Big day for Queensland bush with Group 1 wins for Rothfire, Tyzone
‘Thrilla from Chinchilla’ and ‘Tolga Tornado’ star in final top-level features of the season on a day of firsts
The Queensland bush has produced some of the finest horses to grace the Australian turf – think Bernborough (Emborough), Gunsynd (Sunset Hue), Dalrello (Aloe) and Lough Neagh (Bachelor’s Persse) among others – and while yesterday’s two Group 1 winners at Eagle Farm have a long way to go before joining their ranks, Stradbroke day in 2020 will long be remembered as a momentous day as the locals came to the fore.
Trainer Rob Heathcote has won Group 1 races all around Australia and on the world stage but he registered a first Group 1 in his home state when Rothfire scored one of the juvenile wins of the season in the J J Atkins (Gr 1, 1400m).
Just over half an hour later, former Tolga galloper Tyzone took out Queensland’s flagship race, the Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1, 1400m), giving father-son training partnership Toby and Trent Edmonds their maiden Group 1 success.
Queensland-trained horses have not completed the J J Atkins-Stradbroke Handicap double since 1984, when Prince Frolic (Mendham) and Daybreak Lover (Namnan) won each race respectively – and on different days of the long weekend, too.
Riches galore await Rothfire after Atkins success
Auction house reject Rothfire, already one of the rags to riches stories of the year after his victory in the J J Atkins Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), may attempt an even greater feat come October after trainer Rob Heathcote revealed that the world’s richest turf race, The Everest (1200m) at Randwick, may be on the gelding’s radar.
“It’s a really good story, we’re very pleased for the Heathcote stable,” Rothfire’s co-breeder Jacob Gleeson, representing his family’s operation Gleeson Thoroughbreds, told ANZ Bloodstock News. “There are a great group of owners in this horse and I just hope he takes them a long way. I hope that he’s the sort of horse that is around for many seasons, competing in the top races.”
A number of Everest slot-holders have expressed interest in Rothfire (2 g Rothesay – Huss On Fire by Hussonet) in an attempt to emulate last year’s winner, three-year-old Yes Yes Yes (Rubick). Newcomers to the race MiRunners, with their broad ownership base, appear a logical fit for the race, with Heathcote admitting that their four-person panel had already interviewed him about a potential deal.
“He climbed his Everest today and note that I did use the word ‘Everest’,” Heathcote told Sky Thoroughbred Central. “He will spell now, I’ll take him to the paddock on Monday myself, and we haven’t put anything in concrete as there are a stack of races for him – a race like the Coolmore at Flemington could be perfect. But I have had some talks about The Everest and I am not talking out of turn. I did an interview with MiRunners, we know that they have bought a slot and they told me the other day that he’s certainly in the running for their spot.
“He needed to do that today against a good, strong field of two-year-olds and I will be eagerly waiting to see where (form analyst) Daniel O’Sullivan rates him.”
Any Everest deal may have taken a step forward after Rothfire’s victory yesterday. Sent off as $3.50 favourite, rider Jim Byrne was happy to sit handy behind leaders Wisdom Of Water (Headwater) and Isotope (Deep Field) from gate 13. Notably, though, the gelding appeared relaxed and unfazed, despite the fact he had established a profile as a strong pacesetter.
From the apex of the bend to the Eagle Farm winning post, though, it was a one-act affair with very little doubt over its conclusion. Rothfire hit the line three and a quarter lengths ahead of the Steve O’Dea-trained Gotta Kiss (Not A Single Doubt); The Drinks Cart (Unencumbered) flashed home into third for Toby and Trent Edmonds, cementing the 2020 J J Atkins as a race for the underdogs with Queensland horses filling the trifecta.
“Wow. He is some horse, hey? I am lost for words and that is not normally me,” Heathcote, choking back tears, said. “I have been saying for months he is doing things even my multiple Group 1 winner Buffering couldn’t at the same stage. I have been a nervous wreck all week, but when you have a jockey like Jim Byrne you have a big start.
“He is so experienced and calm. He didn’t panic when he couldn’t lead and ended up getting the run of the race. He is bombproof.”
Heathcote, who won the Al Quoz Sprint (Gr 1, 1000m) in Dubai with Buffering, believes that Rothfire can follow in his footsteps in the future: “This bloke can take me around the world.”
But while the world may beckon, Rothfire’s background is far more humble. In fact, it’s almost difficult to believe that, a little more than 12 months ago, few wanted anything to do with the then “unremarkable” bay or brown yearling.
Unwanted and unfashionable as a yearling and rejected from even the most minor yearling sales, Rothfire was reared on the Chinchilla property of Wally Gleeson, his wife Jill and their sons Jacob, Simon and Tom – hence his nickname, the Thrilla from Chinchilla.
“We’ve just got a little property on the west of the Darling Downs, it’s not what you’d call renowned horse country,” Jacob Gleeson said. “Interestingly, though, a stone’s throw from our property, there have been two Group 2 winners produced before: Rudy, who won a Villiers, and Seawinne, who won a BTC Cup and a Doomben Slipper. They were bred on properties within a few kilometres of us, but we are certainly not in a zone that you’d call horse country. So we feel pretty privileged and pretty lucky.
“In 10 years that we’ve been doing this, this is our first stakes winner. It’s a huge thrill for my parents. They work so hard, it’s great to see them get this sort of success.”
Gleeson patriarch Wally is a former amateur jockey who rode with success around Queensland, including at Eagle Farm. He has also been a polocrosse player, as well as a breaker, owner and trainer. However, it is as a breeder that he has now had his most prominent success, in partnership with his family.
“We were breeding a few horses for the country circuit and about 10 or 15 years ago, we decided that we should do it a bit more commercially,” Jacob Gleeson said. “We only breed about 10 to 15 foals every year. We’ve been pretty lucky to have been mentored by some very knowledgeable industry people like Steve Morley, Scott McAlpine and Henry Field. That’s certainly been very helpful in terms of getting us where we are.
“We range between 15 to 20 mares at the moment. We can’t afford to buy stakes-winning mares or blueblood pedigrees, so we’ve developed this strategy of buying mares with good damsires down the pedigree page. I guess Rothfire is a good example of this. He’s out of a mare called Huss On Fire, she was bought for about $9,500 at the Inglis Easter Broodmare Sale approximately 10 years ago. The damsires down the page are Hussonet, Zabeel, Marscay and Northfields.
“So that’s been our way of creating some success. We figure that, somewhere along the line, hopefully the genetics will kick in and these mares that may not have a lot of black type up close, the genetic ability of these stallions might be able to make a horse for us. And fortunately, it looks like it has worked out with Rothfire.”
Born in September, 2017, the Rothesay colt was the last of six foals produced by Huss On Fire (Hussonet). Even to his breeders, though, he hardly set the world on fire.
“It’s funny, he was one of those horses that didn’t stand out at all,” Gleeson said. “He was just a very plain horse, but there was nothing wrong with him. You’ll often pick a foal and can see a fault with it, or you’ll pick a foal and say, this is a standout. But he was the sort of the horse that flew under the radar, he didn’t raise any eyebrows.
“I tweeted out the video I found today (https://twitter.com/GleesonTbreds/status/1269158347082612737?s=20) which was the video we sent to Rob Heathcote, he actually bought him on the back of that video without seeing him. If you look at that video, you can see that he’s just a nice, plain horse, pretty much unremarkable.
“My father, who is a very good horseman, that’s one thing he’d say about the horse. He just had a very good temperament right from the word go. Possibly, that’s the difference; obviously, there is more to it than that but that’s obviously a very big factor in his ability.
“He’s such a bombproof horse; he can jump and then settle, he can handle pressure and then kick off a good tempo. He takes luck out of the equation because he puts himself in a position where he doesn’t need luck. That’s such a helpful asset for his racing career.”
Inspected by sales representatives and bloodstock agents, Rothfire was overlooked as a yearling prospect. Heathcote snapped him up for $10,000, although he famously had to pay the bill twice after falling victim to a phishing scam.
Gleeson explained: “Rob’s a very good payer and we sent him the bill and just presumed that he’d sort it out, so we were a bit surprised a few weeks later that we hadn’t heard anything. We were a bit unsure about chasing it up, but we thought that we’ve got to say something. And then it all came to a head and we realised that he had paid and it had all gone haywire. I think he’s paid for himself now.”
It was the fact that Rothfire was prevented from even stepping foot into the sales ring which prompted the Gleesons to retire Huss On Fire, although tragedy struck not long afterwards.
“We retired her just after she’d produced Rothfire because he was proof that the pedigree wasn’t commercial enough for us to breed horses to sell,” he said. “We had planned to use her as a nanny for some of the younger horses, but she got a leg infection and she succumbed to it within 24 hours. We barely had any time to do anything about it and she was very unwell.”
However, a hint from Heathcote about Rothfire’s potential ability saw the family acquire two of his siblings, fillies that Gleeson Thoroughbreds had put through the sales ring as yearlings.
“We were very sad that we lost the mare but Rob had given us an indication very early this season that Rothfire was going to be pretty special. We’d sold two of the older fillies out of Huss On Fire,” he recalled.
“One was to Rex Lipp, she was a full sister named Smokin’ Hussay and we bought her back off the track after she won. She was a bit unfortunate, Rex thought she had ability but she broke a pedal bone before she was broken in so she raced injured for her whole career.
“We also bought back a Sizzling half-sister from Angela Davies that got sold through the Inglis Classic sale. She injured herself before she even galloped, she bowed a tendon just trotting around the track.
“We bought them both back very cheaply and fortunately, we’ve still got some upside in terms of the pedigree because we’ve been able to track those two fillies down. It was a punt at the time, buying them back, but we didn’t pay much and they are worth something now so we’re very lucky.”
Rothfire also represented the first Group 1 winner for Lyndhurst Stud’s Rothesay (Fastnet Rock). Having served small books of 28 mares apiece in 2017 and 2018, he found renewed popularity at a reduced fee of $4,950 (inc GST) last season, serving 98 mares; he will stand again for the same fee in 2020.
“The stallion Rothesay, we just love him,” Gleeson said. “He hasn’t been the greatest horse for us in the sales ring but we’ve bred a couple of proper racehorses by him. Rothfire is clearly the standout but there’s another horse going around in Macau called Golden Conqueror. We also bred him and he’s got a similar record of six wins and one second, he’s been labelled the ‘boom three-year-old’ there. He’s doing very similar things on the track to Rothfire, although not in a jurisdiction that is the same as Australia. But he’s a very good horse in Macau.”
While Heathcote is eyeing off the rich spring sprints with Rothfire, Gleeson believes that he would be a horse capable of getting a mile and potentially even further should the trainer ever wish to go that way.
“There was a lot of concern and conjecture about whether Rothfire would get the trip today but we had really no concerns and no doubts,” he said. “On his pedigree, he’s by Rothesay who was a 1400 to 1600-metre horse. He’s out of a Hussonet mare who is out of a Zabeel mare so we just thought that this was going to be almost his pet distance today.
“We thought he’d be a three-year-old miler, that’s the style of horse that we thought he was and given the way he was bred. So to see him doing these sorts of things over the shorter distances this early in his career, it’s pretty exciting.
“It’s great that he’s a gelding too because he’ll have some longevity. People are mentioning him in the same breath as Alligator Blood. It’s been a long time since Queensland could stake claim to two horses of the ability of Rothfire and Alligator Blood who have the potential to go into the southern states and prove highly competitive.”
Rothfire has now earned $708,400, having won six of his seven starts.
From Tolga to top-flight triumph for Tyzone
The town of Tolga – population 2,718 at the last census – is known for its peanuts and very little else.
As a nursery for top-class thoroughbreds, it may not be the Simpson Desert, but it’s not far from the bottom.
Take Tyzone (6 g Written Tycoon – Rezonet by Hussonet) who, on Doomben 10,000 day in 2017, couldn’t have been much further away from the Group 1 action in Brisbane. Instead, he was winning an open handicap at a picnic meeting at Gordonvale, south of Cairns.
However, the deeds of Tyzone – nicknamed the Tolga Tornado – in winning the Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1, 1400m) may throw more of a light on the north Queensland racing circuit given what he has achieved since transferring to Toby Edmonds and his son Trent in early 2018.
Yesterday, Tyzone became the talk of Tolga when he took out Queensland’s most famous race, a year after finishing second. Ridden by Robbie Fradd, he came with a late flourish to deny game mare Madam Rouge (Zoustar) by a head with a further head back to Niccanova (Nicconi) in third.
“I never expected him to do what he has done,” Trent Edmonds told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday. “You get a horse from up there, from the Tablelands, and you think, oh well, he might measure up to Saturday grade or hopefully a little bit better. He’s won a Group race and now he’s won a Group 1 – it’s bloody unreal.”
Like Rothfire, Tyzone was also a product of the Darling Downs, having been reared and broken in by Cameron and Kellie Bond from their Kenmore Lodge property in Wyreema, just outside Toowoomba.
“He was a handful,” Kellie Bond recalled to Magic Millions. “Tim Bell breezed him up at the Gold Coast and the horse was flicking his tail around before the breeze-up and was a bit full of himself. But he knuckled down in the breeze and the more he knuckled down the better he went.
“Tim came back and said he had the most economical action in the draft. He said he was a 100 per cent professional and, boy, hasn’t that turned out to be true.”
Sent through the 2015 Magic Millions Gold Coast 2YOs In Training Sale, the Written Tycoon colt fetched $60,000 to the bid of top North Queensland trainer Roy Chillemi on behalf of an ownership group headed by Tom Hedley.
“I really liked when he breezed how much he stuck his head out and tried to go faster,” Chillemi said. “Every time he was asked to go faster he kept finding – he just wanted to run.
“The only thing that worried me at the sale was his size. He’s a bit small, but what he lacks in size he makes up for in heart.
“He showed it with me from day dot. You could take a sit on him and he would switch off and then he could sprint so well. He’s the fastest horse I’ve ever trained. He could break 32 seconds over 600 metres at home.”
Winning 11 of his first 19 starts, predominantly at Townsville, Tyzone was a consistent open handicap performer. However, with a rating in the mid-80s, options were quickly running out up north and Hedley decided to send the chestnut down south.
“He was just a prolific winner up north, he was a winning machine,” Trent Edmonds said. “He was just getting outweighed up there. They decided to give him a crack with us and the rest is history; he’s been a star.”
The now-retired Jeff Lloyd rode Tyzone in a Gold Coast barrier trial mere weeks after joining the Edmonds yard. His wraps on the gelding surprised the stable, particularly the younger Edmonds, then assistant to his father.
“He came back and said that he gave me a Group 1 feel,” said Trent Edmonds. “To be honest, I thought he was joking – this was a horse from north Queensland. But he said, no, he gave me an incredible feel. You could tell he wasn’t joking so it made me pay attention.”
Working his way through the grades, he scored a first stakes win in the Goldmarket Handicap (Listed, 1200m) in March last year, adding the BRC Sprint (Gr 3, 1350m) in May before he finished second to Trekking (Street Cry) in last year’s Stradbroke. As soon as he crossed the line, the Edmonds pair set their sights on the 2020 Stradbroke.
“It was a 12-month plan,” Trent Edmonds said. “We took him to Melbourne in the spring, just to keep him ticking over, and we were even thinking of giving him a big spell and having a long build-up into the winter carnival. But we didn’t end up doing that and it’s worked out.”
Both father and son were confident of victory on Monday, but 24 hours later, their hopes were seemingly dashed when he drew barrier 21, coming into gate 16 with scratchings.
“He isn’t very big and when he got in with only 52kg we were really buoyant. But then he drew very wide and we were a bit deflated,” the younger Edmonds said. “People kept telling us not to worry about barriers at Eagle Farm and they were right.
“It was pretty amazing. When I saw Vega One looming up outside us, I thought oh no, I was groaning. But our fella is just so tough.
“I never expected him to get to do this, to do what he has done. You can always hope but to actually have done it and to have the Group 1 next to our name, words can’t describe it.”
Not only was it a first Group 1 for Trent Edmonds, who joined his father in partnership less than a year ago, but it was also a first Group 1 win for Toby Edmonds after more than three decades as a trainer.
“I am just a johnny-come-lately but people like Dad slog along for years trying to win big races,” Trent Edmonds said. “I am so thrilled for him. Hopefully, we can continue to build on our stable in the years to come.”
Toby Edmonds added: “It’s a big thrill – finally. I had to wait for Trent to come on board to get it.
“Tom Hedley – in the north I don’t think racing would survive without him. He often gets a horse up there that’s very good and he sends that to us – it’s great. We are so glad that we can deliver him his first Group 1 as well.”
Tyzone is the ninth Group 1 winner for Written Tycoon (Iglesia), who will stand for $77,000 this season having relocated to Arrowfield Stud.
It was a big day for the late Hussonet (Mr Prospector) too, as he was the damsire of both Group 1 winners. Tyzone’s dam Rezonet, who died in July last year, has produced four named foals, including 10-time winner Five Stars (Hotel Grand), and also has a Winning Rupert yearling filly, who was purchased for $38,000 by Mishani Enterprises at this year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast March Yearling Sale.
Tyzone’s victory provided redemption too for the family, with his third dam Society Bay (Zephyr Bay) second in 1987.
For now, Trent Edmonds is hoping that Tyzone will be able to return to defend his title in 2021.
“Who knows? Maybe we’ll be back for the Stradbroke next year,” he said.
Classique Legend returns a winner
While the Everest was at the forefront of discussions after Rothfire’s J J Atkins win, a past Everest runner made his return to the races in classy style yesterday when Classique Legend (Not A Single Doubt) took out the Bob Charley AO Stakes (Listed, 1100m) at Randwick.
The Les Bridge-trained Classique Legend, who was unlucky when midfield in last year’s Everest, returned for his first start since finishing 10th in the Golden Eagle (1500m) in November.
Originally set to head to Hong Kong, where owner Boniface Ho has a string of horses, the four-year-old was instead kept to Sydney once the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Ho instead decided to target the Everest yet again with Classique Legend, purchasing the Australian Turf Club slot for the $15 million feature.
The Group 2 winner was asked to shoulder 60 kilograms yesterday but proved far too classy, edging away from Southern Lad (Ocean Park) to win by a half-length with Snitz (Snitzel) a head away in third. Bridge acknowledged too that, under the circumstances, it was a better win that it appeared on paper.
“This was the tightest schedule I have ever had for a horse – he’s only been in about seven weeks,” Bridge said. “The horse had to be just outstanding to win.”
“It takes a lot to get me off the bit but I was off the bit today because I have been worried about the track since Tuesday. It looked closer to heavy to me but the wide barrier worked in our favour.”
Rider Kerrin McEvoy was also concerned about the potential wet track.
“I was a bit worried when I got here, they were getting their toe right into it,” McEvoy said. “I rode him every Tuesday for two months and every time I got off his back he just improved and improved. He is a horse that comes to hand quickly and he showed that there, he has gone out there and won that race.
“To be fair he is only 85 per cent. He is not fully screwed down so that’s what class horses can do.”
While Classique Legend hasn’t officially been confirmed for Ho’s Everest slot, he looks all but certain to line up as his representative. Bridge plans to follow a similar path through The Shorts (Gr 2, 1100m) and the Premiere Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) to the Everest.
“I will give him almost an identical program to last year,” Bridge said. “I told everyone last year he wasn’t ready. He will be a better horse this spring.”
Classique Legend is the second foal out of burgeoning blue hen mare Pinocchio (Encosta De Lago), a sister to five-time Group 1 winner Racing To Win. She has also produced Hong Kong’s Group 2-winning three-year-old Aethero (Sebring), while her So You Think (High Chaparral) yearling colt was purchased by Ho for $1.1 million at this year’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale.