Sergeant Major
Gavin O’Dea is an accountant and small-time breeder from Hawera who at 77 and having been breeding for 40 years has seen a thing or two.
But he hadn’t before seen the like of what happened at Trentham in March last year when a horse he bred, Sergeant Major (Proisir), contested the Sires Prelude 2YO Stakes (1200m).
Having his second race – after a debut second in an Otaki maiden – the Gavin Sharrock-trained gelding blew the start by three lengths. As if that wasn’t “show over”, on hitting the home bend the raw two-year-old went wide. Way wide. You wouldn’t say he veered out on the turn – more that he missed it altogether.
Several people told O’Dea that cost the horse seven lengths. O’Dea reckons it was only four. But whatever it was, Sergeant Major balanced up again, under Sam Weatherley, and rather than fatiguing out of it as he rightly should have, he built up a head of steam. He flew down the grandstand side to win.
Not just win. He won by 3.3 lengths. And against a handy field.
The track was a soft 7. And he still set a stunning time of 1:09.66.
As a loose comparison, one week later at Rosehill another two-year-old, Lady Of Camelot (Written Tycoon), covered the same distance to win the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) in 1:09.76 – almost a length slower. On a good 4.
“The phone started ringing that very night,” O’Dea tells It’s In The Blood. “They don’t muck around those boys.”
It has taken him another seven starts to score his next win, but Sergeant Major’s eventual buyers saw that horse from Trentham again at Randwick on Saturday, when he won the South Pacific Classic (Listed, 1400m) by 0.35 lengths.
O’Dea had thought long and hard before selling him. A larger offer came in from Hong Kong, but O’Dea instead accepted the bid from Melbourne mega owner Ozzie Kheir, who now races him in his familiar colours with Ciaron Maher, along with a team of heavyweights including Neil Werrett, John O’Neill and Brae Sokolski.
While the windfall would have been better from Hong Kong, O’Dea had waited a long time for a horse this exciting.
“I knew if I sold to Hong Kong, that would be that. I couldn’t stay in the ownership,” O’Dea says. “At least if he went to Australia, I could keep a share and I could go over and see him race if I wanted to.”
That said, having retained a share in the deal, O’Dea was at a home show up the road in New Plymouth last Saturday and, as he puts it, “had to watch the race on my wife’s mobile phone”.
When this column asked Proisir’s studmaster John Thompson, of Rich Hill Stud, for a mobile number for O’Dea, the request was met with laughter, and an explanation that O’Dea was from Taranaki.
To set the record straight, the place isn’t quite that old fashioned. O’Dea tells us he does have a mobile phone, but he leaves it at home, which is why it’s best to call him on the landline at his accountancy office, the one he took over from his dad.
If it sounds like this is one of those heart-warming New Zealand stories of thoroughbred lore, where a barefoot mare in the backyard of a tiny village produces a big city champion, that’s in fact not far off the mark.
O’Dea has been breeding for four decades, starting out with his father Pat. They bred a highly consistent one in the late ’80s called Moving Away (Half Iced), who ran second in a Wellington Guineas (Gr 2, 1600m) then won four city races in Melbourne, alongside 12 metro placings there.
But Sergeant Major looks like being the headline act of O’Dea’s breeding story – though he thought that might have come along a couple of years earlier, and out of the same broodmare, no less.
This chapter started, humbly, when O’Dea and friends Johnny and Helena Goodin paid all of $4,000 for an unraced mare named Efrosini (Royal Academy) at the Karaka Broodmare Sale of 2010.
She’d had four named foals, and three of them would end up unplaced, but O’Dea and his friends liked the breeding. She was a full sister to Honour The Name, who’d won in Australia at Listed, Group 3 and Group 2 level but just failed to complete the full set, running second in the 2000 Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m), to one of New Zealand’s finest, Sunline (Desert Sun).
Efrosini was in-foal to Ekraar (Red Ransom), and that produced a filly the breeders named Forty Love. These owners were nothing if not methodical. The one before was called Thirtylove (Postponed).
Thirtylove was unplaced in 16 starts. Forty Love also lived up to her name – as the receiver, not the server – by running twice for two 11ths, before succumbing to a leg issue. But once she went into breeding, for O’Dea, she came up all aces.
O’Dea’s pedigrees consultant Earl Feck recommended the then first-season sire, Proisir (Choisir), who’d begun standing for a modest $7,000. O’Dea, who mostly breeds to race, did what he was told. Four foals in a row, in fact.
The first was Vancooga, who after winning a 1600-metre maiden at Otaki at her sixth start, nearly could have become an elite winner for O’Dea and his Taranaki mate Sharrock. She swooped home from near last for a 1.5-length second in the New Zealand Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m), behind quadruple stakes winner Jennifer Eccles (Rip Van Winkle).
Sadly, Vancooga went in the wind before long, but she’s now had her first two foals for O’Dea.
Forty Love’s next visit to Proisir produced Soldier Boy, who trumped his older sister by becoming a stakes winner of the Marton Cup (Listed, 2200m), before taking second in the Taranaki Cup (Gr 3, 1800m) one start later.
Continuing another progression, Forty Love’s next foal appears better still, in Sergeant Major.
After that astonishing second-start win, he ran a luckless, impeded fifth under Kheir’s colours in the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m). He flashed home to be 2.8 lengths off the winner, but at least was two places ahead of the outstanding Velocious (Written Tycoon), whose previous two starts were wins in the Sistema Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) and Karaka 2YO Millions (RL, 1200m).
Since crossing the Tasman, Sergeant Major has taken his record from nine starts to two wins and three placings – including two thirds in Melbourne at Listed and Group 3 level – with the future looking bright, including a possible tilt at the Brisbane winter carnival since he’s only had three runs this campaign.
All of which will keep O’Dea’s breeding flame burning bright.
“I love it. It’s great fun,” says the owner-breeder who owns up to having “too many” horses.
“I do it because I love it, but at the same time, I don’t have many ordinary ones. More often than not they’ll win more than one race.”
O’Dea says a “stunning” two-year-old sister to Sergeant Major has just gone into work with Sharrock, while he’s now tried something different with Forty Love, who has a weanling filly by Vanbrugh (Encosta De Lago).
That mating stands to echo the success of Sergeant Major and his siblings, since Proisir is out of an Encosta De Lago (Fairy King) mare, in Prophet Jewel. Thompson says that shows in Proisir.
While his only stakes win was a Group 3, the 15-year-old has surged in recent years – buoyed by six elite victors including multiple successes Levante, Legarto and Prowess – to the point where he stood at Rich Hill last year for $80,000 (plus GST). That gave him New Zealand’s second largest service fee after Savabeel (Zabeel) on $100,000 (plus GST).
“He’s got the strength of Choisir and the quality of Encosta De Lago,” Thompson said. “And he throws a good, consistent line of yearlings. They’re good walking horses with a good physique and they’re relatively sound.”
Proisir broke Savabeel’s long streak of New Zealand champion sire titles in 2022-23, but had to settle for second to him the following year. He’s again stuck behind Savabeel this season, but leads the country in stakes winners, with seven.
He has three more in Australia this term, in Sergeant Major, Melbourne Group 3 winner Coeur Volante, and Brisbane Listed winner Nikau Spur, and Thompson is expecting better to come.
“He had 51 Karaka Book 1 yearlings this year, whereas when he started out he had four or five,” Thompson said.
“This year’s yearlings were from a good book of quality mares after his fee went up to $17,500. His foals now came from when his fee had gone up to $70,000, so you’d hope they’ll be better again.”
Thompson notes Sergeant Major’s pedigree contains elements well proven with Proisir, particularly Forty Love’s third sire Roberto (Hail To Reason), and Efrosini’s grandsire Nijinsky (Northern Dancer).
There’s only a little in-breeding in the pedigree, but one duplication appears an effective, gender-balanced double-dose of an influential Australian sire in useful positions in Century (Better Boy), at 5m x 5f. He feeds strongly into Proisir as the sire of his second damsire Centaine, and is the sire of Forty Love’s third dam Primrose Lane.
One row deeper there’s more potent Australiana, with the great Vain (Wilkes) doubled through two daughters at 6f x 6f, via Centaine’s dam Rainbeam and Forty Love’s fourth dam Miss Narcissus.
Northern Dancer is repeated through four different offspring in the first seven generations at 6m, 5m, 7f x 5m, through Danzig, Fairy King, Victorian Dancer and Nijinsky.
And that helps bring a 7m, 7f, 6m, 8m x 6m of Northern Dancer’s hugely influential dam Natalma (Native Dancer), which can never hurt.