Champions Day representation enhances Deep Field’s growing reputation
Golden Sixty (Medaglia D’Oro) should shrug aside all-too-familiar rivals in the Champions Mile (Gr 1, 1600m) at Sha Tin on Sunday, when a handful of raiders from Japan are expected to be too strong for the home defences in the other two Champions Day features: Daring Tact (Epiphaneia), Loves Only You (Deep Impact), Kiseki (Rulership) and Glory Vase (Deep Impact) make up half the field in the QEII Cup (Gr 1, 2000m), while Danon Smash (Lord Kanaloa) is a standout in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize (Gr 1, 1200m).
Some encouragement for the home runners, besides Golden Sixty, however, lies in the refreshing, eternal truth that sport has a tendency to scuttle the seemingly obvious, and, beyond that, there is always the hope of what the next cycle of young stock might bring.
Danon Smash exposed the current weakness in the Hong Kong sprinting ranks with an upset win in the Hong Kong Sprint (Gr 1, 1200m) at Sha Tin in December. He followed with success in the Takamatsunomiya Kinen (Gr 1, 1200m) at Chukyo in March and heads into the weekend rated 116, four points superior to his closest rivals.
The 12 opposing him are a mix of the admirable yet exposed, the slightly disappointing and the as-yet-unfulfilled. Among those is a quartet of four-year-olds, Wellington (All Too Hard), Beauty Applause (Stratum), Stronger (Not A Single Doubt) and Sky Field (Deep Field), who all came up short behind Amazing Star (Darci Brahma) last time in the Sprint Cup (Gr 2, 1200m) but could have the innate talent to rise higher.
Sky Field was ninth in that race and is the lowest rated in the field off a mark of 103. But the fact that he is taking his place, with a career record of four wins and three placings from 11 starts, is itself a nod to the eye-catching start his young sire Deep Field (Northern Meteor) has made with his Hong Kong-raced progeny.
The Newgate Farm stallion has enjoyed a fine beginning to his stud career more broadly: among his best offspring, Portland Sky was a dead-heat winner of the Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m), while Aysar placed second in the Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
“Deep Field has clearly been a revelation and as an Australian stallion operation, seeing our stallions succeeding in Hong Kong is key because Hong Kong is an extension of the Australian racing industry, in my mind,” Newgate Farm boss Henry Field said.
Deep Field’s career was shaped by an injury. A couple of surgeries were required after another horse landed a kick at trackwork and that prevented him from racing until the back-end of his three-year-old season. The late start to his racing career is a positive, though, in terms of his profile as a producer for Hong Kong, where sprinters mature through the grades to peak at age five.
The speedy bay proceeded to rattle off five wins, culminating with the Linlithgow Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) in the late spring of his four-year-old campaign, before he placed third, as favourite, in the Lightning (Gr 1, 1000m). With his mind already on the breeding shed in two subsequent starts, he was retired to stand the 2015 covering season at Newgate for AU$20,000 (exc GST), rising to AU$50,000 by 2020.
The stallion’s first Hong Kong success was achieved in January 2020, a bustling night in the outer environs of Wanchai District, when Californiadeepshot (Deep Field), blazed from the gate and ran his rivals ragged first-up. The race was a Class 3 handicap over 1200 metres, and the gelding has proven no better than a stock sprinter in the grade, yet the win was eye-catching in its make-all execution.
Californiadeepshot is a product of Deep Field’s initial crop, and that bunch of four-year-olds has taken to Hong Kong, a tough environment for any horse both physically and mentally, and one which can appear fickle, too, as owners latch onto trends – be that stallions, trainers or jockeys – only to abandon with brutal pragmatism if the chosen one falls short or a better option arises.
So far, Deep Field is keeping the owners and trainers happy. His 24 progenies in Hong Kong have raced 159 times and nine have won 22 races between them. The list includes not only Sky Field but also Winning Dreamer who won his first six races, rising from a rating of 52 to 102; Winner Method is unbeaten in three and Master Fay, trained, like Sky Field, by Caspar Fownes, has won his only outing to date.
“There is no doubt Deep Field is going to be one of the best stallions going in the next few years. He’s got them coming left, right and centre. He’s a potential star stallion and he’s already proving that,” Fownes said.
Deep Field has already been tagged ‘a Hong Kong stallion’. That colloquial label has been applied to a select and sometimes obscure group of sires down the years. Forget superstar Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), whose three limited-ability imports quite naturally failed in the sprinter-miler dominated circuit; to gauge real stallion success in Hong Kong, look to his less-lauded Coolmore companion, Holy Roman Emperor (Danehill), and the likes of O’Reilly (Last Tycoon), Pins (Snippets), El Moxie (Conquistador Cielo), Darci Brahma (Danehill), and Hong Kong’s current leading sire by winners Per Incanto (Street Cry), as well as the globally-renowned Encosta De Lago (Fairy King), Exceed And Excel (Danehill) and Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway).
“There are Hong Kong stallions, to some degree, but I actually think it’s more that some stallions do not get Hong Kong horses,” said Sha Tin-based trainer Paul O’Sullivan.
Hong Kong relies entirely on imported stock, there is no breeding industry, so there is not the same need to promote stallions. It’s a simple relationship: if their stock delivers, the sire finds favour, whatever his name or reputation elsewhere.
Holy Roman Emperor was never the height of fashion after coming off the subs bench for George Washington (Danehill), despite siring a European Classic winner early on, but 76 of his offspring have raced in Hong Kong and 42 of those have garnered 126 wins. Most importantly, his global profile was raised with his Hong Kong-based Group 1 winners Designs On Rome, Beauty Only and Rich Tapestry. Meanwhile, Pins sired two champions in Hong Kong, Ambitious Dragon and Aerovelocity, with his 68 runners in the city yielding 136 wins from 42 individual winners.
O’Sullivan trained Aerovelocity to win Group 1 races in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, and he has had success with less-vaunted stallions, too, whose stock had the requisite attributes to make it in Hong Kong.
“O’Reilly had winners all over but they achieved more in Hong Kong considering the numbers; he was more fashionable in Hong Kong. To a lesser degree you have a horse like Castledale, he had winners here in Hong Kong and he was serving 15 mares a year in New Zealand,” said the handler.
Castledale (Peintre Celebre) had only ten individual runners in Hong Kong but eight of those won 27 races from 226 starts between them. As O’Sullivan put it, “They handled the firm tracks and had good brains” and those traits are essential for Hong Kong success.
“Deep Field gets very sound horses,” noted Field. “Very fast horses, and he’s a very consistent stallion on every metric. But it doesn’t surprise me that he’s a freak in Hong Kong because they’re horses that have such great temperaments and they’re hard, tough, sound horses that can handle that harsh environment.
“The yearlings at sales by Deep Field, they eat, they sleep, they’re push-button and they’re the types of horses that go to Hong Kong and succeed.”
Hong Kong’s champion trainer Ricky Yiu enjoyed his biggest wins with the exceptional champion sprinter Sacred Kingdom, sired by Deep Field’s grandfather Encosta De Lago.
“I’ve been noticing the Deep Feld progeny from day one, we had a big rap for them,” Yiu said. “I think the majority of his progeny is in good shape, good conformation, and they look like they’re runners. I liked Northern Meteor, his father, but he passed away.”
A stallion has really made his name in Hong Kong when the ever-cautious Hong Kong Jockey Club starts purchasing their progeny for its private sale; that happened at this year’s Premier Yearling Sale in February. Yiu, though, knows too well that it is already getting harder to buy Deep Field’s stock.
“I could have bought two from the Premier,” he said. “I bought Lot 109 and I was underbidder for Lot 525, the Deep Field the Club bought for AU$550,000, the most expensive one they bought. I went up to AU$525,000.
“A couple of years ago they averaged just under $300,000 for a good one but now you want to have a decent one you need to pay a lot more: you need to nearly double it.”
Fownes’ Sky Field was a NZ$175,000 purchase when he was bought as a yearling three years ago. The gelding has already more than repaid his purchase fee and, if he can make his presence felt against Danon Smash on Sunday, it will only enhance his sire’s burgeoning reputation.