The Black Cloud
We’re not saying The Black Cloud (Shamus Award) is plainly-bred or anything, but it’s a good thing there’s black in her name.
Because there’s bugger all on her page.
On her catalogue entry from the 2022 Inglis Classic sale, there’s space for no fewer than five dams, liberated as the family is from such space-hogging encumbrances as stakes winners, dams of stakes winners, relatives of stakes winners – anything!
To be fair, she’s the first foal of her dam Containment (Krupt), so there was no offspring to write home about there.
Containment’s claim to fame was being placed twice in Adelaide and, according to the catalogue, winning four in the bush – two at Balaklava and two at Strathalbyn. But even that has to be marked down.
When the Racing Australia data bank listed her as a three-time winner, it was time for some investigative journalism. Turns out Containment lost the second one at Balaklava on protest. Contain your enthusiasm.
Second dam Military Training (General Nediym) had three winners from nine foals headed by Military Road (Shamus Award), who also won three – one at Morphettville and two at Alice Springs.
Third dam Dearcorp (Omnicorp) had three foals, topped by a placegetter.
The fourth dam was unraced, had a New Zealand maiden winner (from 17 starts) among her four foals, and in keeping with this tale of a tail female line was named O’Dear (Alvaro).
But at last we come to the fifth dam, a Kiwi named Susan Maree (Ocean Spray). She had eight foals, for two winners. One of them was in New Zealand metro class in fact. But the other one of those winners had a foal named Janet Quill (Fan Letter) and that filly, tucked away in the deepest, darkest recesses of this page, won at stakes level!
Three times, in fact, in 1991-92. Sure, they were all Listed events also in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Shaky Isles – Dunedin and Invercargill. But with this page, if that’s not real class it’ll do till we get some.
Well, come to mention it, 33 years later, the family has another stakes winner, an animal with undoubted class. And they went and called her The Black Cloud.
Perhaps it was an attempt to add some prestige and respectability to the family, named after a high-brow poem by Keats or Yeats or somebody?
No, the Proven Thoroughbreds-Joe Pride mare was named after group of blokes who could only go by that well-worn tag of “reprobates”.
“It was a bunch of my friends who used to go around together, turning up at social gathers and causing mayhem,” Proven boss Jamie Walter tells It’s In The Blood. “One night they turned up and one of our female friends said, ‘Here they are – the black cloud’.”
Some of those mates are now in the ownership of the mare, who enhanced her value by becoming a stakes winner at the fourth attempt in Saturday’s Bribie Handicap (Listed, 1000m) at Eagle Farm.
A sense of humour is a much needed quality in this game. But she was a seriously good looking horse when Walter and his main trainer Pride spied her at that Classic sale.
She was bred by avid breeder and large-scale Northern Territory pastoralist Viv Oldfield, who also bred and retained Containment.
This wasn’t one of those cannily divined bits of breeding arrived at by way of dusty old books, remembrances of matings past or software packages. Oldfield is also a part-owner of Shamus Award (Snitzel), so he simply put his mare to his stallion, then standing his first spring at Rosemont Stud after his switch from Widden.
But what resulted was a delight of the physical form, who Walter and Pride secured for $100,000 – a fifth of her earnings so far.
“She brought the money on type alone – because let’s face it, the pedigree didn’t help her much,” says Grant McKay, who manages Oldfield’s Golden Grove Stud, the Hunter Valley farm that houses most of his 50-plus mares.
“She was a cracker. She had everything – good hind, strong all over. She was a first foal, but you wouldn’t have known it. She was a decent size and very good to look at – a real stand-out.”
As Walter tells it, The Black Cloud was a useful study in the art, the science, the luck, or the pure economics of horse buying.
“She was very attractive, moved well, very correct, everything in proportion,” he says, “but she had no black type on her page. To be fair, I was concerned about that, but Joe said, ‘Let’s give it a go’.
“This is probably an example of the advantage of having a couple of sets of eyes. Whereas I would’ve perhaps baulked at buying a pedigree like that. Joe, who likes the Shamus Awards and has had success with them, said, ‘She’s too good a type. You can’t let her go’.
“Joe’s very much into type, and particular stallions. I’m probably more inclined to consider pedigree as a whole, and type fits into the equation.
“But he got me over the line. If anyone deserves credit for her purchase, it’s Joe.”
Walter says he and Pride have bought “three or four” more Shamus Awards since this one. Pride also enjoyed success with the Rosemont stallion’s son Brutality, who won the Villiers Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) in the last year before its inevitable name change, to be among his sire’s 30 stakes winners.
There was another factor that might have scared a few people off buying The Black Cloud.
Her only bit of inbreeding is double Danehill, of the statistically least successful of the three combinations – double male. Not only that, he’s in influential places, given he’s the third sire of both Shamus Award and Containment.
However, the fact he’s at 4m x 4m in The Black Cloud’s pedigree most likely lessens any risk. Indeed, based on a wholly unscientific study of how much it crops up in this column about stakes winners, the dangers of double Danehill appear to be weakening as time goes by and he recedes deeper and more diluted into pedigrees.
It still went into Walter’s reckonings on purchasing the filly.
“I’ve got to respect statistics, but when it comes to horse purchasing, you can’t play the game unless you’re prepared to compromise. You’re never going to buy something that ticks every box,” he said.
“In the equation that constitutes reasons of why you should buy a horse or why you shouldn’t, for me that kind of double Danehill thing four generations back, it’s not a huge issue.
“When you’re trying to buy a horse, you’re looking to nullify as many negatives as possible, and prioritise the positives.
“And at the end of the day, it’s all down to price, and we had $160,000 on this filly and we got her for $100,000.”
He continued: “Everything’s a compromise about buying a horse, but the most important component of all is price. And if once you’ve considered all those contributing factors and settled on a price, if you get it for significantly unders, which in this case we did, then it’s value.
“Someone else who’s bought more Group 1 winners than I’ll ever buy might have put $80,000 on her. It’s a game of opinion, and you’re pitching your opinion versus price, with what you can afford, to try to ascertain value.
“You can blind yourself with science and too much information, given the detail you can go into.”
The Black Cloud didn’t start until a December three-year-old, but soon made up for lost time, with the sprinter winning four of her first six, the last two at Randwick and Flemington.
Black type seemed to be beckoning, but she didn’t win again in her next nine starts, laced with four frustrating seconds. Finally, she broke through on Saturday with the stakes win that boosts her value – and that forlorn looking page of hers.
As a horse whose creation occurred through a mare owner supporting his stallion, there’s precious few bits of trickery and nickery in the pedigree, although the Cox Plate-winning Shamus Award is doing well with mares stemming from General Nediym, The Black Cloud’s second damsire.
With mares by General Nediym, Shamus Award is running at 21 percent stakes winners to runners, with three from 14. It’s his best nick involving more than nine starters.
That trio is headed by Queensland Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) hero Mr Quickie, and includes the aforementioned Brutality and G3 winner True Detective.
Aside from Danehill, the only double-up in The Black Page’s first six generations is a 5f x 6m of stallion Storm Bird (Northern Dancer), and it’s well buried away, as second sire Snitzel’s second damsire, and as the third sire of the dam of Krupt, Containment’s father.
Precious few dams of note are repeated, the main one being the omnipresent Natalma (Native Dancer), who has eight mentions in Shamus Award’s half and four in Containment’s.
The dominant stallion is Hyperion (Gainsbrough), with 19 spots, ahead of Nearco (Pharos) with 16.
Containment also has an unraced two-year-old gelding by Impending (Lonhro) named Spokesperson in the stable of Matthew Smith, and this season she foaled a full sister to The Black Cloud in early November. Subsequent to that, she missed to Kia Ora stud’s Farnan (Not A Single Doubt).