Daily Bugle
How fitting that a breeder who set himself up in the printing industry now has a horse making headlines by Press Statement (Hinchinbrook) called Daily Bugle?
Ken Williams built his print business over several decades before selling out 20 years ago and buying the boutique Tarcoola Stud on the Mornington peninsula. He went from a staff of 200 to managing just three – “or about 197 fewer problems” – plus a dozen or so mares.
“I sold out of printing and my wife said I was too young to retire, plus I’d need something to do so I wasn’t annoying the hell out of her all the time,” Williams says with a laugh.
He’d had a lengthy interest in horses and racing but was by no means an expert. But it wasn’t long before he struck gold, putting a daughter of Sir Tristram (Sir Ivor) to an untried first season Danehill-line sire in Choisir to produce dual Group 1-winning mare, Sacred Choice.
Thirteen years later Williams is enjoying a familiar bout of success – albeit to a lesser extent thus far – after sending a daughter of a Sir Tristram mare to an unproven Danehill-line sire, in Press Statement.
Daily Bugle is the result – a debut winner in January for the Robbie Griffiths-Mathew de Kock team, winner of his fourth start in the Mornington Sires last Saturday, and a two-year-old colt now being aimed for the Group 1 ATC Sires Produce stakes next month. He’s also a half-brother, out of the Danehill Dancer (Danehill) mare Hold Me Closer, to 2019 Group 3 Norman Robinson Stakes winner Thought Of That (So You Think).
Williams is nearly 72, and breeding seems as much a tantalising hobby as a business. He knows what he’s doing, but savours advice from those who dig deeper into the science than he does. And while much success stems from hard work, he also knows perhaps the most vital ingredient in this business.
“Oh, you’ve got to have luck, rightio,” he says with a favoured turn of phrase. “In this industry, if you haven’t got luck, I think you’re buggered.”
A large dollop of that came with an early Williams purchase. Around 2003 he waded in and bought the broodmare Intertwined. She was by Sir Tristram, out of a dam Williams feels represents the quality taproot for the bottom line leading to Daily Bugle and Thought Of That, Twining.
A 1984 drop by French sire Twig Moss (Luthier), Twining won the Group 2 VRC Bloodhorse Breeders’ Plate and the Listed AJC Emancipation Stakes, and threw Intertwined as her second named foal. Intertwined was no star on the track, but a short time after Williams bought her, her daughter How Funny (Rory’s Jester) ran second in the 2003 Golden Slipper to Polar Success (Success Express).
Williams bred six foals from Intertwined, and the sixth was Hold Me Closer. He bred the filly in a foal-share arrangement with the significantly larger Coolmore operation, partly due to Danehill Dancer’s hefty service fee of $120,000.
Despite the pedigree, she was no hot ticket as a yearling, sporting a pair of open knees and a case of physitis. Coolmore bought her wholly at the Gold Coast Magic Millions Yearling Sale of 2011 for $45,000. She was sold on at the MM National Yearling sale five months later, to a posse of Coolmore staff buying privately, for $30,000.
Hold Me Closer raced nine times for a city win, and when she was retired after breaking down in 2013, the syndicate offered her back to Williams, for not very much.
“I said, ‘What are you talking about? She’s a really well-bred mare’,” Williams tells It’s In The Blood. “But the boys weren’t that interested in breeding with her. I won’t tell you the price, but I was very happy, put it that way.”
Williams contacted his statistical guru in the UK, Dr Steve Harrison, of Thoroughbred Genetics. He advised the outcross to So You Think (High Chaparral) which yielded Thought Of That.
After that mating was repeated (for an as-yet unraced filly), much like he had advised Williams in the gamble on Choisir in his first season that produced Sacred Choice, Harrison was insistent on an unproven second-season sire, Press Statement.
The 2015 Caulfield Guineas winner and Randwick Guineas runner-up, Press Statement hadn’t quite hit the ground running at Vinery Stud. Early foal reports weren’t that encouraging. His service fee dropped from $27,500 to $22,000. But Harrison was more than just keen.
“It felt a bit weird to me,” Williams says. “I must admit I couldn’t quite see it, but on the rating system Steve uses, it was through the roof.
“But I’ve used and trusted Steve for years. He wrote a paper in 2006 looking at the mitochondrial DNA passed on by females, and his stats and data show how certain male lines mate up better with certain mitochondrial female groups. Or, put more simply, he just liked the mating.”
There had been similarities with the Harrison-inspired Sacred Choice, out of a mare in Sacred Habit (Sir Tristram) who was surprisingly quite in-bred, perhaps through the 3X4 presence of her sire Sir Tristram’s maternal grand-sire Round Table (Princequillo).
“That mating came out of the blue,” Williams recalls. “You can’t tell by looking at the pedigree, but when you looked at her DNA, and her genetic markers, she was terribly in-bred. Steve’s suggestion was to breed to something that was pre-potent and totally outbred to her, and he said Choisir was the perfect mating, which turned out to be a good call, considering we got a multiple Group 1 winner.”
By contrast, there appear some potential dangers in Daily Bugle’s pedigree. He’s in-bred to Danehill on a 4X3 cross, and involving two sons, no less, which stats show to be the least attractive kind of Danehill in-breeding. On top it runs Danehill-Fastnet Rock-Hinchinbrook-Press Statement. Below it goes Danehill-Danehill Dancer-Hold Me Closer.
But Daily Bugle’s distaff line, that all-important channel of mitochondrial genetic information, essentially overwhelmed those Danehill dangers.
“A double Danehill cross can be very unsuccessful, but what would’ve overtaken that is that Daily Bugle’s female line is dominant. And the mix that was so attractive was Danehill across a Sir Tristram-line mare,” says Williams, who could also be talking about Sacred Choice.
“You could pull your hair out trying to understand it, like I do at times. But if Steve comes back and says this is the way to go, especially when he gets a rating number like he got on this Daily Bugle mating, I just go with it, I don’t look too hard. And we’ve got a very nice horse out of it.”
That horse was knocked down to Griffiths for $230,000 at the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale of 2020, eclipsing the $100,000 Thought Of That had realised at Inglis Easter two years earlier.
“Daily Bugle’s not a big horse but everything’s in the right spot,” says Williams, who holds a share in the colt. “He’s a lovely horse to look at and I think what attracted Robbie the most is he’s got an unbelievable walk on him. He moves like a panther, very athletic to look at.”
Press Statement, represented also by Magic Millions Maiden winner Newsreader, now sits eighth on Australia’s second season sires’ table, and in fact had two winners from three races at Mornington last Saturday when Incredulous Dream won the third.
Hold Me Closer now has a Spirit Of Boom (Sequalo) yearling and a So You Think weanling, both fillies Williams will probably race.
After Thought Of That romped home with the Norman Robinson, Williams received substantial offers for Hold Me Closer, but did as her name suggests – a fact the ex-Coolmore syndicate who raced her seem to regret ever more.
“I saw them recently and they were crying on my shoulder. They said, ‘You’re the luckiest breeder in the world!’,” Williams says with an understandable chuckle.
“I’m not sure that I am, but I know one thing about luck – you can’t survive in this game without it.”
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Trevor Marshallsea is the best-selling author of Makybe Diva and Winx- Biography of a Champion.