Corner Pocket
In snooker, it’s all about precision.
And in the making of picket fence builder Corner Pocket, one of two new stakes winners for surging stallion Toronado (High Chaparral) last weekend, Swettenham Stud played all the angles with consummate skill before putting their queue in the rack.
The mare Baize (Commands), from which the Lindsey Smith-trained Corner Pocket gained his name, achieved no fame on the racecourse. Inherited in Darley’s buy-out of Woodlands via an in-foal dam who in turn was the source of a name – Suede (Quest For Fame) – the mare’s career stopped at four starts, for a Muswellbrook maiden win in 2012.
She went to stud with, time would tell, a good dash of credentials, being by the Darley Danehill (Danzaig) stallion who’s become a top dozen broodmare sire for the past four seasons, with a PB of eighth last year, Commands. But if this were snooker, Baize’s breeding career would largely be a series of shots rebounding agonisingly from the edge of the pocket.
A first cover by Darley’s Lonhro (Octagonal) in 2012 yielded a filly named Billiards, but from there it’s mostly a tale of woe bearing out the inexact science that is breeding. Billiards never made it to the races, and Baize has built a record of one miss, a slip, and three “foals deceased after birth”, which adds up to just four live foals from 11 covers to date.
But amidst all this noise, Swettenham struck a sweet note.
Adam Sangster’s Victorian stud stepped in to buy Baize at the 2015 Inglis Broodmare sale for just $22,000. She was in foal to Darley’s Denman (she would lose the colt after birth) but, Sangster said, the purchase was made with an eye to Toronado, the dual UK Group 1-winning son of High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells) who’d start shuttling to Swettenham from the Haras de Bouquetot stud of his Qatari owners, Al Shaqab, in France.
“Brian Gorman, my then manager and a bloody good horseman and a damn good judge of horses, thought she’d be a very good match with Toronado,” Sangster told It’s In The Blood.
“That first year, I bought a number of mares to go with Toronado to get the support. In this case the allure was that with Baize being by Commands, it was the High Chaparral over the Danehill line mare, which was proving itself a bit with Dundeel (High Chaparral),” Sangster said of the Arrowfield stallion whose best two nicks are through sons of Danehill, in Redoute’s Choice and Fastnet Rock.
After Baize bore her Toronado colt – against quite some odds, time would tell – she had a colt which didn’t survive by Swettenham’s Trust In A Gust (Keep The Faith), slipped to Nom Du Jeu (Montjeu), and was then sold on in 2018, for just $4,000.
That Toronado colt, however, bucked all other trends. So impressive was he, Swettenham decided it had one clear shot to take – to offload him quickly – deeming him such a fine advertisement for their new sire that they should forego a potentially high yearling price to push him onto the market.
“This was an exceptional foal and a good example of the breed to show off, to help promote the stallion, since obviously no-one had seen his foals yet,” Sangster said.
The colt went to the Inglis Australian Weanling Sales in 2017, was pounced on, for $75,000, by another Victorian stud in Musk Creek Farm, whose judgement was rewarded the next year when selling the yearling to Boomer Bloodstock and trainer Smith, adding a Victorian base to his Perth stable, for $175,000.
Named Corner Pocket, he kicked off as a late three-year-old in June 2020 with a narrow Ballarat maiden second, then returned at four, on Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) eve, with another placing at the same course.
A week later he broke through at Hamilton, and he’s been winning ever since, a faultless string of eight which escalated to Listed class over 1400 metres at Flemington last Saturday, first-up from a spell.
With prize-money of $350,000 he’s neatly doubled his yearling price, and he continues to be a gleaming advertisement for Toronado, who’s building up plenty of them.
The northern 12-year-old now has 23 stakes-winners worldwide, with six-year-old Legionario also winning at Listed level in France on the weekend. Another first-cropper – William Reid Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner and Everest (1200m) runner-up Masked Crusader – fills the role of poster boy in Australia, while French-bred Tribhuvan became his second Grade 1 winner four months after him by taking the United Nations Stakes (Gr 1, 11f) at Monmouth Park.
With Still A Star winning five black-type races in Tasmania and the VRC Rose Of Kingston Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m), and another daughter in Affair To Remember also succeeding at Group 2 level at Flemington, Toronado’s stocks in the past two years have followed an invigorating trajectory for Sangster, the team at Swettenham, and Al Shaqab’s Sheikh Johann.
After debuting outside the top 200 on the general sires list in Australia in 2018-19, Toronado has finished 51st, then 19th, and is currently ensconced in the top ten in ninth position. With five stakes-winners here this season, he looks on track to eclipse last season’s high of seven, and as a result the service fee which last year rose by $22,000 to hit $49,500 is set to rise “substantially” again, Sangster said.
“We knocked back a number of mares last year, as we did the year before. We’ve been protecting the stallion, not over-breeding him and that’s what we’ll continue to do. If we can get 150 mares in foal, we’ll be very happy with that,” said Sangster of the imposing bay, who had 172 covers last term, down from a high of 210 the year before.
“Things are going very well for him here, which is very satisfying. He’s doing a good job in Europe, but down here he’s doing an exceptional job, and he’s only going to get stronger. He continues to gel really well with the Australian broodmare band,” said Sangster, highlighting a couple of Danzig-based female lines as the key to Toronado’s Australian strength.
“Mares from the Invincible Spirit – I Am Invincible line, and the Danehill and Green Desert mares. What has really come of age has been the realisation of these particular lines which are very strong, and there’s enough in the southern hemisphere pool of mares to really make him become a dominant stallion.
“Toronado is doing it with his colts and his fillies, and Corner Pocket is going brilliantly. It’s so hard to string together a picket fence of eight straight wins in Australia, so full credit has to go to everyone involved with him.”
Toronado’s winners-to-runners ratio in Australia sits at 64 per cent, – as it does in Hong Kong where he’s nine from 14 – compared with 48 per cent in France and 57 per cent in Britain and Ireland.
His top three nicks for winners here are damsires by Danehill in Danehill Dancer (Danehill), Fastnet Rock and Dansili (Danehill). Cape Cross (Green Desert) also scores strongly, with three winners from as many runners, which is noteworthy given Sangster met last weekend with Al Shaqab’s Sheikh Joaan in Doha at the Amir Sword Equestrian Festival, a feast of events including Arabian and thoroughbred racing.
“Sheikh Joaan confirmed his ongoing support of Swettenham, and they’ll send some mares to Australia who should work well, such as daughters of sons of Invincible Spirit, Dansili and Cape Cross, so we’re looking forward to that immensely,” Sangster said.
Baize, meanwhile, went on to provide further validation for her mating with Toronado. Corner Pocket has a two-year-old brother, yet to race, in the care of Victorian trainer Jamie Edwards, named Balabushka.
Just when you thought we’d finally made a clean break from the snooker theme, it transpires George Balabushka was a famed – if such people can indeed become famous – craftsman of the game, known as “the Stradivarius of queue makers”.
Tens of thousands of dollars can be paid at auction now for samples of the 1200 or so queues made by the Russian-born New Yorker until his death in 1975, turned out, no doubt, with the same level of care and precision you sometimes need in breeding, and in making picket fences.