Australian Bloodstock bid for another Group 1 with bargain northern hemisphere buy
Accidental Bid (Phoenix Of Spain) is a northern hemisphere three-year-old seeking to win Saturday’s South Australian Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) with eerily similar plotlines to the first horse to achieve that remarkable feat, Russian Camelot (Camelot).
Born in Ireland, the Danny O’Brien-trained Russian Camelot came to Australia and won his fourth start at Pakenham by seven lengths. The colt was then ridden by expat Irishman John Allen to his stunning 1.9 length Derby win at Morphettville, after drawing an inside gate.
Australian Bloodstock’s British-bred Accidental Bid also had his most recent run at Pakenham, and won by 7.8 lengths. Allen was in the saddle and has also been booked for the Derby, where his colt has barrier two.
Russian Camelot started a $2.90 favourite in his 2020 Derby triumph, when he travelled wide but was still far too good, despite being six months younger than his Australian rival stayers.
Accidental Bid is also favourite, at $3.
Only problem is, he still needs to gain a run.
The trouble with having only raced four times – the first two in England – and winning $50,247, is that despite all his exciting potential, Accidental Bid has only qualified as first emergency, outside the maximum 16-horse field for the $1 million Classic.
Though favourite after winning both his Australian starts at Pakenham in a 1600-metre maiden and that Benchmark 62 romp over 2000 metres, the Ciaron Maher-trained colt fell just $8,526 short of the last horse who scraped into the 16, Phillip Stokes’ Wigmore (Sweynesse), who’s a $17 chance.
Maher told ANZ News Accidental Bid would still make the trip from his Cranbourne base to Adelaide – an obvious choice given only one of the 16 horses needs to be scratched up until 7.30am on race day for Accidental Bid to gain a run.
And the master trainer is confident that like present day Widden Stud sire Russian Camelot in 2020, Accidental Bid can again prove the superiority of European over Australian staying blood, though a place in the starting field would be handy.
“I think he’d give it a real shake,” Maher said. “From gate two you’d think he’d be up in the first half-dozen in the field.
“Both of his wins here have been quite dominant and his work’s been very good and improving all the time. The step up in trip is only going to be a benefit to him.
“It’d be ideal if they got a shower of rain, but even on top of the ground I’d still be reasonably confident.”
Forecasters give Morphettville a 60 per cent chance of rain on Saturday between noon and 6pm.
Accidental Bid went into his Australian debut off the back of an eighth and a sixth in his two jump outs. But the stable’s confidence in him was reflected by the fact he jumped as $3.20 favourite, and he won by 0.75 lengths on a Soft 5 track in a field of ten.
Second-up, he was $3.20 favourite again on a Heavy 8, trailed the leader in an eight-horse field, and came away with ridiculous ease under hands-and-heels riding from Allen for a 7.8-length blitz Maher said his data battalion “rated very highly”.
In England, the grey bay was bought at Tattersalls’ October Yearling Sale in 2024 for just 12,000 guineas (around AU$34,000), thanks to – as the story goes – an accidental bid. He debuted late in August with a 0.8-length second over 1609 metres on a good surface at Thirsk, in a two-year-old novice.
That was enough to lead Australian Bloodstock to make a very deliberate bid. As you’d expect, they acquired him without too much trouble, with his original owners perhaps flattered by the interest.
“It wasn’t hard to buy him, put it that way,” Australian Bloodstock director Jamie Lovett told ANZ.
“I’m not sure if I’d say they [his connections] were surprised, but it wasn’t hard to convince them to sell. They didn’t think as much of him as we did.”
So why the interest in a colt who’d run second at lowly Thirsk?
Australian Bloodstock, with Maher, have been involved in several expensive purchases of European stayers. Gold Trip (Outstrip) is the obvious granddaddy of them all, bought for $2.3 million from France before winning the 2022 Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
But there is another European field ploughed by Australian Bloodstock, which is where Accidental Bid and a few other bargain buys come in.
“We’ve been trying to do it for a while, just trying to find those northern hemisphere two-year-olds who have a staying pedigree,” Lovett said.
“He certainly presented as the right type of horse to have a throw at the stumps and try to run him in a Derby, whether it be Adelaide or Queensland.
“We’ve had three or four throws like that, and we haven’t got there. Zaphod comes to mind.”
That now five-year-old gelding was bought after a win and a placing in Ireland, has won five of 17 for Kris Lees, and is a dual city winner at Eagle Farm, but hasn’t risen to black type.
“Those three or four have ended up being nice horses but we didn’t get them into a Derby,” Lovett said.
“But Accidental Bid just has a nice profile. He’s got a lovely staying pedigree. His sire can get a nice staying horse, plus the colt has got a bit of depth in the bottom half of his pedigree to suggest he’d stay.”
The ten-year-old sire Phoenix Of Spain (Lope De Vega), who won the Irish 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1m), beating Too Darn Hot (Dubawi), stands at the Irish National Stud for €12,500 (AU$20,400). He has seven stakes winners from 159 runners at 4.4 per cent, with four black type victors from 1800 metres and up.
His sole elite winner did it over distance, with gelding Caballo De Mar claiming Longchamp’s Prix du Cadran (Gr 1, 4000m).
In Australia, Phoenix Of Spain has had exposure lately through Chris Waller’s four-year-old gelding Soul Of Spain, winner of the Newcastle Cup (Gr 3, 2300m) plus three other races, and a last-start runner-up in this month’s Sydney Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
Accidental Bid’s 18-year-old dam Comnena (Tiger Hill) has had six runners for six winners, with two scoring over 3300 metres, one of them over jumps.
The pedigree also has a dash of attractive inbreeding in the repetition in powerful places of a most useful broodmare in Helen Street (Troy) – dam of the outstanding racehorse and highly influential sire and broodmare sire Street Cry (Machiavellian).
Helen Street sits at 5f x 3f. Her daughter Helsinki (Machiavellian) – Street Cry’s full-sister – is the dam of Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway), Phoenix Of Spain’s grandsire. And down below, Helen Street is Accidental Bid’s third dam.
“We bought Accidental Bid for a bit of both his pedigree and what he’d shown on the track,” Lovett said. “The pedigree’s not relevant if they’re slow, although we did buy him off one run, so it was a bit of a throw at the stumps.
“We actually bought him with a view to leaving him in Britain, trying to make him look good and trading him. But it turned out he wasn’t the right one for that job.
“The more we looked into his pedigree, the more we could make a case that he might stay.
“And if you can buy a northern hemisphere horse, regardless of their age, if they can stay, they’re just better than our stayers, and that’s been proven time and time again.
“We’ve always thought it’s worth having a try, if you can get the right one. They can go through their grades early and then you can throw them in at the deep end.
“And Accidental Bid was a relatively inexpensive horse, as he should’ve been. It’s a commercially viable way to have a throw at the stumps, as opposed to trying to breed a stayer.”
Accidental Bid had one start in Britain for Australian Bloodstock, running 14th of 26 in a rich Newmarket two-year-old event over 1408 metres, which now seems unsuitably short.
“That was an ok run. The jockey sat up on him once he wasn’t going to run a place, as they do over there, plus his old connections told us he was still probably very immature,” Lovett said.
“Then in Australia, we watched his first start with our eyes shut because he hadn’t shown a lot in his jump-outs, but he’d come into his own in his work and he won well. He certainly bounced off that well into his second run.”
Two weeks later, Lovett and Accidental Bid’s owners will be keenly hitting their “refresh” buttons between now and Saturday morning.
“I’d love to get him into the Derby, just to see where he fits in,” Lovett said.
“But equally, with that big, deep, staying pedigree of his, regardless of what he does now, he might be a staying horse of the future.”