast property midway between Charleville and Birdsville – in 42 degree heat, and as a rising 73-year-old.
“Not on foot, mind you. I’m not silly. I’m in me air-conditioned ute,” said Ramsey, who was 80km from the homestead, though still on his farm.
“You should see where I am now,” the old bushie told It’s In The Blood via satellite phone. “I’m out here in the desert. It’s flat and dusty and hot as buggery. If you could see where I am, you’d think I’m bloody mad. Or madder.”
Well recognisable at sales as the square-set little bloke in the braces, Ramsey stopped to mop his brow and tell us how Gangsta Granny came about.
The question we all want to know first, of course, is whether he still wears his braces in the outback, or are they just for show at yearling sales in the big smoke?
“No, I’ve still got ‘em on,” he declared. “I lost a bit of weight actually, so I had to cut ‘em down a bit. Then me missus had to find a different pair of pants for me to wear. They go alright. Haven’t worn ‘em in 30 years, but they still go alright.”
Far removed from the heat and dust of the outback, Ramsey has the craft and wherewithal to breed many an important winner amidst the gilded halls of big city racetracks. Horses such as last year’s TJ Smith Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) queen Chain Of Lightning, a four-time black-type victor borne of such an obscure sire as Fighting Sun (Northern Meteor), and who’s in fact that stallion’s only Group winner.
Ramsey bred her and raced her with his old mate and fellow bushie Peter Moody, watching her win $2.7 million and selling her to Yulong as a broodmare for another $2.5m.
The veteran owner of the Hunter Valley’s Turangga Stud has a canny knowledge of bloodlines which belies one or two softer patches in the memory banks, which can creep into one’s eighth decade among all those horses.
Asked for one particular detail he says, “Yeah that could be right, I wouldn’t know – me brain’s not good enough. I’m flat out remembering what I had for breakfast.”
And he’s not exactly boastful when asked how many stakes winners he’s bred.
“How would I know?” he laughs, as if we shouldn’t have been so silly. “I do try all the time though. Every mating I try.”
Ramsey might prefer to look ahead, which is easier after all, for in the same breath he says: “I’ll tell ya what though, I had a winner at Armidale yesterday [Tuesday] who’s a stakes horse.
“It’s taken me four years to get him going. I bought him inside a Shamardal mare for $11,000 in New Zealand, and I can tell you now he’s a stakes horse.”
For black bookers, that’s Concoction (Rageese), and he’s won two from three for Armidale trainer Stirling Osland.
“And I’ve got another one with Moody called Call Me Later,” he says. “We don’t want to run her too much – she’s too good. It’s taken me almost 30 years to breed her. I claimed a mare in America and sent her to Devil’s Bag to produce the mare.”
That mare was claimed in 2001, and three mares down the line, Ramsey had Bright Rubick (Rubick), who’s now the dam of the yet-to-race Call Me Later (Too Darn Hot).
Chain Of Lightning, Ramsey says, took 20 years to breed. Her pedigree packs a punch with several outstanding mares repeated in La Troienne, Lalun, Plucky Liege, Thong and Fairy Bridge. She also has some Australian reinforcement, with Bletchingly (Biscay) doubled up at 5m x 4m.
Ramsey loves playing around with inbreeding, which we see in colonial spadefuls in Gangsta Granny.
Asked if there were similarities in breeding horses and cattle, he says: “Livestock’s the same nomatter what you’re breeding. All these dickheads don’t want to inbreed to the good ones, but that’s the only way to breed them.
“It goes for everything – dogs, pigs, chooks. What do you think nature is?
“The worst thing that’s ever happened to breeding horses is better transport. You’ve only got to look at New Zealand; they’ve got a small genetic pool, the same as Ireland and France and those places, and see how many good horses they breed.
“We [Australia] bring in the foreign genetics, and it just doesn’t work. Well, it is now because you’ve got enough of it. But High Chaparral, for example, was very lucky he went to New Zealand and ran into a lot of mares he clicked with there, so he started to work.”
Gangsta Granny is a well-related four-year-old, with her second dam Marrego (Marscay) being the dam of Eremein (Timber Country), her second foal. Trained by Allan Denham, the gelding won seven stakes races – five of them Group 1s – most memorably in a four-year-old autumn of 2006 that brought him the elite treble of the Ranvet Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m), The BMW (Gr 1, 2400m) and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m).
Ramsey bought Marrego 12 years after she’d had Eremein, for just $16,000. Her fifth foal Gliding (Flying Spur) had won a Listed race in Melbourne by then, but Marrego would still receive another boost when another daughter, Peace Force (Bernardini), won one Group 3 and placed in three more.
However, Ramsey would only breed one horse out of the ageing Marrego in six attempts. That was Gangsta Granny’s dam, Miss Hawaii (Manhattan Rain) – one hit in a string of misses – and she was helped by some old country cunning.
“I used a trick I learned when I was seven-year-old,” says Ramsey, in the bush vernacular that often eschews plurals. “To get mares pregnant, we’d ride ‘em up to the stallion and get ‘em all hot and sweaty. Then they’d get in-foal straight away because they’re all hot and sweaty, see?
“With Marrego, I led her up to Arrowfield on the side of a buggy to get her served, so she was all sweaty when she got there: straight into the mating barn with Manhattan Rain, ready to go, and bingo.
“After that it didn’t happen because I didn’t have the time or something. But they’re good families, those Marscay mares. They’re terrific.”
When you look at the in-breeding at play in Gangsta Granny, and the pedigree overall, you could almost guess it’s a Ramsey mating.
There are only two names in the first three generations that don’t have the (AUS) suffix, and they’re sire Written Tycoon’s Irish-bred grandsire Last Tycoon (Try My Best) and his French-bred damsire Kenmare (Kalamoun).
Ramsey may have had Written Tycoon in mind when he bought Marrego, for they share two influential Australian stallions.
Putting Marrego’s daughter Miss Hawaii to Written Tycoon has given Gangsta Granny a 4f x 3f of 1982 Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Marscay (Biscay), in good places via the dam of Written Tycoon’s sire Iglesia (Last Tycoon), and Marrego, Gangsta Granny’s second dam.
And the mating also affects a 4f x 4f of the great Vain (Wilkes), coming in strong as Written Tycoon’s second damsire, and Gangsta Granny’s third damsire.
“It was the Vain and Marscay crosses that led me to go to Written Tycoon,” Ramsey says.
Of course if you go back further, Marscay, like Bletchingly before him, was by Biscay who was by the breed-shaping Star Kingdom. While that great British import’s sirelines have largely died out, having his offspring – particularly the sons – sprinkled in a pedigree warms Ramsey’s heart.
He loves combining two or more of Star Kingdom’s three exceptional full-brother sons, Biscay, Star Of Heaven and Tattenham. He couldn’t attain that in the case of Gangsta Granny, but does have Star Kingdom five times through two sons and a daughter at 6m, 6m, 8f x 7m, 5m, via Biscay, Noholme and Fairy Dream, and with Biscay twice more in the bottom half.
“You can’t have too much of Star Kingdom. He only had 40 foals a year and he’s still influential,” Ramsey says. “He and Wilkes ruled the world.”
So it’s also good, then, that French import Wilkes is there three times, at 7m, 5m x 5m, the first one via Bogan Road, winner of three modern Group 1s, and the second two through Vain.
Aside from Australian sires, Ramsey’s a fan of repeating key mares wherever they’re from, and in Gangsta Granny there’s a triplication of one of the finest, 1960s American blue hen Best In Show (Traffic Judge), at 6f x 6f, 6m, through three different offspring.
Her daughter Sex Appeal is the dam of Gangsta Granny’s fourth sire Try My Best, while in the bottom half Best In Show has full-siblings in Show Lady – the third dam of damsire Manhattan Rain, and Gielgud, who’s Gangsta Granny’s fourth damsire.
“That Best In Show family is the best middle distance family in the world,” Ramsey says. “I like those good females and I like repeating them.
“If you can get brothers and sisters in a pedigree, or half-brothers and half-sisters, it’s better. That’s what you aim for – to sex balance it a bit.”
Other mares at play in Gangsta Granny include Lalun at 7s x 7s via Never Bend and Bold Reason, plus three others repeated in columns eight and nine in 1920s Italian mare Nogara (12 times), British mare Selene (eight) and France’s Mumtaz Begum (seven).
Hyperion is the dominant sire, with 19 appearances, ahead of Pharos with 15 and Nearco 14.
Miss Hawaii had a colt last year by Paulele (Dawn Approach) but sadly died two months later.
Still, the veteran cattleman appears to have hit the bullseye with Gangsta Granny, reflected in her $240,000 price at Inglis Easter – compared to her half-sister by Overshare (I Am Invincible) who fetched $12,000 at this year’s Inglis HTBA Yearling Sale.
“No one knows with genetics,” he says. “I’ve got seven kids and they’re all different. Dawn Fraser’s daughter couldn’t dog paddle.”