Snippets’ Lass
World breeding has produced its selection of famed superior broodmares you love to see in pedigrees, the likes of Best In Show, Natalma, Lalun, Flower Bowl and La Troienne.
Australasia has also been blessed by mares whose influence has spread far and wide, such as Scandinavia, Shantha’s Choice, Eight Carat and Decidity.
And this week is a perfect time to recognise the impact of another – Snippets’ Lass (Snippets).
At Caulfield on Saturday, Ole Dancer (Ole Kirk) became her rising sire’s first elite winner in taking the Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m). Snippets’ Lass is her fourth dam.
Forty-five minutes later, the remarkable Private Eye (Al Maher) took his earnings to $12.64 million by claiming the Moonga Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m). Five years older than Ole Dancer, he has Snippets’ Lass as his third dam.
Two years ago, Rediener (Redoute’s Choice) won the Epsom Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m). Snippets’ Lass is his second dam, and he’s closely related to Ole Dancer, both coming into being thanks to breeding maven Neil Werrett.
Snippets’ Lass is present in far more Australasian pedigrees than just by sitting a few rungs back on the above three female lines.
That’s because the greatest gift she’s left us was her colossal son Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), the six-time stakes winner who spread his dam’s genes through more than 2300 foals – 161 of them stakes winners – en route to four Champion Sire titles from 2017 to 2020.
Aside from Snitzel, Snippets’ Lass threw Hinchinbrook (Fastnet Rock), the dual black-type victor who left 21 stakes winners – four at the top level – in a stud career limited to just seven seasons by accidental death.
Snippets’ Lass threw Snitzel’s full-sister Viennese, a dual stakes winner whose Darley-bred daughter Gloriette (Lonhro) produced Arcaded (Street Boss), who won a Group 2 and a Group 3 in 2021.
And Snippets’ Lass produced Wiener (More Than Ready), who’s now the dam and third dam of two elite winners – Rediener and Ole Dancer.
To think what Snippets’ Lass might have done. All of this came from just six named foals in seven years at stud before a premature end in 2007, aged just 14.
Snippets’ Lass was bred by the Baxter family’s MacQuarie Stud near Wellington.
She was by the influential Snippets (Lunchtime), winner of the inaugural Magic Millions Gold Coast 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) and seven subsequent stakes races – three at the top level – and the sire of 55 stakes winners.
Snippets’ Lass was the first Australian foal for the taproot of all her descendants, Snow Finch (Storm Bird), an Irish Listed winner who’d left a city victor among four British-bred foals.
Eight years after Snippets’ Lass, Snow Finch left a brother who became her other black-type horse, triple stakes winner Captain Bax.
Raced by Queensland prawn farmer Francois Naude – who would later breed Snitzel and all five of his siblings – Snippets’ Lass was pretty handy on the track.
Trained throughout by Bill Mitchell of the Yarraman Mitchells, she virtually lived in stakes grade, but couldn’t break out of Listed class, running at that level no fewer than 17 times, for two wins and six seconds. She made just one higher appearance, a failure in a Flemington Group 3.
She was not only handy but hardy. She didn’t race until four, but she sure made up for lost time, running on no fewer than 21 occasions in the 12 months to May, 1999.
Promoted to city grade at start four, she ran second four times in a row, by less than a length. But just when people were writing her off as the ghost of Tom Melbourne past, she won three of her next five, also in Sydney metro class.
Her first two Listed appearances followed in the spring of 1998, for two more seconds, before she finally broke through in her eighth attempt at that level the following April, taking the AJC Sapphire Stakes over 1200 metres.
Five months later she added Caulfield’s How Now Stakes (Listed, 1200m), and she bowed out in May 2000, with seven wins and 13 minors from 41 starts, and a decent-for-back-then $289,000.
At stud and in the sales ring, Snippets’ Lass’s impact has been profound.
In four straight years at Magic Millions Gold Coast: Gerald Ryan bought her second foal, the yearling Snitzel, for $260,000, and 12 months later his half-sister Wiener for $350,000;
In 2006, with Snitzel’s class confirmed, third foal Royal Snippets (Royal Academy) fetched $775,000, sold to Wadham Park, before Darley paid $1.4 million to make Viennese the third-highest lot at the 2007 auction.
Wiener ran third in the Gimcrack Stakes (Listed, 1000m) of 2005 but couldn’t win in a career restricted to five starts.
Werrett comes into the picture, and the family, when Wiener changed hands for $1.25m at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale of 2007. He bred all 13 of her offspring, some with long-term associate Max Whitby, with whom he races Ole Dancer and Rediener (among many others).
Before Rediener, Wiener bore another stakes winner in Rathlin (Fastnet Rock) and two stakes placegetters including Za Zi Ba (All Too Hard), who’s now the dam of the Ryan-trained Group 3 winner King Of Pop (Farnan).
Wiener’s second foal Viennese Lass (Redoute’s Choice) was unraced but, retained by Werrett, she became the dam of the Listed-placed Viennese Star (I Am Invincible) and, one year earlier, Dancers (Husson).
Trained by Brad Widdup for Werrett and Damion Flower, Dancers – a $230,000 yearling – won twice at her home track of Hawkesbury among 11 starts, with her career highlight a fifth at Group 3 level.
At stud, she’s been a little up and down, with three successes mixed with three misses and a foal deceased after birth.
But after dual Melbourne city winner Ginger ’N’ Pink (Zoustar), her third foal was Ole Dancer, the latest Group 1 winner descended from Snippets’ Lass.
Bought by trainers Moody Racing for $350,000, again at Magic Millions Gold Coast, Ole Dancer’s pedigree packs an impressive punch.
Her only spot of inbreeding is a relevant one – Snippets himself – at 5f x 5f.
It comes through another of those aforementioned superior mares, Scandinavia, the fourth dam of Ole Kirk, and of course Snippets’ Lass, Ole Dancer’s fourth dam.
Peeling back another layer reveals the great Nijinsky (Northern Dancer) at 5m x 6m, 6f. Up top, he’s the third sire of Ole Kirk’s dam Naturale (Bel Esprit). Down below, he comes into Ole Dancer’s damsire Husson’s female half, and is present through Dancing Show, dam of another great mare Shantha’s Choice (Canny Lad), the mother of Ole Dancer’s second damsire Redoute’s Choice.
Where there’s Dancing Show there’ll be her second dam, another first-paragraph dweller Best In Show.
And the hope that that all-timer will be repeated comes to fruition, in a 7f x 7f. At the top, the 1960s great comes in strong via daughter Sex Appeal (Buckpasser), dam of Ole Dancer’s fifth sire Try My Best (Northern Dancer). Down south, Best In Show is Redoute’s Choice’s fourth dam.
Natalma (Native Dancer) underpins it all as the most repeated mare, with 11 spots in the first nine generations, ahead of Mumtaz Begum (Blenheim) with ten.
The dominant sire is Nearco (Pharos) with 19 mentions, while his son Nasrullah has 15.
Ole Dancer is the result of the first of four straight matings with Ole Kirk, and is the only live foal from that run.
Werrett is trying again, with Dancers covered by Ole Kirk again the day after Ole Dancer’s Thousand Guineas triumph. Ginger ’N’ Pink was also covered by Ole Kirk on Sunday.
With Ole Dancer’s value as a broodmare now secured, and with Werrett’s ample resources sure to line up some quality matings for her, Snippets’ Lass’s legacy looks set to continue for many years.