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Tulloch Lodge hoping Shangri La Boy can shine in Spring Champion
Gai Waterhouse is confident she can repeat a sibling trick 23 years on when she and Adrian Bott send favourite Shangri La Boy (Pierro) into Saturday’s Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) at Randwick.
In 2002, Waterhouse won the three-year-old feature with the younger sibling of a shorter-course star, when Redoute’s Choice’s (Danehill) little brother Platinum Scissors outstayed his rivals for Jim Cassidy.
This week she’ll be striving to win the race with Shangri La Boy, the year-younger half-brother to Tulloch Lodge’s former gun two-year-old speedster Storm Boy (Justify).
While Storm Boy’s five victories from ten starts ranged from 1100 metres to 1200 metres - en route to his current first spring standing at Coolmore Stud for $16,500 (inc GST) - Shangri La Boy has quickly shown he’ll likely be suited by longer trips.
Purchased by Waterhouse and Bott and Bruce Slade’s Kestrel Thoroughbreds for $375,000 at Magic Millions Gold Coast - where a year earlier they’d paid $460,000 for Storm Boy - Shangri La Boy only debuted on September 17.
That 1.09-length third over 1250 metres at Canterbury was followed by a 2.18 length midweek maiden win over 1400 metres at Rosehill. Stepped up two furlongs for the Gloaming Stakes (Gr 3, 1800m), the colt showed he relished the further distance by leading throughout for a 2.11-length triumph.
Bookmakers have Shangri La Boy favourite for the Spring Champion at around $3.40, ahead of Godolphin’s Joe Pride-trained $3.80 shot Attica (Lonhro), another who’s well bred as the first foal of Darley’s seven-time stakes winner Savatiano (Street Cry).
Waterhouse also trained Shangri La Boy’s Coolmore sire Pierro (Lonhro), the five-time Group 1 winner and two-year-old Triple Crown hero. She sees a lot of the sire in the son, just as she sees shared characteristics between the two “boys” of broodmare Pelican (Fastnet Rock) - Shangri La and Storm Boy - that mare’s only two named foals so far.
“I can’t see any reason why Shangri La Boy can’t win this Saturday,” Waterhouse, chasing her fifth win in the race, told ANZ News.
“He’s got great speed, and he’s got that lovely strength about himself. He’s by Pierro - a champion racehorse and a champion sire - and I love the way this horse pins his ears back when other horses come to him.
“That’s exactly the way Pierro used to race - exactly. He used to pin the ears back and say, ‘Get out of my way’.
“Shangri La Boy does exactly the same thing. It’s amazing. And Storm Boy used to do the same thing too. Not every horse does it, but those three horses really have had that attribute.
“So I think with Shangri La Boy and Storm Boy, obviously their mother had a bit to do with it as well. She’s been a damn good broodmare so far.”
Pelican won twice at 1000 metres and 1200 metres, including in a Melbourne metro two-year-old handicap, but appears to have inherited some stamina not only from her sire Fastnet Rock but her outstanding dam.
Seachange (Cape Cross) was New Zealand’s Horse of the Year in 2007 and 2008, and while she was also its Champion Sprinter in that second year, three of her seven elite victories came over 1600 metres, and she was Group 1-placed over 2040 metres.
For Pierro’s part, four of his 40 stakes winners have scored at further than 2400 metres, while he’s sired five Derby winners - and 2019 Spring Champion victor Shadow Hero.
Waterhouse said she’d been surprised to acquire Shangri La Boy for $85,000 less than his fellow Coolmore-bred sibling Storm Boy, considering the latter had won his first two starts by then.
“Storm Boy as a yearling was a lovely big strong horse, and good boned,” Waterhouse said.
“And Shangri La Boy was the half-brother, by a proven sire in Australia in Pierro, so I said we should buy him.
“I was very surprised he didn’t bring more money. But there’s such a lot of know-alls in the sales ring, and thank the lord there are.
“It’s nice buying or being given horses where you know the dam or the granddam. You can see the similarities if there are some. They’re not always there, but most times they are.”
And while he was something of a late bloomer, Waterhouse feels Shangri La Boy - part of the “Shangri La” team of Shanghai textiles millionaire Tony Huang - has come into a golden period at the right time.
“Horses, when they come right, can just go ahead in leaps and bounds. It’s so exciting,” she said. “You only have to see the Caulfield Cup winner [Half Yours]. He’s done the same sort of thing.
“I’m pretty confident about Saturday. Shangri La Boy is a very talented horse, he should get the run of the race from gate two, he’s got a good jockey in Nash Rawiller, and I can’t see any reason why he can’t lead all the way over the 2000 metres.”
Waterhouse has fond memories of Platinum Scissors, one of three Group 1 winners among five stakes victors for the remarkable broodmare Shantha’s Choice (Canny Lad), and another horse who came from nowhere in a hurry. Yet she still angsts over what might have been.
“I was really concerned with him before he raced. He couldn’t go at all - couldn’t scratch himself. So I said to his owner Muzaffar Yaseen, who’d also had Redoute’s Choice, ‘Should we geld him?’ He said no,” Waterhouse said.
“Then at his second trial he came home really well under Darren Beadman, and I rang Mr Yaseen and said, ‘Redoute’s brother has revealed himself!’
“In his first prep he won the Spring Champion, then the Norman Robinson next start, and was favourite for the VRC Derby. But he got terribly sick and was never the same horse. He won a Group 2 and a Group 3, but he was never able to achieve the heights we’d thought he would.
“But Shantha’s Choice - what a fabulous broodmare. Pelican might be on the same track. It’s a pretty big ask - Shantha’s Choice is one of the great broodmares - but you never know.
“We won the Spring Champion with a brother to Redoute’s. Hopefully we can do something similar with the half-brother to Storm Boy, and there’ll be a bit of symmetry there.”
Waterhouse in fact did achieve something similar with her second Spring Champion winner, Magic Of Sydney in 1996, who came a year after her first one with another son of Danehill in the exceptional Nothin’ Leica Dane.
Magic Of Sydney’s year-younger full-brother Daney Boy had won Perth’s two-year-old feature sprint, the Karrakatta Plate (Gr 1, 1200m) back when it still had top-tier status.
Waterhouse said Shangri La Boy was unlikely to follow Platinum Scissors’ path towards the VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m), but her stable’s second Spring Champion runner Champagne Hero (Maruice) - another colt carrying Huang’s colours - probably would.
A $600,000 Gold Coast purchase for Waterhouse and Bott and Kestrel, from the draft of breeders Rosemont Stud, Champagne Hero has won two of five at Wyong and Newcastle, before a fair 4.54-length seventh in the Gloaming, and is at $16 for the Spring Champion.


















