Archo Nacho
Here’s a great question for the next time you gather the coolest people you know for a racing tragics’ trivia night:
Q: What do top thoroughbreds Aquanita, Aurie’s Star and Heron Bridge have in common?
A: They weren’t thoroughbreds.
And neither were a lot of other good thoroughbreds.
Not officially at least.
This curly subject arose up the straight on Saturday at Flemington, when Archo Nacho (Sioux Nation) won the Poseidon Stakes (Listed, 1100m) on his third start.
It concerns the evolution of the Australian thoroughbred, or at least the documentation of the same in the effort to keep the breed pure. And that’s because Archo Nacho descends from a fifth dam who for many years wasn’t even regarded as a thoroughbred.
Vista Anna (Caranna) wasn’t a standardbred, an Arabian, a waler or an appaloosa. She was, most certainly, a thoroughbred, and eventually quite a significant one. But at the time she raced – and for two decades afterwards – that was still a matter of debate.
Born in 1965, she’s symbolic of an era in breeding whose often sketchy details are still being smoothed out and filled in today.
She was a daughter of Caranna (Valognes), an outstanding racehorse who had the influential French stallion Bois Roussel (Vatout) as just his second sire. Caranna won the AJC Derby, Rosehill Guineas and Caulfield Guineas in 1955, as well as running second and third in successive Cox Plates, and third in the 1956 Melbourne Cup.
Vista Anna won four races, all in town, to rank as the third-best progeny of Caranna [better on the track than at stud]. Her wins came in such bygone events as a welter and a flying handicap, the latter – in 1969 – carrying a princely purse of $407.00.
Despite her deeds, back then she, and others like her, were allowed to race even though they did not have official thoroughbred categorisation.
In this case, a problematic chain of events – which leads all the way along a female line to 2020 foal Archo Nacho – began in 1935. A filly was born by the leading sire Heroic (Valais) out of New Zealand mare Greenaway (Sutala). Both parents were registered in the Australian Stud Book, but alas someone didn’t get around to lodging the forms for this daughter.
In what seems extraordinary now but was a matter of pragmatism back then, she couldn’t have an official foal reference number but was still allowed a registered name. Future Queen was allowed onto the track, and she would be allowed to breed, but she wouldn’t be allowed into the stud book.
This was at a time long before computers, when the stud book wasn’t a website but an actual book, a huge tome of around 2,000 pages printed every three or four years to take stock of what mares and stallions had parented.
But in terms of classification, Future Queen – like some descendants and a lot of other horses barred from the book – floated around in limbo. And she did so for more than 40 years.
It wasn’t until 1979 that a Non-Stud Book register was established, by order of the International Stud Book Committee, to ensure all racehorses could be identified. It was first printed separately and not for sale, made only as a guide for registrars. In the 1990s it became the Non Thoroughbred Register, then being published as a separate section in yellow at the back of the book. Now, the letters NTB reflect such status beside horses’ names on the stud book’s website.
Future Queen didn’t race, though she could have, but had a filly who did, and did so very well. Vistaed (Port Villa), won six from 36, and even placed third in the AJC Challenge Stakes of 1955. But, zealously guarding the integrity of the breed, authorities deemed a mother of questionable repute meant Vistaed also could not be classed as a thoroughbred, and couldn’t have a foal reference number.
At stud, Vistaed’s second foal was View (Todman). He was twice stakes-placed – second in the Silver Shadow and third in the Breeders’ Plate – but was also non-thoroughbred.
Vistaed then had Vista Anna, who again raced well before bearing a colt called Salaam (Radames). In the late 1970s, he won three stakes races – a Sydney feature sprint treble of The Galaxy and the Missile Stakes and Premiere stakes – but was still non-thoroughbred, because his mum was.
And then someone blew a whistle.
As retired keeper of the studbook Michael Ford recalls, Australian officials decided it was time to fix such issues which, evidenced by the performances of certain progeny, were clearly more about bureaucracy than actual breeding.
“There used to be a lot of horses who were non-stud book,” Ford told It’s In The Blood. “The Australian foal crop is usually around 15,000 now but when it was around 25,000 in the 1980s, about 5,000 of them used to be non-stud book. Under international authorities, they were listed as non-thoroughbred.
“But clearly, if a horse is competing against and beating thoroughbreds, and having offspring that did the same, it had to be a thoroughbred.
“These anomalies came about because of breeders not getting around to submitting their mare returns. You might have had a war on, your farm might’ve been in strife in the Great Depression, whatever – a lot of people might have had more important things to worry about than submitting mare returns.”
Still, in Britain, the US and even Australia, NTB horses weren’t allowed to compete in the Classics, until the law was relaxed around 40 years ago.
And in Australia, there have been many notable examples of great thoroughbreds who weren’t, so to speak.
The champion Aquanita (Wateringbury) won 18 stakes races, for heaven’s sake, 11 of which are modern Group 1s including the Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) and Mackinnon Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m). But look him up, and the stud book will still tell you he’s “NTB”.
“It was ludicrous to term Aquanita a non-thoroughbred because he beat the best in the land,” Ford said. “But there were no records of the birth of his third dam, Brilliant Queen in 1918, obviously due to the impact of the Great War.”
Aurie’s Star (Stardrift) was good enough to win four modern Group 1s from 1937-40 and to have a Flemington Group 3 named after him, but not good enough, apparently, to be called a thoroughbred.
Likewise, the far more recent West Australian gun sprinter Heron Bridge (Tudor Bridge). He won the 1984 VRC Newmarket Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m) but no one knows who his third dam was – though it is known she mated with Wateringbury (Blue Peter) in 1959 to produce Heron Bridge’s second dam Princess Lana (NTB).
Another case comes through 2002 Golden Slipper winner Calaway Gal (Clang). She’s OK, but her dam Calais Royale (Captain’s Gold), born as recently as 1991, couldn’t attain a foal reference number, as she was out of an NTB 1983 mare. And all of this while Calaway Gal’s sixth dam was Tranquil Star (Gay Lothario). That all-time great’s daughter Tranquil Dawn was registered well enough, but no return was submitted for her daughter Seascape (Althrey Don), Calaway Gal’s fourth dam.
Amidst this minefield of omissions, errors and anomalies, Australian officials decided things had to change.
In 1984, the then keeper of the studbook Jim McFadden went to the International Stud Book Committee meeting in London seeking retrospective ratification for five NTB mares. One was Vista Anna, with her bona fides to be pleaded using the example of her blistering son Salaam.
His track performances just about got her over the line, but first she had to meet the most important criteria, instituted among those other changes in 1979, to be afforded full stud book status: that she came from a female line bearing eight successive generations of mares covered by registered thoroughbred stallions.
But back then, still before computers had taken over to allow greater depth of international pedigree research, only seven could be proven. And so a new category was created.
“Vista Anna became the first mare ever to be promoted from non-stud book status to Vehicle Mare,” said Ford, assuming the catalyst for change would have come from breeders.
“You imagine she would’ve had another foal, and the breeder would’ve thought, ‘I’ve got this foal, Salaam’s its half-brother, but if I sell it it’d be worth about $2,000, but if Vista Anna were in the stud book I’d get $10,000.”
Many other Vehicle Mares followed, after review, making major differences to the selling power of a great number of breeders. Vista Anna herself had three more foals after shedding her NTB shackles, including Hollywood (Memento), a Sydney city winner exported in 1989 to Hong Kong, where he won twice more.
And so begun with Vista Anna, the drive to fix and ratify designations took on greater importance.
Performance still came into it, for you wouldn’t initiate the process for a line of scrubbers. It was decided that to trigger a possible change of categorisation to “Vehicle Mare” or “full stud book” – allowed only if those seven or eight ancestral mares bred to thoroughbred stallions were proven first – a foal had to win at stakes level, be placed at Group 1 or Group 2, or score four wins in open company.
The task also became enormously easier after computerisation, and international link-ups. (This would also confirm Vista Anna indeed had those eight dams who’d been covered by thoroughbred stallions, thus allowing full stud book status, but not to worry).
“Our computerisation project started in the 1980s. Before that, it was just bits of paper everywhere – boxes and boxes, huge filing cabinets full of cards and serving certificates, foaling slips going back to the 1940s!” said Ford, who had the wonderful Todman’s (Star Kingdom) foaling slip, among others, mounted in a special frame for the ASB’s archivers as a souvenir.
The stud book had 38 employees before computers, an age when some 25,000 bits of paper would begin arriving in the post each March. Now it has around 12 staff, and the retrospective verification – important in preserving the purity of the thoroughbred – continues.
As for the pioneering Vista Anna, in 1980 she threw Superburn (Blazing Saddles), a city winner and Listed placed. Superburn bore What Price Glory (New Regent), a maiden winner who foaled another in Cash Crazy (Secret Savings), who threw Jackpot Queen (Not A Single Doubt), who won three metro races and a Wellington Boot. Jackpot Queen also scored up the Flemington straight, and now so has her sixth foal, Archo Nacho.
The three-year-old is the first Australian stakes victor – among five winners from 11 runners – for his Phoenix Stakes (Gr 1, 6f)-winning sire Sioux Nation (Scat Daddy), who shuttled for one season to Victoria’s Swettenham Stud. With 12 stakes winners from 180 runners worldwide (6.7 per cent), he might still be a sire to watch, despite just 39 live Australian foals.