Kintyre
It’s been a long journey to have Kintyre (Hallowed Crown) join his year older half-sister Fireburn (Rebel Dane) as a stakes winner, its arduous nature illustrated further by Saturday’s Frank Packer Plate (Gr 3, 2000m) breakthrough having to be settled in the stewards’ room.
But while it might be tempting to also call it mystical, there was nothing other-worldly about this passage to black type. It’s a case instead of a planned shot in the breeding world landing a bull’s eye.
It’s just coincidence Mystic Journey was its inspiration.
That Tasmanian super mare earned seven stakes win, an All-Star Mile, almost $4.2 million in prize-money and a lucrative sale to the Japanese breeding barn, and is one of seven black– type victors, from 240 runners, for Needs Further (Encosta De Lago). She’s also his only one at Group 1 level, courtesy of her VRC Australian Guineas (1600m) win in 2019.
Needs Further, standing at Tasmania’s Armidale Stud for $5,500 in 2023, won only one stakes race, Randwick’s Carbine Club Stakes (Gr 3, 1600m) of 2011 – the same event in which Kintyre racked up an agonising fourth black–type placing the start before the Packer.
Kintyre has now become the third-greatest achiever for Hallowed Crown (Street Sense), who stood at Twin Hills Stud for $8,800 in 2023. Like Needs Further, Hallowed Crown has had seven stakes winners, from a similar 230 runners. And he’s also had just the one top-tier victor in Colette, from her sire’s former home of Darley/Godolphin.
There have been stronger numbers for sires other than this pair, but there’s another slice of symmetry between Needs Further and Hallowed Crown, and it’s what caught the eye of Laurel Oak Bloodstock’s Louis Mihalyka in planning the mating that produced Kintyre.
The two are half-brothers, being out of Crowned Glory (Danehill). That Gooree-bred 1997 drop won a Flemington Group 3 for Lee Freedman, but was also the two-year-old unlucky enough that the “one better” she ran into in the 2000 running of the Golden Slipper was Belle Du Jour (Dehere), with that ridiculous and narrow win after bungling the start.
And there was a key ingredient in Crowned Glory’s family also present in those of the dams of Mystic Journey and Kintyre.
Crowned Glory’s second dam was the superb – and prolific – French-bred Lady Giselle (Nureyev). Imported to Australasia, her mating with Bletchingly (Biscay) produced the mare Significant Moment. She was one of the worst-performed of Lady Giselle’s 14 named foals, but her pairing with Danehill at least yielded the stakes-winning and duel stakes-throwing mare, Crowned Glory.
Lady Giselle did leave some better performed offspring, headed by her second foal, Zabeel (Sir Tristram), winner of five stakes races, and another who’s sole Group 1 came in the Australian Guineas. Five foals later she begat Baryshnikov (Kenmare) who won three black– type events, capped by – once again – a certain 1600-metre three-year-old Group 1 at Flemington.
At stud, those two half-brothers were worlds apart. Baryshnikov sired three (low-level) stakes winners, and Zabeel sired 163 more than that, including 46 at the top rung.
Amid all his descendants, Mystic Journey counts among the long list of good ones, with Zabeel the sire of her unraced damsire, Colombia, through his mating with New Zealand blue hen Eight Carat. That gives Mystic Journey a gender-balanced double dose of Lady Giselle at 4f x 4m, running strongly into Needs Further as his third dam, and of course as Zabeel’s mum.
And in choosing the unfashionable Hallowed Crown – then standing at Darley for just $11,000 – Mihalyka saw an almost identical doubling of Lady Giselle at 4f x 4m, but with possibly stronger positioning. Again, as the sire’s third dam, but with Zabeel going directly into the female line of the foal who’d become Kintyre, as the damsire of his mother Mull Over (So You Think).
Mihalyka bought Mull Over for just $22,000 at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale in 2018. Bred by Think Big Stud, she’d seemed ordinary on the track, with one Newcastle win from 11 starts. Further digging by Mihalyka upturned that her connections had considered her city class before injury intervened.
Zabeel was her damsire, but that dam – Zahani – was winless. But what a producer Mull Over has become. Fireburn won the Group 1 double of the Golden Slipper (1200m) and ATC Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400m), two more Group races and $4.25 million prize-money, and almost that again in a stud deal to Japan.
Her half-brother Kintyre has now won more than $500,000 – a more modest haul than big sister, but with possibly far more to come. A gelding, and only three, he has a lot more racing in him, starting with the Brisbane carnival where targets include the $350,000 Queensland Guineas (Gr 2, 1600m) on May 4, and the $250,000 Rough Habit Plate (Gr 3, 2000m) on May 18.
All in all, the Gary Portelli-trained siblings’ racetrack earnings alone of $4.725m leave Mihalyka roughly $4.7m ahead on the purchase of Mull Over, whose bloodlines built a convincing argument for Hallowed Crown when the mating was agreed with Kintyre’s co-breeder – and still part-owner with Mihalyka – Kerrie Tibbey of Goodwood Farm.
“The mating that inspired it, though it is a little different, was Mystic Journey, in that she was in-bred to Lady Giselle,” Mihalyka tells It’s In The Blood.
“I’ve always felt that when you in-breed to some of these horses, it’s better when the horse is in the tail-female line of the stallion. Kintyre has that from Hallowed Crown, like Mystic Journey had it with Needs Further.
“But then when you see it in Kintyre’s female side with Mull Over, Zabeel is in our second dam [Zahani)]. We had the opportunity to do something similar to Mystic Journey, but ours is actually in a better position, pedigree-wise.”
Aside from duplicating the superior Lady Giselle, Kintyre’s pedigree features a doubling of Danehill, at 3f x 4f.
So it’s double-female – probably the second-best way of doubling Danehill behind gender-balanced, if only slightly, but definitely statistically superior to the least-wanted double-male.
And, like Lady Giselle’s duplication, it’s powerfully positioned in both sides of Kintyre’s pedigree: Danehill is Hallowed Crown’s damsire and Mull Over’s second damsire, via Danarani – who usefully was also very good on the track, winning Randwick’s 1994 Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) and two other stakes races.
The other effect of double Danehill is it boosts the numbers of blue hen Natalma (Native Dancer), who’s two times his “great-grandmother”. She appears five times in each side of Kintyre’s pedigree.
“When you’re in-breeding to Danehill, the best option is sex-balanced or two females. Fireburn is sex-balanced, and Kintyre two females,” Mihalyka says. “We’ve found double-male products to be quite dour.”
With Fireburn, Danehill’s duplication is effected with the super sire on her top line in Danehill-California Dane-Rebel Dane, and Mull Over’s aforementioned second dam Danarani.
That helped hit the highs for Fireburn and Rebel Dane, prompting the stallion’s switch from relative obscurity in Victoria to Widden Stud, Hunter Valley.
Ironically, Mihalyka – breeder and part-owner of Rebel Dane – was almost mistakenly led to sniff out another mating for Mull Over after Fireburn’s arrival.
“Fireburn had just been born, so we didn’t know how good she was going to be,” Mihalyka says. “And we’d already had a number of foals by Rebel Dane that year. We only get 12 or 14 new foals a year, and we didn’t know how Rebel Dane was going to go as a stallion, so we thought we wouldn’t use him that year – probably much to our chagrin, given how Fireburn turned out.”
Still, Mihalyka has bred another stakes winner in Kintyre. And Mull Over, whose Pierata colt – bought back by Laurel Oak for $460,000 at Easter earlier this month – will also go to Portelli, is now in-foal to Rebel Dane again.
But what Kintyre has brought so far, apart from prize-money, is the rewarding feeling of what some forethought can produce.
Of Hallowed Crown’s seven stakes winners, four were born in his first crop in 2016, one in 2017 and one in 2018. Kintyre comes along in 2020 to become the stallion’s third-best offspring, and from a paltry crop of 34 foals – exactly half the number of his 2016 batch that produced Colette and three other black–type victors.
Mihalyka can list several Laurel Oak success stories bred from lesser-light stallions: dual Group 1 winner Rebel Dane being the best of California Dane’s six stakes winners; Fireburn in turn being the best so far from Rebel Dane; and now Kintyre by Hallowed Crown.
“The really good stallions do it on their own – the I Am Invincibles and Snitzels, you don’t make any real impression on their results with your planned matings,” Mihalyka says.
“But if you look at horses we’ve bred like Rebel Dane by California Dane, Fireburn being Rebel Dane’s best so far, and now Kintyre for Hallowed Crown, we [Laurel Oak] have noticed over the years that for less successful stallions, we’ve had the best horse or close to their best horse through planned matings.
“So yes, it is a nice, satisfying feeling, that a planned mating to a horse who sired only 34 foals that year has brought the best one of the crop, and his third-best overall, in Kintyre.”