Midnight Dynamite

From an agonising pinhooking failure – belying a family with several elite winners – Midnight Dynamite (Pierata) has gone on to shine as yet another success story for the power couple that is Darby Racing and Bjorn Baker.

Bred by Rheinwood Pastoral, the southern highlands boutique nursery that’s brought us Group 1 heroes Private Harry (Harry Angel), Libertad (Russian Revolution) and more, the four-year-old model of consistency became a black type winner in Saturday’s Civic Stakes (Listed, 1400m) at Randwick, as a popular short-priced favourite.

If not quite a story of humble beginnings, his is definitely one with a bleak second chapter.

Midnight Dynamite is the third foal of Talented Miss (Al Maher), who Rheinwood bought in tandem with Bill Mitchell Bloodstock for $85,000 in 2018, carrying her first foal by Shalaa (Invincible Spirit). In a scene that would have a reprise, Talented Miss had been offered a month earlier at the Inglis Chairman’s sale, but failed to meet the same $85,000 figure as her reserve.

There’s class in the family, though it mightn’t hit you on first blush. Talented Miss won twice from 12 starts, at Armidale and Inverell, while her mother Mahira (Canny Lad) was unraced. But digging a little deeper reveals quality.

Mahira also threw Talented Miss’s full-sister Acouplamas, who ran second in Listed class. Better still, Mahira’s mother Tilly Foster (Vice Regal), also unraced, spawned some great success. She threw two stakes placegetters including Kensington Gardens (Grosvenor), who ran third in the AJC Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) of 1990 and became an outstanding broodmare.

Kensington Gardens threw no fewer than five black type victors – all by Danehill (Danzig) – from just six runners, two at the top rung.

They were headed by Blackfriars (Danehill), who won the VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) among two stakes successes and went on to sire 48 black type winners. His three top-level victors include Playing God, who’s emulated his father in becoming a dominant champion sire in Western Australia.

Kensington Gardens also threw Larrocha, who won the South Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) when it still had top-level status. Larrocha threw Rocha (Encosta De Lago) – a Group 2 winner who in turn bore the Group 3-winning Rocha Clock (Pierro) – as well as the dam of a South African Group 3 victor.

The stakes-winning quintet of Kensington Gardens was rounded out by Group 2 winner Manton, and Waterford Road and Lions Gate, who both scored at Listed level.

Talented Miss fitted Rheinwood’s modus operandi to a tee. She was not a stakes winner, but was stakes winner adjacent, hinting she had potential as a broodmare without the stakes-winning price tag.

It also didn’t hurt that she was being sold by Willow Park Stud, Glenn Burrows’ Hunter Valley farm of which Rheinwood has become quite fond. It was at the same 2018 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale that Rheinwood bought from them Happy Pilgrim (Congrats), who threw Private Harry. Two years earlier at the same auction, Willow Park had sold Rheinwood Electric Charge (Charge Forward), who became the dam of Libertad.

“Talented Miss was similar to a lot of the mares we try to purchase,” Rheinwood manager Kirsty Willis told It’s In The Blood. “We like buying a well-credentialed sister to a very good mare.

“Her full-sister Acouplamas had already shown her talent in producing good looking horses, so we decided to snap up her good looking sister. Plus, being in-foal to a first-season sire in Shalaa was attractive.”

The purchase soon proved astute. The very next day, Acouplamas had her first winner when Seasons (Sebring) scored at Warwick Farm – the first of three straight Sydney wins, which ultimately led to a Sydney Group 3 victory.

Four months after the purchase, Acouplamas’s third foal The August (I Am Invincible) was second in Caulfield’s McNeil Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m). He later moved to Singapore, where he won seven times.

But the best was yet to come in the form of Acouplamas’s third-straight stakes horse – by three diverse sires – Quick Thinker, by that super son of High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells), So You Think.

Almost a year after Rheinwood bought his aunty, the Murray Baker-trained gelding won in Listed class at Ellerslie in April, 2019. He then hot-footed it to Sydney to claim Rosehill’s Ming Dynasty Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m) at start number three, and returned the following autumn to win the ATC Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) and Tulloch Stakes (Gr 2, 2000m).

After Talented Miss had thrown them Miss Shalaa (Shalaa) and Innovates (Hellbent) – both country winners – Rheinwood tried to replicate Quick Thinker’s breeding by putting their mare to So You Think, but she unfortunately missed.

They changed tack the next year, 2020, and sent Talented Miss to Pierata (Pierro), standing his first season at Yulong, and the result was Midnight Dynamite.

“Ideally, we like to go to either proven sires or first season sires,” Willis said. “You’re stepping into the unknown with a first-season sire, but Pierata was a talented racehorse and stood every chance of making it as a stallion.

“With Talented Miss being by Al Maher, who’s by Danehill, we have to steer away from stallions from a Danehill sireline. And Danehill had worked well with [Pierro’s sire] Lonhro, so that was encouraging.”

Lonhro (Octagonal) over Danehill has produced a thumping eight stakes winners from 83 runners at 9.6 per cent, among 62 winners, headed by the elite-winning sprinter Benfica. Pierro over Danehill mares has 25 winners from 34 starters with one black type victor in the Group 3-winning Parry Sound.

“Plus, physically, Pierata looked like he’d be very compatible with Talented Miss,” Willis said. “She’s a bit slighter of bone, on the smaller side and feminine, and he looked like a big strong forward stallion that would complement her physically. Pierata looked like he would bring that size and substance.”

You love it when a plan comes together.

“Midnight Dynamite was a cracking foal,” Willis said. “He was nice and leggy, very good looking, and Pierata definitely brought the size.”

All started off well. Rheinwood opted to sell the colt as a weanling, which Willis says “fits our business model to sell a few weanling to reduce the numbers”.

And Rheinwood were elated to receive $100,000 for him at Inglis’s Sydney Weanling Sale of 2022, sold to the Redwall Syndicate.

Savvy breeders David Redvers and Hannah Wall have had some star horses go through their pinhooking fingers, including Breeders’ Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) winner King Kirk (Ole Kirk) and Extragalactic (Deep Field), the three-year-old filly who ran a 0.02-length second in The Goodwood (Gr 1, 1200m) at Morphettville last month.

Midnight Dynamite is now another of their pinhooked stakes winners, though some ill fortune meant he didn’t tick the financial box.

The colt went to the 2023 Magic Millions’ Gold Coast Yearling Sale but was passed in $30,000 short of an $80,000 reserve.

“It was a bit of bad luck,” says Matt Comerford of Widden Stud, who offered him. “He hit a fence before the yearling sale and had a haematoma on his chest. It was ok, but it did affect him a little bit.

“It was a shame, because we thought enough of him to think he was going to be a Gold Coast yearling.”

His owners tried again at Inglis’s HTBA sale, determined to sell. Enter Darby Racing, who swooped to buy him for just $48,000. If they’re not the canniest buyer around, they’ll do till we find one.

“I’ve got to thank Matt Comerford,” says the syndicator’s chief Scott Darby. “We’ll usually ask them ([Widden] which horses we might be interested in, and he gave a good push to this one. He said he’d had an issue which had been resolved, and he’d been good enough to make one of the top sales in Magic Millions Gold Coast.”

Midnight Dynamite also fitted Darby’s model in many ways.

“We’ve bought a couple at HTBA that have been through another sale and been passed in, or had a setback that’s resolved itself. You can find good value that way,” he said.

Darby counts among such horses Time For War (Snitzel), a $56,000 buy who won two Group races and $470,000, and Look To The Stars (I Am Invincible), a $26,000 purchase who earned $223,000 and was Group 1-placed.

Midnight Dynamite has outstripped them all. Saturday’s eighth race victory, alongside six minor placings, took his earnings past $600,000, and with only 20 starts in the bank, it can be assumed there’ll be plenty more to come.

He’s now the 42nd stakes winner for Darby Racing, having progressed in the Bjorn Baker way in that his debut at Muswellbrook preceded wins at Goulburn and Nowra, before his rise through the grades to black type level.

“I just love those horses who keep improving with each step,” said Darby, whose group has some 140 horses on their books. “You think their lot in life will be to continue at their benchmark rating, but then they make it to stakes grade.”

Pedigree wise, things are pretty straightforward for the sprinter. Danehill brings the only bit of inbreeding, at 4m x 3m. As mentioned, Danehill may be Al Maher’s father but is not in both sirelines, since he comes in the top half as the sire or Pierata’s damsire, Flying Spur. This makes Danehill the strongest contributor to the pedigree overall by far, with 18.75 per cent of the blood.

Sir Ivor (Sir Gaylord) makes a decent contribution at 6f x 6f, as Flying Spur’s second damsire and Al Maher’s third, while there’s a strong dash of colonial quality in a 6m x 6m of Star Kingdom (Stardust), with Kaoru Star being Pierata’s third damsire, and Biscay leading to Bletchingly and Canny Lad – Midnight Dynamite’s second damsire.

This perpetuates a theme Willis also respects in that two of Pierro’s six Group 1/ winners have Canny Lad close up in their female family. Regal Power and Levendi are out of mares by Redoute’s Choice, who has Canny Lad as a damsire.

Natalma (Native Dancer) and her dam Almahmoud (Mahmoud) share the top rank among mares in the pedigree, with nine mentions each.

The influential Lalun (Djeddah) is on both sides at the back at 8m, 8m, 8m, 9m x 8m. Bold Reason (Hail To Reason) fills the third of those spots and Never Bend (Nasrullah) the rest, and all four top half mentions run into Pierro.

Nearco (Pharos) is the main stallion with 17 appearances, for 4.88 per cent of the blood, ahead of Hyperion (Gainsborough) with 13.