Stablemates set to clash as Price eyes another Blue Diamond quinella
Two headstrong, ultra competitive colts, out to seal a stud future, filling the top two spots in the market and drawing barriers three and five.
And they also happen to come from the same stable.
Trainer Mick Price must be feeling confident as he eyes off the 56th Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) with $4 favourite Big Sky (Bivouac) and $5 shot Guest House (Home Affairs).
“I am feeling confident – confident that they’ve had pretty good training preparations, which is what we need to have from them,” Price told ANZ News.
“Unfortunately training is not raceday level, and raceday brings out all your mistakes, but if I’ve made a mistake, I can’t see it at this point.
“I feel like I’ve been able to get my timing right on both of them, and both horses go in pretty spot on, I believe.”
Price has won Victoria’s two-year-old showpiece twice previously, before Michael Kent Jnr joined him as co-trainer.
He did it with Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) in 2016, and that horse has duly gone on to become not just a sire but a super one, at Newgate Farm.
Price also did it with the filly Samaready (More Than Ready) four years earlier, and she’s blossomed into an outstanding broodmare, leaving Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner and current Coolmore stallion Shinzo (Snitzel) and his four-time stakes-winning sister Exhilarates.
Such storylines underscore the enduring significance to the breeding scene of the Blue Diamond.
In the ten editions starting with Extreme Choice’s, the race has been won by seven colts. All six who are old enough – not counting last year’s winner Devil Night (Extreme Choice) – have gone on to stand at stud.
Written By (Written Tycoon) and Tagaloa (Lord Kanaloa) have made decent starts, while Artorius (Flying Artie) and Daumier’s (Epaulette) first yearlings are hitting the sales rings this year.
Among the two still living female winners from our sample period, 2017 winner Catchy (Fastnet Rock) has thrown dual stakes winner Floozie (Zoustar).
“There’s no doubt that it’s still a good stallion maker,” Price said of the Blue Diamond. “It certainly worked for Extreme Choice, though admittedly he won a second Group 1 as a three-year-old.”
And so, if not quite as pronounced as on Golden Slipper day, the fizzing cocktail of pressure and hope will be acute at Caulfield on Saturday, with so much riding on the result.
Saturday’s edition rings remarkably similar for Price as 2016. Extreme Choice started $2.70 favourite and won clearly, by 1.75 lengths. Price also had the $5 second elect Flying Artie (Artie Schiller), and he ran second.
For more on stallion-making, Flying Artie is now kicking goals as a sire at Blue Gum Farm, with triple elite winner Asfoora being Europe’s reigning Champion Sprinter, and the stallion’s dual stakes winning son Sixties seemingly bearing down on a Group 1 title to match his brother, to Artorius.
Yet price can’t have gone into 2016 feeling like he was holding as strong a hand as he has for this edition a neat decade later.
For one thing, Extreme Choice had gate 11 and Flying Artie 15. If Saturday’s emergencies come out, Big Sky will have gate three and Guest House two.
Big Sky, a $140,000 Magic Millions Gold Coast yearling buy for Price bred by Queensland’s Eureka Stud, has had a flawless preparation. After two jump outs, he debuted with an effortless 2.75-length win in a 1000 metres two-year-old handicap, taking to the Flemington straight like so many young horses don’t.
Held back to the same trip, he strolled home arrogantly with a three-length victory, again in a seven horse field, in Caulfield’s Chairman’s Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m) on January 31.
That’s given him three weeks between runs into Saturday, and it’s the same as the path as the muscular Extreme Choice took into his Blue Diamond.
Guest House is on a two-week lead-in, the same as Samaready. A $270,000 Gold Coast buy for Price, Rogers Bloodstock and the Roll The Dice Racing concern whose colours he bears, the first crop son of Coolmore’s Home Affairs (I Am Invincible) debuted with a 0.75-length win in a field of ten over 1000-metres at Cranbourne’s metro meeting on December 27.
But it was in defeat at his subsequent start in the Blue Diamond Prelude (Gr 3, 1100m), when he gave Saturday’s rider Jamie Melham quite the torrid time, that he shone most impressively.
He may have run a one-length second to Saturday’s $6 third-favourite, the Danny O’Brien trained Closer To Free (Street Boss), but it was the obstacles he crashed through in getting there that pleased Price.
“I was very surprised when Guest House duffed the start in the Prelude and then charged into the bridle,” the trainer said. “He was still game enough to run second, which I thought was a pretty good effort, because horses who miss the start, and then pull, and they’re deep, and they’ve got no cover, and they’re working – they don’t usually run second.
“I thought in the run that he would run seventh, so I thought it was an indication of his capacity, and I’m very happy with that colt.”
Guest House is striving to go in at the top level as a first Australian stakes winner for Home Affairs, who covered 205 mares at $82,500 (inc GST) at Coolmore last year, and who’s made an eye-catching start at stud. From only his first 18 runners, the seven-year-old has seven stakes horses and four winners, including one black-type victor in New Zealand Group 2-winning colt Kinnaird.
Melham rode Guest House in some “very strong work” on Tuesday morning, Price said, while race rider Jordan Childs steered Big Sky.
“They’re both going very well,” Price said. “They don’t work together, they don’t need to work together. The last time we worked Guest House in company he overworked. He’s very, very competitive. He’s still got a fair bit to learn, that colt.”
While Guest House may have worked too hard to win his last start, Price sees no attraction in trying to hold him back.
“I don’t think the horse will allow himself to be ridden in that fashion,” he said. “Jamie knows him well, he’s not an easy horse to ride, but I think she’s got to ride her horse first and the race second.
“I actually wouldn’t mind if Guest House did explode from the gates, found the fence and crossed the horse in barrier one. If they left him be, to a point, that would be good.
“It’s difficult to say that in a 16-horse field in a Blue Diamond, because everything goes up a notch as far as race tempo goes, but if he was to lead, I don’t think it’d be a bad thing.”
Big Sky is one of four stakes winners from 83 runners for Darley’s Bivouac (Exceed And Excel), who served 104 mares at $55,000 (inc GST) last spring. The colt will race on the pace, Price said, as he strives to become his sire’s second elite victor after Golden Rose (Gr 1, 1400m) hero Beiwacht.
While he hasn’t blotted his copy book behaviourally like Guest House, Big Sky is no angel either, but in a way a trainer – or a stud master – likes to see.
“Big Sky doesn’t exactly come out and rest on the bridle. He gets a bit cranky if you’re going too slow,” Price said.
“Jordan came and rode him this [Tuesday] morning. Jordan got him pretty well right when he did win on him at his first start, so both my riders have a good understanding of their colts.”
Childs, who won the Blue Diamond on Written By in 2018, goes back into the saddle after Ben Melham, Big Sky’s rider in the Chairman’s, interestingly opts for Clinton McDonald’s filly Streisand (Magnus), an $11 shot who’s drawn gate 12.
Ben Melham has ridden Streisand only in defeat – two seconds and a fifth in the Blue Diamond Preview (Gr 3, 1000m) – while his wife Jamie was aboard for her last start win in the Prelude (Gr 2, 1100m).
“Ben’s got a better relationship with Clinton professionally than he has with me, so I get that, I’ve got no problem with that,” Price said of Melham’s decision.
“Jordan’s one for one on Big Sky. When he goes past him [Melham], that’ll be OK,” he said with a smile.
“I like the preparation Big Sky has had. He’s a horse with enough condition on him, he’s not a big, fat, robust colt that needs to do too much.
“The Chairman’s is well suited for a two-year-old if you want to keep them fresh and looking for something to do into the Blue Diamond. It’s well positioned in that race, and it worked for Extreme Choice.”
As is usually the case with the Blue Diamond, sitting early on the two-year-old calendar as it does, one gnawing question concerns distance.
Big Sky hasn’t been past 1000 metres, while Guest House steps up past 1100 metres for the first time.
“You never really know but I’d be confident Big Sky will handle the trip,” Price said. “He’s not a small barrel little pony. He’s a good lengthy colt, with a good stride and a good set of lungs, and I think 1200 metres will be no trouble.
“Guest House is a bit of a different horse. He’s a big, strong brute, a very forward type of horse, and if you see him in the mounting yard, you’d see how mature and what a lovely specimen he is.
“He’s a different horse to Big Sky. He’s got a good temperament in the barn, but come raceday he tends to get a bit sparky in the brain, which is what a lot of good horses do.
“Like any two-year-old in the Blue Diamond, they just have to get it right. But I think Guest House is no worries at the trip.”
And so to the main question: Which way is Price leaning?
“Guest House runs quicker time in trackwork, but they are different horses and raceday is different to trackwork,” he said.
“Whilst I don’t know for sure which one’s the better horse, I still think Guest House has great capacity about him, and if I have to split them – people ask me to have a pick – then that’s my pick.
“But I could be wrong.”
Ten years on, perhaps he’d settle for another quinella.