Future looking bright for Harron’s team of youngsters
James Harron and his backers don’t have another stallion on their hands just yet, but the partnership’s current cohort of two-year-olds as a group might just be their strongest yet – and certainly since 2019-20 when King’s Legacy (Redoute’s Choice) won two Group 1s as a juvenile.
Highness made it three stakes winners for Harron so far this season when scoring at Wyong on Wednesday, paving the way for the Snitzel colt to target the Magic Millions 2YO Classic and the agent this week revealed his syndicate’s two other stakes winners, Espionage (Zoustar) and Bodyguard (I Am Invincible), were being targeted at Group 1s and bypassing the $3 million Gold Coast race.
“They’re both in work, they look terrific and they’ve both put on about 40 to 50 kilos each,” Harron told us.
“They had a nice break after their impressive debuts and hopefully they can make their presence felt next year.”
The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Espionage won the ATC Breeders’ Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) while the Peter and Paul Snowden-trained Bodyguard won the Maribyrnong Trial Stakes (Listed, 1000m).
Espionage is likely to resume in the Silver Slipper Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) on his way to the Golden Slipper while Bodyguard is being aimed at the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
Customized (Capitalist), another Magic Millions graduate, won a 1050-metre barrier trial at Randwick on Monday for the Snowdens and he, too, could join the Michael Freedman-trained Highness at the Gold Coast.
“He was more switched on with winkers. He’s a nice, big-actioned horse and he probably looks like he’s going to get over a bit further with time and it was quite a slowly run heat,” Harron said of Customized.
“He couldn’t have done much more and was good through the line, and after the line, so at this stage we’re thinking about going towards the BJ McLachlan.
“We’ll certainly take a look at it, 1200 [metres] on a big track and that might be his first kick off point.”
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Is it smoke and mirrors, a distraction that the Minns government desperately needed after the Russell Balding-Racing NSW chairman debacle?
That is, the selling off of Rosehill racecourse and the Australian Turf Club’s plans to develop it with at least $5 billion reportedly jumping into the coffers.
As the dust has started to settle and people have looked beyond the initial front page headlines in mainstream media focusing on the 25,000 homes that could be built on the site, as well as the fallout in the racing trade publications, it appears that more and more people within racing who would be impacted by such a major shift are believing that it’s unlikely to occur and certainly not in the foreseeable future, or within the four to five-year timeline set out.
In an interview with New Zealand’s SENZ’s The Good Oil radio program on Saturday, Arrowfield Stud chairman John Messara said he was “gobsmacked by the announcement, absolutely gobsmacked” and “no, I had not the slightest idea” of the Rosehill sell-off plan.
He also said he was against selling major sporting assets such as premier racecourses.
“If you took that view, you would also sell the Sydney Cricket Ground and you could sell other key, core sporting assets for property redevelopment,” Messara told the station.
“I think Rosehill is one of the two major racetracks in what is the fourth or fifth biggest jurisdiction in the world, NSW.
“Obviously the lure of that amount of money – if that’s the sort of money that will flow, but I can’t see how it could except on a very long scale basis after the development, on the sale of properties, etc – but the answer is, it’s something that I probably would not do myself, but then I haven’t got all the facts at hand.
“I am on the outside looking in.”
Messara said if the ATC needed capital then selling Canterbury was a much better option, even though some say the site would be worth ten times less than Rosehill, in the range of $500 million.
While a memorandum of understanding has been signed between the ATC and the Labor government, trainers undertaking their on-farm yearling inspections for the Magic Millions Gold Coast sale, and even those across the ditch getting an early look at the Karaka yearlings, wouldn’t take odds-on about the development getting off the ground.
Of course, the ATC hasn’t taken anything to its members yet, either, and the group would have to vote on it.
Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys, never shy of publicity, is conspicuous by his absence as well, which makes you ponder the motives of the ATC and the government.
Leading trainer Chris Waller, who would be the most affected by the closure of Rosehill, used the state-versus-state rivalry to try and make his point about the proposed development last weekend.
“I just think there is so much to think about and it makes me think about Victoria a lot and how well the infrastructure is down there,” Waller told Victoria’s racing station RSN.
“Little tracks like Pakenham, you’ve got some really good young trainers down there that have invested in their own properties, some maybe renting, and they’ve basically built up something that they own and the industry owns.
“Then you’ve got Cranbourne, that’s getting bigger. Ballarat’s gone from a dark, cold place to a vibrant training centre, which pumps out a lot of winners.”
“I think the big thing is a trainer needs an asset at the end of the day and we’ve got properties but don’t have as much skin in the game as I’d like, so there’s so many pros and cons.”
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If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, they say.
And after being left out (again) on Saturday, it seems I’ll have to join the team of “good men” from WA and the few interlopers from the east if I am to ever receive the (profitable) Perth mail.
Standing in the mounting yard at Ascot after race one on Saturday, just after racecaller Darren McAullay boomed over the PA system, “Define Beautiful right over the top, grabs the lead and Define Beautiful has got home and they didn’t forget to back it, either, about 20s into 10s”, I spotted some familiar faces.
They included Magic Millions WA’s David Houston, auctioneer Grant Burns, Darling View’s Clive and Brent Atwell and Einoncliff Park’s Wayne Beynon, all smiling like Cheshire cats. Then I looked at the racebook under two-year-old filly Define Beautiful (Ducimus) where I spied the names James Hetherington and Barry Bowditch, of course also of Magic Millions fame, and all were no doubt behind the successful double figures plunge.
Define Beautiful’s trainer Trevor Andrews, who also prepared well-performed three-year-old A Lot Of Good Men for a similar group of owners to run an eye-catching fifth in the Northerly Stakes (Gr 1, 1800m) later in the day, claims this scribe won’t be the kiss of death come February’s Perth sale.
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Perth’s Pinnacles carnival rounds out its five-meeting late spring, early summer event – even though the Perth Cup is still to be run on New Year’s Day – with the Gold Rush tomorrow.
It has gathered more publicity than it ordinarily would due to the fact it’s the last meeting that champion jockey Damien Oliver will ride at before he heads into retirement, but from afar and then being at Ascot last Saturday, the carnival has had a fantastic atmosphere and the participants, owners, trainers and jockeys, have been tremendous to deal with.
They are open and transparent and willing to take calls or speak in person rather than rushing off to the bar post-race. The Northerly meeting had a good feel to it and administrators from Perth Racing and Racing Wagering Western Australia expect a bumper crowd tomorrow to farewell Ollie.
Even though Racing Victoria has encroached on some of Perth’s calendar by moving the Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) and Sir Rupert Clarke (Gr 1, 1400m) into November, I don’t think it diminished the WA carnival in any way, and it’s a credit to what the Sandgropers have been able to achieve with a bit of marketing.
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Sometimes accidents with horses just happen and it’s no one’s fault. Last week, 24 hours prior to Perth-based owner Wally Daly winning the Northerly with Dom To Shoot (Shooting To Win), the breeder was devastated after losing a young horse by first season sire Long Leaf (Fastnet Rock).
The highs and lows of the game.
This week, Western Australian-based trainer Steve Wolfe also experienced a deal of bad luck, finding his Playing God half-sister to Perth’s three-time Group winner Watch Me Dance (I’m All The Talk) dead in her box at his Albany stable on Tuesday morning.
She was a three-year-old named Coventry Blitz who was bought by Noel Carter’s Commercial Bloodstock Services for $150,000 at last year’s Perth Yearling Sale.
Wolfe told us: “I don’t know if a snake bit her or what but she was an unraced filly who was worth anything and showed a heap of ability but never been to the races.
“There’s downsides to the game, isn’t there?”
Watch Me Dance was bought by Sean Buckley for $600,000 at the 2022 Magic Millions Perth Winter Racehorse Sale and she was sent to New Zealand in August this year to start her life as a broodmare.