Signature Scent
Against the tide of imported European runners and sires, supporters of Australasian-bred horses will be cheering Signature Scent (Written Tycoon), who made it two from two in impressively taking a two-year-old fillies handicap over 1100 metres at Caulfield on Saturday.
Now a city winner, Signature Scent looks like fully justifying Yulong’s determined, shall we say, move to stop her from being the one that got away.
Bred by Zhang Yuesheng’s Victorian operation, she was sold for $200,000 to Victoria’s Baystone Farm at Inglis Easter last year.
Perhaps feeling a modicum of seller’s regret, Zhang was pleased to see her bob up again in last October’s Inglis Ready2Race Sale. Breezing up quite nicely after a prep from Team Corstens, she’d caught the eye of a few others as well.
Zhang did get her back, as is his way, although he had to set a sale record to do so, paying $1 million and showing us all that while an abundance of money can’t buy you love, it can buy some of the things you love, and perhaps atone for a regret.
“Mr Zhang loved her all the way along,” Yulong CEO Sam Fairgray says with a smile. “She got sold and then when he saw she was back as a ready to runner, he thought he wanted to have her back in the team.”
These are early days still in this second bite at the cherry, but the Ciaron Maher–trained filly looks well poised to make up that $800,000 deficit, having erased $126,000 of it so far.
And the possibilities look vast. For starters, she’s by Yulong’s seemingly ageless Written Tycoon (Iglesia), and is out of an outstanding and versatile dam, and one who perhaps explains why Signature Scent is so dear to her owner’s heart.
Zhang went to $1.15 million to buy Soriano (Savabeel) as one of his early mares as he set up shop in Australia, at the 2017 Magic Millions Gold Coast National Broodmare Sale.
She’d won nine times in New Zealand from the 1200 metres of her debut to 2000 metres, with seven stakes wins including the 2000-metre Group 1 double of the Zabeel Classic and the Herbie Dyke Stakes, while also racking up six top–tier placings. Soriano is also a half-sister to the dam of 2021 New Zealand Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Rocket Spade (Fastnet Rock).
“It was very early on in our operations, and Mr Zhang had quickly taken a liking to Savabeel – so much so that we ended up buying a share in him too,” Fairgray said. “So Soriano really made appeal for Mr Zhang as a good mare by Savabeel.”
Soriano’s first five foals for Yulong brought mixed results. Two, by Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), were unraced. The highlight was Flemington Listed-placed gelding Alsonso (Zoustar), who now races for Zhang in Hong Kong.
But then Soriano’s first cover from Written Tycoon has yielded the exciting Signature Scent, who now has a weanling full–brother on the ground.
“We thought the mating would work nicely on physicals, and it looks like it’s produced a good one,” Fairgray said. “Signature Scent is a big, strong, forward foal, and is the most similar to Soriano of all of her foals.
“Soriano was a very versatile racemare who won up to 2000 metres, so you’d think Signature Scent should get up to 1400 metres or 1600 metres. She’s from a very good New Zealand family, with plenty of depth in there.”
And from the land of the long white cloud has come an extremely lengthy female line. Signature Scent has uninterrupted New Zealand-breds on her female line all the way back to her 13th dam.
Second dam Call Me Lily (Just A Dancer) won eight times in a trans-Tasman career, including taking the Wagga Cup (Listed, 2000m) of 2002, two starts after running third in Randwick’s Emancipation Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m).
She’s part of a chain in which Signature Scent’s second, third, fourth and fifth dams have thrown stakes winners, with Call Me Lily getting into the multiples since she also threw Soriano’s Group 3-winning full–brother Kaiser Franz.
Not only is this a deep New Zealand family, the female line traces back to a hugely influential Australian source. That aforementioned 13th dam – Elfin (Musket) – was a daughter of Sylvia (Fisherman), an 1864 throw who was a runaway success at stud.
The taproot for this line was Sylvia’s British-bred dam Juliet (Touchstone), who arrived here a few years before the first Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m), in the mid-1850s.
Juliet threw five stakes winners, including four who were successful in what are now Group 1s. One of them was Sylvia, who won the VRC Oaks (then 2400m) of 1870.
Sylvia then had three stakes winners of her own, all of modern Group 1s.
Goldsborough (Fireworks), foaled in 1870, took what was then known as the AJC Great Metropolitan Stakes (then 3200m) – now The Metropolitan – and two other stakes races, and went on to sire the winners of ten modern elites, including 1886 Melbourne Cup hero Arsenal.
Incidentally another of Goldsbrough’s principal race winners, who took the STC Challenge Stakes of 1893, was called Buccleuch. That Scottish nobleman’s name is shared 130 odd years later by another stakes victor in the Team Payne trained two-year-old gelding who’s won three out of five, and who was bred by another from a long tail in Australian breeding, Olly Tait.
For good measure, there’s a third Buccleuch (Benzoin) in the Australian stud book, and he too won a principal race, in New Zealand in 1908.
Two years after Goldsbrough came his full-brother Robin Hood, who won the VRC Derby among five principal race triumphs.
Eight years after him, Sylvia threw the outstanding Martini Henry. Another son of the great Carbine’s sire Musket (Toxophilite), Martini Henry won the VRC Derby-Melbourne Cup double only three days apart in 1883 – in his first two career starts, if you don’t mind. He went on to sire the winners of six modern Group 1s.
Not only is there such rich colonial history in Signature Scent’s female line, the filly’s pedigree overall reads like a tribute to the Australian-bred.
There’s only one duplication in her first five generations, and it’s that Australian giant Biscay (Star Kingdom), at 5m x 5m. The top mention comes via one of Biscay’s most successful sons, Marscay, the damsire of Written Tycoon’s father Iglesia (Last Tycoon). The bottom is through the more obscure Brazen Bay, our subject’s third damsire, who left just five lower–level stakes winners.
Another icon of Australian breeding – albeit one imported from England – is liberally spread through the pedigree in Star Kingdom (Stardust), who’s there at 6m, 7m, 8f x 8m, 8m, 6m. Importantly, there are three sons involved in Biscay and Noholme (twice each), and Todman, while the daughter is Fairy Dream, Iglesia’s fifth dam.
Signature Scent has another (imported) Australian breeding byword at 5f x 8f in the Irish-bred Better Boy (My Babu), who’s Written Tycoon’s third damsire and Savabeel’s (Zabeel) fifth.
“I’d say that with Written Tycoon, the Biscay doubling has helped this pedigree to work, along with Savabeel as the damsire,” Fairgray says.
Written Tycoon, the rising 23-year-old standing again at Yulong under private arrangement this spring, has worked fairly well over mares by Savabeel, with six winners from seven runners, though no stakes winners. Over mares by Zabeel (Sir Tristram) he runs at six winners from six, again with no stakes winners.
Given his outlay to bring her back “home”, Zhang will be hoping Signature Scent breaks that stakes winners duck, at the very least. On disclosed form so far, she certainly looks headed that way.