Ryan celebrates back-to-back Singapore stakes wins
Relentless by name, relentless by nature. That term could fittingly apply both to Blake Ryan and a pair of his graduates, Relentless (Hallowed Crown) and Golden Monkey (Star Turn), after the duo gave the renowned horseman his first Group winners in Singapore
Even with Singapore’s restricted nature ensuring that the Stewards’ Cup (Listed, 1600m), a local Group 2, and the Singapore 3YO Sprint (Listed, 1200m), a local Group 3, only carry Listed status for future pedigree pages, it is a noteworthy milestone for the Australian who has become one of the premier sources of ready to race prospects down under.
Ryan, son of top trainer Gerald, is forging his name as a trainer in his own right with a stable of almost 30 at his Hawkesbury base on the outskirts of Sydney. However, it is his success as a pinhooker and a meticulous and methodical educator of ready to race prospects that has established his reputation and it appears that further success is now on the horizon with stakes-quality graduates.
“We’ve sold a lot of winners but these are actually the first Group winners we’ve sold so to get two Singapore Group winners in two weeks, it’s really satisfying,” Ryan told Asia Bloodstock News. “It’s what we set out to do when we started this, we wanted to prepare a nice horse for the market. It’s good for the sale, it’s good for us as a draft and as a vendor and it shows, like at any sale, if you’re prepared to do the work you can find the ones that can slip through the cracks.
“If you’d said to me, these two will be your first two Group winners, I would have looked at you a little bit funny. I would have said Relentless before Golden Monkey but it is amazing what time does.”
While the Tim Fitzsimmons-trained Golden Monkey became Ryan’s first Group-winning graduate on June 18 in the Singapore 3YO Sprint, it is his stablemate Relentless (4 g Hallowed Crown – Gladwell by Anabaa) who looks set to be a force at the highest levels in Singapore after taking out one of their premier races, the Stewards’ Cup, on Sunday.
With his three-quarter length victory over the classy Lim’s Kosciuszko (Kermadec) under Vlad Duric, Relentless joined an honour roll that includes some of Singapore’s top liners including War Affair (O’Reilly), Emperor Max (Holy Roman Emperor), Gingerbread Man (Shamardal), Better Than Ever (French Deputy) and Big Maverick (O’Reilly).
When the then-unnamed two-year-old stepped foot into the Riverside sales ring at the Inglis Ready 2 Race Sale in 2019, expectations were high as his half-brother Buddies (So You Think) had won four of his nine starts in Hong Kong and he was clearly bound for stakes company.
However, Ryan said that he was a different type to eventual Group 3 winner Buddies in many ways.
“He was a horse that I always quite liked, he was really backwards but he had a nice frame and I always thought he was a really nice moving horse,” Ryan recalled. “He was quite popular because his half-brother Buddies was winning in Hong Kong at the time and there was quite a bit of interest in him because of that.
“Buddies though is a big, strong, flashy son of So You Think and this horse was backwards and a little bit light. I think people were a little bit disappointed in him and in what they saw, but he always moved well. I remember saying to three or four people, I was reading the place a bit and I’d say, don’t knock the horse until you watch him walk. And I think everyone that I said that to said, you’re right.”
Ryan’s relationship with Arthur and Harry Mitchell at Yarraman Park Stud saw him given Relentless to prepare for the two-year-old sales. And while the market may not have appreciated the eventual Singapore stakes winner, Ryan was buoyed when he saw that Wattle Bloodstock’s Peter Twomey was the eventual buyer for $30,000.
“I got a phone call from the Mitchells at Yarraman Park and a client of theirs, Conor O’Brien, he bred the horse but he’d gone back to Ireland and this was the horse he had left,” he said. “They sent him down and there was nothing special about him when he arrived, he was just a neat Hallowed Crown type but a bit backward and needed time.
“I’m rapt to see what he’s done over there, we had $30,000 (as a reserve) on him and we got $30,000 for him. Peter’s a very good judge, so that always gives you confidence. I’ve followed the horse along and I’m rapt to see what he’s done. Hopefully, he can go on and be hard to beat in the Derby.”
A year after Relentless went through the Riverside ring, Golden Monkey (3 g Star Turn – Dixie’s Comet by Northern Meteor) would be a member of Ryan’s draft at the 2020 Inglis Ready 2 Race Sale.
Another who was expected to interest Asian buyers coming from the family of Hong Kong’s Group 2-placed sprinter Flagship Shine (Tale Of The Cat), a breeze that Ryan describes as “terrible” saw him fail to reach his reserve and he stayed in Australia.
“Golden Monkey, he was a bit on the other side (to Relentless),” Ryan said. “He was a big, raw horse. One of my clients rang me and asked me to prepare him, he’d bought a handful of yearlings – I think I prepared three for him that year.
“Gelding has been the making of him, as well as time. He was a bit of an ugly duckling, he actually moved OK but he didn’t have a good experience on breeze day. He was quite bully, he went to water and he breezed terribly really. The time wasn’t terrible but the way he did it, it just made it awfully hard to try and promote the horse.
“The gentleman that owned him took him home, I think we had $30,000 on him and he was passed in. There was an offer of $20,000 a day later and the gent said no, I’m going to send him to Victoria to Clayton Douglas.
“He was always a much better horse than he showed on breeze up day and as I say, time and the gelding operation have been his best friends.”
Golden Monkey was purchased from Australia as a maiden, having had five starts for Douglas. While he didn’t break his duck down under, he did finish in front of stakes winners like Barb Raider (Rebel Raider) and Tutukaka (Tavistock) and the form around him has stood up.
Transferred to Fitzsimmons, he has won two of his four starts including the Singapore 3YO Sprint which gave the trainer his first ever stakes success.
While Ryan is pleased to have seen his graduates go on to strike success, he already is hard at work preparing his 2022 draft – and there will be some familiar bloodlines on offer.
“We’ve got at least 20 this year, depending on what happens between now and then, and there are some really nice horses amongst them and also some sleeprs amongst them,” he said. “There’s a good mix of stallions and I’m really happy with how they are coming along.
“Through coincidence, we’ve actually got the half-brother to Golden Monkey by Churchill. He’s a different horse altogether – he’s neat, strong, more in the Galileo sort of mould. I actually quite like the horse, he’s only been with me a short time but I think he will get up and run.
“I’ve got a Deep Field colt that I paid $250,000 for at Easter and I think he’s as good as anything I’ve ever taken to a sale, he’s a star; I’ve got a Real Steel colt I picked up at Classic from Arrowfield, I love him.
“The training is going well too, we’ve had a good start. I’ve got 26 in work at the moment, we started with one horse in January last year and now we’ve got 45 on the books. I’ve had quite a few provincial winners, the city Saturday winner (Momack) was a great thrill too and hopefully onwards and upwards.”