Snitzel Dancer
One of the great blue hens of modern breeding has come to the fore again with a first-time black type winner in Snitzel Dancer (Snitzel), who took out Saturday’s James H B Carr Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m) at Randwick.
It was a stellar last day of the Randwick carnival for the late, great, general sires’ table leader Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) and his former trainer Gerald Ryan.
The four-time – and likely soon to be five-time – champion sire had three stakes winners and Ryan trained two of them, back-to-back, with Snitzel Dancer’s victory followed by Matias’s in the Frank Packer Plate (Gr 3, 2000m). Fireball finished Snitzel’s hat-trick by becoming his 28th elite winner in the Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m).
Ryan, who these days trains with Sterling Alexiou, has prospered from many trips back to his old sprinter’s well. He’s had 17 stakes winners by Snitzel – whom he trained to six stakes successes from 2004-06 including Caulfield’s Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m) – and he and his co-trainer have been rewarded for paying $425,000 for Snitzel Dancer at Inglis Easter in 2024.
The Hunter Valley’s progressive Sledmere Stud bred the filly, having bought her dam Novel Dancer (Written Tycoon) off the track, in a private deal helped along by bloodstock agent Sheamus Mills.
Trained by Shea Eden, who’d bought her as a yearling for $50,000, Novel Dancer made an explosive start, winning at Echuca by six lengths on debut, claiming a Mornington two-year-old fillies’ handicap by 3.75 lengths, and earning black type when third in Caulfield’s Quezette Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) at start three.
After that her form tapered off as she finished no better than sixth in six more tries before connections opted to sell.
However, that didn’t deter Sledmere’s Catriona and Royston Murphy, who swiftly secured the mare.
“I love a Written Tycoon mare,” Catriona tells It’s In The Blood of Yulong’s evergreen stallion, who’s had 13 stakes winners as a broodmare sire at 3.69 per cent of runners.
“Written Tycoon mares are just beautifully balanced mares, they throw good types, and being an outcross mare that was what we were looking for. It’s so hard to find them. There’s a lot of Danehill in our industry, and a lot of Redoute’s Choice mares, Fastnet Rock mares, Exceed And Excel mares, all by Danehill.
“So to find an outcross mare was a big tick for Novel Dancer.
“The fact her form had dropped off a bit didn’t put us off. She’d done what she could do and that was good enough for what we were looking for. Any black type is a positive.”
There was one other major drawcard. Well, two in fact. Novel Dancer came with a double-up of the great, highly influential American 1960s mare Best In Show (Traffic Judge).
The dam of nine winners from 12 runners, including four stakes victors, her blood runs strongly into Written Tycoon’s (Iglesia) sireline, as the second dam of his third sire Try My Best (Northern Dancer), through her also very useful daughter Sex Appeal (Buckpasser).
And Best In Show is in another handy spot as the third dam of New Zealand stallion Umatilla (Miswaki), Novel Dancer’s second damsire.
With the super mare also running powerfully into Snitzel as his sire Redoute’s Choice’s fourth dam, this gives Snitzel Dancer a triple presence of Best In Show at 6f x 7f, 7f, through two different daughters.
Her presence also affects the only piece of inbreeding Snitzel Dancer has – a 4f x 5m of Best In Show’s highly influential granddaughter Dancing Show (Nijinksy), who is Redoute’s Choice’s granddam and the mother of Umatilla.
“Those blue hens or elite stallions doubling up can only be a positive,” Murphy says. “Novel Dancer having Best In Show twice – there wouldn’t be too many pedigrees around that have that elite duplication, and having Dancing Show twice in the first five generations has to help.
“We’ve had a lot of faith in this mare and it’s nice when your hard work pays off.”
Closer to home, Snitzel Dancer is underlaid with strong colonial notes thanks to one of Australia’s greatest sires, Star Kingdom (Stardust), the Irish-bred phenom who makes six appearances in the pedigree from generations seven to nine.
Only one comes in Snitzel’s half, as the fourth sire of Redoute’s Choice’s own blue hen dam Shantha’s Choice, through Biscay-Bletchingly-Canny Lad.
But that’s blended with a well varied five spots feeding into Novel Dancer. Star Kingdom is tripled in the dam of Written Tycoon’s sire Iglesia (Last Tycoon), with Biscay completing a duplication, this time via his son Marscay, alongside Noholme and the only Star Kingdom daughter in the pedigree, Fairy Dream, Iglesia’s fifth dam.
And lower down, Star Kingdom is doubled in Novel Dancer’s Aussie speed-oriented damsire Strategic (Zeditave), via Kaoru Star and Todman.
While we don’t see that coveted blend of Biscay with one or more of his full-brothers Star Of Heaven and Tattenham, the inclusion of two other Star Kingdom full-brothers Todman and Noholme should only be a good thing, especially with Star Kingdom also in the top half.
“I love a lot of those old families, going back to those sorts of stallions,” Murphy says. “They’re getting a bit further away, and the new fancy stuff is coming in, but I don’t think you can beat the old fashioned families.”
Snitzel Dancer is also helped by a successful female line. Melbourne city-winning second dam Strata Title (Strategic) was twice Listed placed, while fourth dam Rockettes (Lord Seymour) won on that tier at Flemington and was a half-sister to the superb Rom’s Stiletto (Sharp Edge).
Incidentally, Rom’s Stiletto claimed the 1982 Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m)-VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) double, yet that was enough to only rank her third on the Australasian 3YO Classification.
She was unlucky enough to have been born in the same spring as another grey filly – Emancipation (Bletchingly) – while New Zealand’s Our Flight (Imperial Guard) polled second after taking the NZ Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) and NZ 1,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
In fact, it was a vintage season for three-year-olds all up, which is worth reminiscing about. The boys were represented by Strawberry Road (Whiskey Road) and his fellow eventual six-time Group 1 winner Mr McGinty (or McGinty in NZ) (One Pound Sterling), and three-timers Grosvenor (Sir Tristram) and Veloso (Zamazaan).
But nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Jump to 2015, and once the Murphys secured Novel Dancer, they looked around for a stallion for her first mating. They hit on a first-season sire, and it is to their – and Novel Dancer’s – enduring credit that they managed to draw a stakes winner out of great racehorse and dud sire Dissident (Sebring). That horse was Pancho, who won two Listeds including the Kilmore Cup (1600m).
In fact, among Dissident’s five stakes winners Sledmere has bred two, the other being close to his best performer in dual Group 2-winning filly Yes Baby Yes.
The road since hasn’t always been easy with Novel Dancer, with her 11 Australian matings yielding just five named foals.
But all of them have been winners. The first and the latest – Pancho and Snitzel Dancer – are stakes winners, and two in between have won in city class, in Troika (Russian Revolution) and Art’s Alive (Snitzel).
BK Racing paid $350,000 for Art’s Alive at Easter 2023, before Ryan and Alexiou went to $425,000 for Snitzel Dancer a year later, a filly who came off a Snitzel service fee of just $165,000, Covid-affected.
“Novel Dancer has never disappointed us with types or sales results,” says Murphy, arguing Snitzel was close to a perfect mating.
“She’s a big strapping mare, with a lot of quality and a lot of room, at about 16.2 hands. That was the other positive about Snitzel, just to refine her and sharpen her up a little bit. He was not overly big but was strong and compact.”
After no live foals in three attempts after Snitzel Dancer’s birth in 2022, the Murphys changed tack last spring by sending Novel Dancer to New Zealand’s Little Avondale Stud for a mating with the young stallion born and reared at Sledmere, and in whom they have a share, Little Brose (Per Incanto).
She’s now in-foal and back home, with the Murphys keeping their fingers crossed for their dual stakes producer.