Dalziel goes back to The Autumn Sun well at Classic
Former chef turned syndicator Wylie Dalziel was back at the scene of one of his greatest coups on Monday, cooking up a plan for a second helping of success with The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice).
Dalziel was something of a pioneer for the young Arrowfield stallion at Inglis Easter in 2022, teaming with his main trainer Peter Moody to buy a filly from his first crop, for $230,000.
She became Autumn Angel and not only a poster girl for her sire but for the concept that quality can be bought at Easter south of common ideas of “Easter prices”.
After a slightly nervous wait at Arrowfield, she broke through to become The Autumn Sun’s first elite winner in the ATC Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) of 2024, and it was the trickle that presaged a flood, with Vibrant Sun and Coco Sun giving him two more within a month.
Autumn Angel won almost $1.2m and was sold as a broodmare for a touch more.
The Autumn Sun now has ten stakes winners at 4.76 per cent of runners. But the stat assumes a different lustre considering a stunning 50 per cent of them have been Group 1 winners, the other two being rather special in Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) hero Autumn Boy, and the potentially phenomenal Autumn Glow.
With so much water under the bridge – and the prospect of The Autumn Sun’s stock becoming rarer for a while after his year off from breeding due to injury in 2024 – Dalziel is not banking on being able to secure one of his fillies this Easter for an Autumn Angel price.
So, operating within a budget, he was at the more economical Inglis Classic on Monday to buy one instead, albeit still not for $230,000 but $290,000.
Offered by co-breeders Arrowfield, Lot 283 also hints at staying potential, being the fifth foal of Pandemonium (Sebring), a four-time winner to 1600 metres who was Listed placed in Adelaide over that trip.
She’ll add to the handful of progeny of The Autumn Sun in the Dalziel-Moody axis, which also includes Vivid Sun, a three-year-old winner of two from four Dalziel has tipped for stakes success, and Autumn Lover, a two-year-old filly set to debut in Saturday’s Talindert Stakes (Listed, 1100m) at Flemington.
“We love the filly,” Dalziel told ANZ News of Monday’s acquisition. “Peter came up last week and had a look, and we felt that out of The Autumn Suns, she was the one we really wanted.
“We’ve obviously had really good luck with the progeny, having had Autumn Angel. We’ve now got five or six The Autumn Suns and we really like them, and we’re doing well with them.
“He’s a fantastic stallion. I thought he would be a decent bet from the get go, being such a great racehorse and considering the way Arrowfield really supports their stallions, and it’s panning out that way. His stats are amazing.”
Dalziel also noted his new filly was bred on the same The Autumn Sun – Sebring cross as Autumn Mystery, Rory Hunter’s three-year-old gelding who won last spring’s Norman Robinson Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m).
The Ballarat-based syndicator and Moody have also enjoyed success with Sebring’s progeny in Group 2 winners Bring Me The Maid and Catch A Fire, the latter of whom Moody raced as an owner during his late 2010s break from training, while she was prepared by David Hayes and Tom Dabernig.
“So everything added up with this filly,” Dalziel said. “She’s a very good size, correct, with a great action, and she was very sensible out the back when I watched her before she went through the ring.”
Dalziel, 51, has taken a path less travelled into becoming a highly successful syndicator, especially in tandem with Moody but also with a few other trainers.
Most notably they include Phillip Stokes, who prepared Dalziel’s first elite winner – again with Moody as an owner – when Mr Quickie (Shamus Award) took the 2019 Queensland Derby (Gr 1, 2400m), before adding the Toorak Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m).
Dalziel first became a chef by trade, and was able to fuse his two great loves – food and sport – when that took him into the catering sphere.
“The people I was with got the contract at Royal Melbourne for the first edition of the President’s Cup in 1998, so I was there preparing food for Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and others,” said Dalziel, who prepared the players’ breakfast and lunch buffets, also fed another all-time great in the US team’s non-playing captain Jack Nicklaus, and revelled in the chance to play on Royal Melbourne once the competition was over.
“The players were good and pretty polite. The caddies were probably the most demanding ones. They all thought they were pretty special but they were just carrying the bags, to me.
“I got some photos of myself with Tiger Woods, but they were on a digital camera, and then I actually lost all the photos, which was a shame.”
Dalziel spent ten years in the food industry, the latter years of which led to an operation called Chefs On The Run, supplying cooks at short notice into various places. Some were racecourses, and this fomented a keenness to become involved in that industry.
It led to a competition – The Punting Chef – in which Dalziel, at the track in full chef’s outfit, would present a betting bank of $200 to a radio caller who correctly answered a question.
Then came nascent dabbles in syndication – starting with a leased horse trained by Robbie Griffiths – but his more frequent trips to the track also led to him meeting Roy Higgins. That sparked a friendship, and later a syndication business – once a persistent Dalziel had won over a reluctant Higgins, embittered by an earlier such venture which turned sour.
“I learned how to look at horses with Roy, and then later with Peter Moody,” said Dalziel, who became close to the retired riding great, who died in 2014.
“We were called Roy Higgins – Wylie Dalziel Racing. When he was in hospital just before he died, I told him I’d never forget him and never drop his name. I had the family’s blessing. His daughters Martina and Nicole said ‘Dad loved you as a son and he’d be proud of you, so keep it all going’.
“I just reversed the names, so now it’s Wylie Dalziel – Roy Higgins Racing,” he said. “There’s still a lot of owners with us from Roy’s days, so that’s nice.”
Dalziel will be hoping his latest offspring of The Autumn Sun can do the Higgins name proud.