Golden Sixty assumes respect on an international scale
Not even the spectre of Covid-19 could detract from the global nature of the Longines Hong Kong International Races at Sha Tin on Sunday.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club bill the card’s Group 1 events as the ‘Turf World Championships’, and while other international meetings also easily live up to that status, there must have been great satisfaction at the close of play on Sunday given that the day’s features had consisted of winners from Ireland (Mogul in the Vase for Aidan O’Brien) and Japan (Danon Smash emulated his sire, Lord Kanaloa, by taking the Sprint, while Normcore, by Harbinger, won the Cup) in addition to the highly popular success of domestic runner Golden Sixty in the Mile.
A local horse he might be but Golden Sixty is actually the most exotic of the four Group 1-winning animals. Bred in Australia and bought by current connections out of a breeze-up in New Zealand, Hong Kong’s latest phenomenon hails from a southern hemisphere crop of an international heavyweight in Medaglia D’Oro and is out of an American-bred, Gaudeamus, who was trained to win an Irish Group 2 by Jim Bolger.
In turn, that daughter of Distorted Humor is a descendant of Queen’s Statute, a producer of note for EP Taylor in Canada whose subsequent appeal to major breeders would fuel the development of her line into a worldwide force.
Along the way, representatives such as Bosra Sham, Hector Protector, Lammtarra, Pour Moi and California Memory, another Hong Kong star of his time, has done it proud. Yet what Golden Sixty has achieved over the past two years in Hong Kong for trainer Francis Lui matches up well to the stature of any of those relations.
Stanley Chan’s gelding was named Hong Kong’s champion four-year-old and most popular horse of the year at the Hong Kong Champion Awards in July following his rare clean sweep of Hong Kong’s Four-Year-Old Classic Series – the Hong Kong Classic Mile, Hong Kong Classic Cup and the Hong Kong Derby. He has continued to carry all before him since then, notably as the winner of the Group 2 Sha Tin Trophy and Jockey Club Mile in the run-up to Sunday’s Hong Kong Mile.
Golden Sixty went into Sunday’s race as the winner of 13 of his 14 starts, yet doubts still lingered over his ability to dispatch a field of top international milers. Those who backed him into 30-100 favouritism need not have worried; held up by regular pilot Vincent Ho, Golden Sixty showed his customary turn of speed to pick off the leaders and storm clear for a two-length success over Southern Legend, with Order Of Australia and Romanised well in arrears.
Such a performance naturally begged the question of an international campaign for Golden Sixty, but Lui commented that such plans unfortunately remain off the table while the pandemic rages on.
This isn’t the first time that Golden Sixty’s sire, the Travers Stakes and Whitney Handicap winner Medaglia D’Oro, has thrown a runner of iconic proportions.
His first crop, bred when he stood at Hill ’n’ Dale Farm in Kentucky, contained champion Rachel Alexandra, whose five Grade 1 wins included a 20-length romp in the Kentucky Oaks and a victory over the colts in the Preakness Stakes. Seven crops later and there was another star in Songbird, a nine-time Grade 1 winner who sold at the end of her career for US$9.5 million.
Medaglia D’Oro has been a mainstay of Darley’s Kentucky roster since his sale – reportedly to be in the region of US$45m – to the operation in the aftermath of Rachel Alexandra’s Classic achievements in 2009. By El Prado, and therefore a grandson of Sadler’s Wells, he possesses the ability to throw elite runners on both dirt and turf, an attribute that in turn had consolidated his position as a stalwart of Darley’s Australian operation prior to his recent retirement from shuttling.
Overall, he is responsible for 145 stakes winners, of which 26 are Group or Grade 1 winners. That elite collection is scattered across the globe, ranging from the aforementioned Rachel Alexandra and Songbird in the US to the European-trained Passion For Gold and Talismanic and Australian-born Astern and Vancouver.
Golden Sixty is from Medaglia D’Oro’s sixth southern hemisphere crop and shares his damsire, the veteran Forty Niner stallion Distorted Humor, with other Grade 1 winners by the sire in New Money Honey and Elate. It is also a variation of the Forty Niner cross that also sits behind Rachel Alexandra (out of a Roar mare) and Songbird (out of a West Acre mare).
Gaudeamus was a relatively inexpensive US$60,000 yearling purchase in September 2005 by Richard Galpin’s Newmarket International and, sent to Bolger, went on to win a Listed event and the Group 2 Debutante Stakes during a productive season at two.
Following a quiet three-year-old campaign, she was purchased privately by agent Sheamus Mills on behalf of Wood Nook Farm and sent to Australia in foal to Pivotal. She changed hands again in 2015 while carrying Golden Sixty at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale. Josh Hutchins went to $160,000 on that occasion to secure the mare on behalf of Element Hill – money well spent in light of subsequent events.
In hindsight, Gaudeamus was also well bought as a yearling by Galpin and Bolger given her heritage.
Like plenty of the thoroughbred population, the hand of EP Taylor weighs heavily on the deeper reaches of this family. Best known as the breeder of Northern Dancer, Taylor came into possession of the line with the purchase out of Newmarket of Queen’s Statute as a yearling in 1955. Queen’s Statute, by Le Levandou, never ran but more than made up for it at stud by producing six stakes winners including the 1963 Canadian Oaks heroine Menedict.
As her worth to Taylor’s Windfields Farm grew, Queen’s Statute naturally became a good fit for Northern Dancer. One resulting foal was the Canadian champion Dance Act, but in Royal Statute, a minor winner foaled in 1969, she left behind a daughter of immense influence as the dam of Konafa, an excellent producer for the Niarchos family, and Awaasif, one of the first good horses to be owned by Sheikh Mohammed.
Awaasif was the best horse sired by shock 1974 Derby winner Snow Knight, latterly a Windfields stallion, and bought for a sale-topping US$325,000 through Aston Upthorpe Stud at Fasig-Tipton in 1980. She went on to develop into a fine staying filly for John Dunlop, who saddled her to win the Yorkshire Oaks and run third in the Arc. Latterly at stud, she produced the 1989 Epsom Oaks ‘winner’ Snow Bride, in turn the dam of Lammtarra.
Awaasif’s yearling valuation that summer at Fasig-Tipton was supported in part by the exploits of her half-sister Konafa, who had run second to Flying Water in the 1976 1,000 Guineas. By Damascus, Konafa joined the Niarchos fold when bought for US$625,000 at Keeneland in 1980. The foal she was carrying at the time turned out to be Italian champion Proskona, while a year later she foaled the French Group 3 winner Korveya to Riverman. That particular daughter went on to spawn a dynasty of her own as the dam of Guineas winners Hector Protector, Shanghai and Bosra Sham; by the time she foaled the latter in 1993, Korveya was in the hands of Gerald Leigh, who would also cultivate Proskona’s line to good effect to yield Prix du Jockey Club hero Act One.
Leo’s Lucky Lady, Konafa’s 1987 filly by Seattle Slew, remained in America after selling for US$725,000 to Manganaro Stables as a Keeneland July yearling. She was talented enough to land minor black-type but was a relatively exposed 17-year-old producer by the time she foaled Gaudeamus, which goes some way to explaining that relatively low yearling valuation.
But there was that deep family of great significance behind her and now, at the age of 16, Gaudeamus herself continues to drive it forward as Golden Sixty assumes respect on an international scale.
The gelding is the sixth and best foal out of the mare and is followed by a yearling filly by Capitalist catalogued as lot 336 at next month’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.