Bel Esprit signs off as a sire of one the greatest we’ve seen
In 2001, trainer John Symons watched a two-year-old colt have his first gallop at Macedon Lodge and said: “This horse will win us a Blue Diamond.”
Eight year later, a few miles down the road, stud manager David Somers rushed into the offices of Eliza Park and told his colleagues: “I’ve just seen a champion win a barrier trial.”
Both declarations – apocryphal-sounding but witness-verifiable – were correct. And in a sweet piece of history for this small patch of Victoria, the first horse sired the second. He was Bel Esprit, and she was Black Caviar.
An unforgettable chapter of the Australian turf came to a quiet close last week with the retirement of Bel Esprit from stallion duties after 19 seasons and today the racing industry pays homage to his achievements with the race named in his honour at Caulfield.
The rising 23-year-old has seen the same farm through three incarnations – as Eliza Park, Sun Stud and Widden, Victoria. He’s seen more than 30 other sires come and go – one of them a son in Moshe, Black Caviar’s full brother, and will now see out his days at the property.
“He still thinks he’s a five-year-old, and he still looks phenomenal,” Widden’s Phil Marshall says of the strapping big bay. “We could’ve easily gone ahead for another year but that wouldn’t be the right thing to do for him. His fertility has waned a bit, and there’s been a couple of other old-age issues.
“He’s done a fantastic job throughout his time here. He’s been a fantastic asset, and he’s really put this property on the map. It was the right time to retire him.”
Bel Esprit closes with a personal best of sixth on the Australian general sires list, held for three straight Black Caviar years through 2011-13. He was first by winners in 2013, his 155 putting prize-money leader Exceed And Excel’s 142 into second.
And he set a new Australian record by covering 266 mares in 2007, albeit helped by travel restrictions in the Equine Influenza crisis, and surpassed two years later by Fastnet Rock’s 273.
But by most markers, Bel Esprit’s stud performance has not been as stellar as his racetrack career. He’s sired 28 stakes-winners from 1,109 runners, at 2.52 per cent. Aside from Black Caviar, he’s left just two top-level winners, of one Group 1 each: 2009 SAJC Robert Sangster Stakes victor Bel Mer, and 2013 The Galaxy winner, Bel Sprinter.
After Black Caviar’s perfect 25, his next most prolific winners have been bushies Glenthorn Avenue, a gelding who won 19 from 93 from Terang to Gympie and parts in between, and Free Billy, who could be spotted winning his 18 from 89 in places like Goulburn, Grafton and Goondiwindi.
He sired two other million-dollar horses after Peter Moody’s wonder mare: Tactical Advantage – winner of 11 from 47 and $1,055,450, and Belflyer, who won 14 from 58 and $1,009,880, with $685,000 coming in winning the inaugural running of The Kosciusko in 2018.
Yet Bel Esprit will forever be remembered for his crucial role in one of the greatest stories of world racing. And while many hold Black Caviar primarily as the shiniest example of the class of the great female family of Scandinavia – through that mare’s daughter and the star sprinter’s dam, Helsinge – there were undeniably very significant qualities imparted by her sire that made Black Caviar the horse she was.
Before all this, Bel Esprit was an extremely good racehorse. He was plucked out of the Inglis Classic Yearling Sale of 2001 by Symons, then a part-public, part-private trainer at Macedon Lodge, soon after it had been built by millionaire owner Kurt Stern, and six years before its purchase by Lloyd Williams. It was a heady time. Seven months after that Classic sale, Cups double winner Ethereal would be prepared out of the complex by visiting New Zealander Sheila Laxon, who became Symons’ partner in training and life. The pair are now on the Sunshine Coast, training as Esprit Racing.
Bred by the Hunter Valley’s Phil Gunter, Bel Esprit had some strong blood behind him, if somewhat unfamiliar to Australian buyers. He was by the US-shuttling son of Nijinsky, Royal Academy, a dual Group 1 winner in Britain and the US. Bel Esprit’s dam Crimson Saint (Crimson Satan) was a Group 3 winner in America and a half-sister to Terlingua, dam of champion sire Storm Cat.
But at that Inglis Classic sale of 2001, few were interested in the bay yearling, aside from Symons, who stole him for $9,000.
“You wouldn’t get a better type,” Symons says. “He had a couple of ordinary front legs – he was a little bit pigeon-toed – and he was such a big yearling everyone thought he was too big. To my glee, they didn’t want to touch him. But I thought he’d finished growing and that he was such a lovely looking horse he should be able to run.”
Still, Symons couldn’t syndicate or even lease the colt. Finally, Racing Victoria administrator Michael Duffy visited Macedon Lodge to see the ground-breaking private facility, and that’s how a syndicate with some celebrity status – featuring then Essendon AFL coach Kevin Sheedy – was formed.
“The horse was lying down and looked about two bobs’ worth, but Michael said he’d take him,” Symons said. “He brought in a mate in Brian Donohoe, who was Essendon’s chairman of selectors, so that’s how Kevin Sheedy became involved.”
Next came that first gallop, Symons’ fateful prediction, then a paralysing opening sortie of five stakes wins, capped by the 2002 Blue Diamond when the even-money favourite. Bel Esprit was also favourite in the Golden Slipper, but, with Symons cursing barrier one and a damp inside channel, the colt ran a meritorious fifth, beaten one and three-quarter lengths, behind Calaway Gal.
After spelling, Bel Esprit made it seven stakes wins from eight starts before Group 1 seconds in the Manikato Stakes, what’s now the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes, and the Caulfield Guineas, when he drew wide and flew home from 14th at the 400 metres, beaten one and three-quarter lengths by Helenus.
“He was the best thing beaten you’d see on any track in the world in the Guineas,” says Symons.
After a failed tilt up at 2040 metres in Northerly’s 2002 Cox Plate, Bel Esprit’s frustrating autumn campaign was highlighted by his three-quarter-length second in the Newmarket Handicap.
“He dominated the horses on the inside, but he was on the wrong side of the track and Belle Du Jour pipped him on the grandstand side,” says Symons, who claimed a second Group 1 two months later in the Doomben 10,000, Bel Esprit’s penultimate start.
“He was a great horse. The horse of a lifetime. If he’d won a couple of those four Group 1s he came second in, people would call him a superstar. I was a little disappointed they didn’t race him on for another year. You could’ve won a mile race with him anywhere.”
A stud deal had been done a year or so earlier, with Eliza Park’s Lee Fleming taking a share, and – after eight wins from 19 starts and more than $2m in prize-money – Bel Esprit commenced siring duties in 2003, covering 122 mares at $18,150. In 2005 the fee was $20,000 when Gilgai Farm’s Rick Jamieson sent the unraced Helsinge to him for her first mating (executing a reverse cross to the great Sunline, who was by Desert Sun from a Nijinsky-line mare).
That covering came in a book of 210 mares, which was easily eclipsed by that record book of 266 in 2007. The stallion’s evident popularity sparked a fee rise to $33,000 in 2008, which triggered a drop to 110 mares covered.
Bel Esprit was starting to show some results, but not quite enough. Eliza Park took the bold step of announcing in the late autumn of 2009 that his fee for that spring would be just $16,500.
As fate would have it, Black Caviar debuted that April, and gave some backing to Somers’ big call after her Cranbourne barrier trial win with her first two victories. Mare owners came crawling out of drains, with Bel Esprit serving 251 of them, and breeders gleefully watching Black Caviar’s third and fourth wins that spring.
“In 2009 we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do with him,” Marshall says. “He’d gone a bit quiet on the track through the end of 2008, we didn’t think a fee of $33,000 was justifiable, so we dropped his fee substantially to get everyone interested again.
“He got a few stakes winners, Black Caviar among them, and in the end we were made to look quite silly. The level of demand was incredible. I don’t think our stallion handlers were too thankful! They were up at all hours of the day covering mares with him.”
The Black Caviar phenomenon began to roar. For Symons, it was bittersweet. While he’d stolen her sire as a yearling, he was an underbidder on his daughter at the Inglis Premier sale of 2008, going to “around $180,000” before Moody won out at $210,000.
Still, it would take 18 months for Black Caviar to complete six starts, her injuries highlighting three factors: a hulking frame, a fierce will to win, and an inordinately high pain threshold which pushed her on regardless of a torn muscle here or there. This was evident again in her famous Royal Ascot victory, under much duress.
And here, Marshall says, is where racing lovers will forever have Bel Esprit to thank.
“He’s such a tough cookie – one of the toughest I’ve dealt with,” he says. “You would never know if he was sick, or in pain, because nothing fazed him, and he would just give 110 per cent every day of the week.
“Nothing ever bothered him, and he threw that into a lot of his progeny. Like when Black Caviar injured herself coming out of the gates (in the Danehill Stakes at Flemington). She tore a muscle but was still tough enough to win.
“That was the key to Bel Esprit’s attributes in producing horses. Even a Bel Esprit with no ability still had the tenacity to win a race somewhere. That’s something you don’t see in a lot of stallions.
“You’d hear it from trainers: a horse that was nowhere near the fastest in the stable but still won more prize-money than most others because it had the will to win. That was Bel Esprit through and through.
“He was a great trainers’ sire. They could almost buy them sight-unseen because they’d go, ‘I’m going to buy a Bel Esprit because I know it’ll win me a race or two’.”
Bel Esprit – sire of 100-plus winners for seven out of nine seasons, and still a top 30 stallion through the seven years after Black Caviar, retires as the sire of 772 winners from 1109 runners worldwide – at 69.6 per cent. He’s also in his third straight season as a top-30 Australian broodmare sire, highlighted by 21st place in 2020-21, due mainly to Ole Kirk.
Although not represented himself in today’s card-closing Bel Esprit Stakes over 1100 metres at Caulfield, his influence on the racetrack remains indelible.
His daughter Volander, bred by Kineld Thoroughbred Racing, lines up for trainer Matt Laurie in the $1m Showdown at Caulfield, while in the role of damsire he has the debut winner Capital Express in the same race.
Ole Kirk’s Group 3-winning half-brother Gimmie Par takes his chance in the VOBIS Gold Dash, while Group 1 placegetter Swats That lines up in the VOBIS Gold Sprint.
Although no longer covering mares in the breeding shed, his legacy will continue to live on for a while to come, and, in the last race today at Caulfield, racegoers will forever more be afforded the opportunity to acknowledge the ‘tough’ yet unremarkable sire that gave us one of racing’s remarkable all-time greats.