Love Tap aiming to bring up Tapit’s first Australian Group 1 success
Gary West-bred three-year-old well fancied to retain unbeaten record in Spring Champion Stakes
The last time breeder Gary West had a three-year-old unbeaten from four starts heading into a top-level 10-furlong feature, the contest produced as controversial a result as the racing world has seen in the modern era.
West, with his wife Mary, is the breeder and owner of Maximum Security (New Year’s Day), who carried their pink and black colours to a tenacious victory in the Kentucky Derby (Gr 1, 10f) last year. That is, until he was disqualified for shifting ground and relegated to 17th.
“What should have been the fastest two minutes in sports turned into over a year of litigation,” a United States federal appeals court wrote in August, upholding the Derby disqualification and seemingly bringing an end to countless endeavours to overturn the result.
Given Australia’s Category 1 protest rules are more straightforward than the confusing American Category 2 guidelines, hopefully today’s two-minute feature at Randwick, the Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m), is far more clear-cut as the West-bred Love Tap (Tapit), a winner of all four of his starts to date, aims to add a first Group 1 win to his record.
Last night, the Richard and Michael Freedman-trained grey was the $3.40 equal favourite for the Spring Champion Stakes alongside last weekend’s Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Montefilia (Kermadec).
A victory to Love Tap would also represent a new milestone for Gainesway Farm’s Tapit, coming weeks after providing the three-time North American leading sire with his first Australian Group victory.
While Tapit has produced 26 Grade 1 winners in the United States, including top-liners like Frosted, Untapable, Tonalist, Unique Bella, Constitution, Creator and Tapwrit, as well as Japanese Group 1 victor Testa Matta, he is yet to have the same success in the southern hemisphere from limited runners.
Tapit has had 19 individual runners in Australia with ten of them winners, while Secretariat Stakes (Gr 1, 10f) runner-up Closing Bell, Japanese Listed placegetter Tap That and Monmouth black-type winner Noisy Feet also raced down under without success.
“We certainly know of all his accolades here in America, he’s just had his 26th and 27th Grade 1 winner over the weekend,” said Sean Tugel, director of stallion sales & recruitment at Gainesway. “He’s still one of the most dominant sires in America, he’s a sire of sires now and his stallions are taking off here, but he’s had a Grade 1 winner in Japan and for him to have another Grade 1 winner on another continent would just be an additional feather in his cap.
“We would love to have a horse that can touch every continent. It’s not always achievable, but Tapit is such an established horse and he is now reaching Australia where there is such a high demand on precocity and he’s had a great record with two-year-olds.
“He puts the class and the will to win into horses and he’s starting to click with some of that precocity that is down in Australia and hopefully, if they found the right match for him, we can get some more Grade 1 winners down under.
Tugel believes that Tapit’s success as a sire of sires in the United States is what separates him from some of the other leading sires in the world.
“What really separates the generational sires, the likes of Mr Prospector, A.P. Indy and now Tapit, is being able to produce high level sons who are going to take over from them,” he said.
“We have got Constitution who is one of the most exciting horses in America and he had Tiz The Law this year in his first crop. You’ve also got Frosted who is one of the best sires of Tapit’s crop with his first two year olds.”
While Tapit has established a recent reputation as a sire of sires in the United States, through Frosted, Tapit saw a son of his kick off his Australian career with a first stakes winner from his very first runner as Ingratiating won the Maribyrnong Trial Stakes (Listed, 1000m) last weekend.
Although Love Tap – as a gelding – will not follow in their footsteps to the stallion barn, he could aim to create history of his own. Should he perform to expectations today, managing owner and syndicator Dean Watt and the Freedmans have flagged the possibility that the grey will aim to become the first three-year-old gelding to take the Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) as the championship event celebrates its centenary.
“The reality is Love Tap’s the most promising horse I’ve had,’’ Dynamic Syndication’s Watt told News Corp’s Ray Thomas. “He goes to the Spring Champion Stakes and if he wins, he will get an invite to the Cox Plate and then we will look at the Victoria Derby. I’m following the same path as we did with Savabeel and I promise you Love Tap is a better horse.
“I’ve never won a Derby and we purchased this horse to try and win one,’’ he said. “Spring or autumn, it doesn’t matter, I’m super keen to win a Derby, that is something missing on my bucket list.’’
If Love Tap does make it to the Victoria Derby (Gr 1, 2500m), it will mean that West – as a breeder – will be represented at two of the world’s biggest meetings on either side of the planet in the same week.
In addition to the Melbourne Cup Carnival, West will be represented at the Breeders’ Cup with Love Tap’s half-sister Fighting Mad (New Year’s Day) – winner of the Clement L Hirsch Stakes (Gr 1, 8.5f) in August – in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff (Gr 1, 9f), while Maximum Security, now owned by the Wests in partnership with Coolmore, is due to step out in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (Gr 1, 10f).
Love Tap does not carry the West’s pink and black colours that were donned by Maximum Security during his three-year-old season, instead sporting the Dynamic Syndications white and red, who secured the grey from Coolmore’s draft at the 2019 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale for $110,000.
While West does not own Love Tap, it was his brainchild to put Smokey’s Love (Forestry) – a mare his racing manager Ben Glass purchased for USD$67,000 (approx. AUD$93,350) at the 2014 Keeneland January All-Ages Sale – in foal to champion American stallion Tapit (Pulpit) to southern hemisphere time before sending her to Australia in April, 2017.
Unfortunately, Smokey’s Love slipped to American Pharoah (Pioneerof The Nile) in 2017, while her 2018 covering to the Triple Crown winner produced a colt who was destroyed six days after birth. She was sent back to the US in February.