Duncan has full belief in The Everest-bound Bustling
Boom Perth juvenile Bustling (Frosted) is assured of a place in the $20 million The Everest (1200m) after confirmation this week that east coast heavy hitters Max Whitby, Neil Werrett and co have bought the gelding.
And his breeder and former co-owner Neville Duncan believes the winner of the Karrakatta Plate (Gr 2, 1200m) and WA Sires’ (Gr 3, 1400m) can more than measure up in Sydney for his new trainers Mick Price and Mick Kent Jnr.
The Oakland Park principal puts Bustling among the best two or three horses he’s ever raced – and Duncan’s raced a couple of good ones.
None more so than dual Cox Plate champion and nine-time Group 1 winner Northerly (Serheed), who dominated the Melbourne carnivals in the early 2000s, and Marasco (Scenic) who he raced in the later half of the decade.
“Bustling, in my view, is untapped. He’s as sound as sound and he’s up there with the best two or three horses I’ve ever bred, I would think. Some of his sectionals are just amazing. They’re older horses’ sectionals,” Duncan told us this week.
“He’s up around there with Marasco. I know that’s a big call, but early days he’s up there. He’s basically had the handbrake on. He’s got a beautiful stride, he’s just so efficient.
“He smashed the Karrakatta record [running 1:09.06 seconds] and it was basically the same time as the Quokka on the same day [1:08.88]. To offer some perspective to it, the race was on the same day, over the same distance and run within half an hour on the same track, so they’re important factors.
“What a lot of people don’t know is, the Quokka was hand-timed, so that means it is automatically faster than it should be. We’re probably three to four lengths faster on the same day with a heavy weight, relatively speaking, to what he would have been carrying in a Quokka.”
And Duncan also revealed to this column that he knocked back a compelling offer for Bustling to take on older horses in The Quokka, which has fast become Perth’s signature race.
He and trainer Dan Morton instead chose to stay on the conventional path and win the Karrakatta on the same day.
“We did knock back the opportunity to run in the Quokka. I didn’t want to run the horse,” Duncan said.
“We had a call and it was a serious offer. For me, it’s not about the money, for want of a better word. Sure, he’s got to earn some money, but I didn’t want to go into the unknown with a two-year-old against older horses because they don’t always come out the other end of it too well.
“I feel confident that he would have done so, but you just don’t know for certain, so we didn’t do it.”
Bustling’s future lies on the east coast – with a price tag suggested to be about $2 million – and while Morton has retained an interest in the exciting gelding, Duncan has sold out his share.
“I am not that sort of person. We bred the horse and I’d be delighted in him being a superstar for someone else,” he says.
Bustling is out of the WA stakes-placed mare Busimiss (Key Business), a mare Duncan sold in 2019 for $15,000, rebought for a paltry $800 and sent to Frosted (Tapit) to produce the star sprinter, before reselling last year to a client for $15,000.
Busimiss remains on Duncan’s Oakland Park Stud which this week acquired Group 3-winning and Group 1-placed Ingratiating, himself a son of Frosted, to stand alongside Sessions (Lonhro) and Shooting To Win (Northern Meteor).
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Talk about sliding door moments.
Yarraman Park likely would have chosen I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) anyway, but a little push from breeder Neil Osborne certainly helped when Arthur and Harry Mitchell bought the Group 3-winning stallion in 2010.
“Harry, before he got Vinnie, was looking at O’Lonhro as well and he rang me and said, ‘these are the two stallions we’re looking at. If we bought one of them, would you support us?’. I said, ‘If you buy the one out of Cannarelle, I’d certainly support him’,” Osborne revealed this week.
“‘Would any of your other blokes be likely to support us, too?’ and I said I’d see what I could do.
“I think I got five of the 13 [lifetime breeding right holders] that they sold.”
Chelmsford Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) winner O’Lonhro (Lonhro), a son of seven-time stakes-winning mare Mamzelle Pedrille (Zoffany), as it turned out, retired to Larneuk Stud in Victoria, siring one stakes winner, Sunline Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) winner Mamzelle Tess. I Am Invincible has 107.
The Mitchells aren’t the only ones to receive a dose of good fortune when it comes to stallions. Rich Hill Stud in New Zealand, currently enjoying its own ride of a lifetime via Proisir (Choisir) and his cohorts, was able to snaffle last season’s champion sire when, we are told, an Australian farm had him all but sewn up.
Whether the Australian stud had a change of heart or left the deal hanging too long, who knows, but as fate would have it Proisir now resides in New Zealand and is making waves on both sides of the Tasman.
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Kiwi auctioneer Steve Davis has sold more than a few good horses in his time behind the rostrum in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
But now the affable Davis owns two decent ones – in South Africa. Last Friday, Davis won the East Cape Derby (Listed, 2400m) at Fairview with his three-year-old Joy And Peace (Master Of My Fate). The filly had also won the East Cape Oaks (Listed, 2000m) a month earlier.
Not to be outdone, fellow Davis-owned three-year-old Fairy Knight (Global View), a colt who had won four races in succession including the Ibhayi Stakes (Listed, 1400m) and the East Cape Guineas (Listed, 1600m), ran fourth in the same race.
Fairy Knight’s defeat in the Derby denied him the Triple Crown – and a 250,000 rand bonus (AUD$20,439).
Both three-year-olds are trained by Alan Greeff at Fairview in Port Elizabeth. Greeff syndicated the horses in one per cent shares. Davis, his family and his Cambridge neighbours have five per cent between them, and they’re having a ball.
“He had to win the Derby, but unfortunately he didn’t see out the 2400 metres and he finished fourth and Joy And Peace won the Oaks and now the Derby. Fairy Knight’s won six races and she’s won five races,” Davis told this column.
“The cost was 3,500 rand per one per cent share with no more to pay. It was $350 and it doesn’t show in the stakes, but there was a 100,000-rand bonus for two-year-old races won by a BSA [Bloodstock South Africa] graduate, of which both they were, and they both won an additional 100,000 on top of that.
“Alan bought both of them and he’s the champion trainer at Fairview. He’s just a super bloke and he bought those particular two that year and there’s a lot of new people involved, as you’d expect. There’s a Whatsapp group and all those sorts of things.”
Davis’ syndicate has since bought into another three horses with Greeff, all paid for courtesy of Joy And Peace and Fairy Knight.
“We already knew the results, but we got together the other night for a champagne and dinner. It’s great for my two neighbours here, they haven’t had a lot of exposure to racing, and they’re just loving it,” he said.
Davis auctioned at the BSA National Yearling Sale in Johannesburg last month and he will return to South Africa in July for the one-day KZN Yearling Sale, a precursor to the Durban July race meeting at Greyville.
There was a huge boost in market confidence at the National sale, one that Davis did not expect, even though there was good international investment.
“I really couldn’t tell you, apart from there is a genuine turnaround in the positivity and feeling in the industry over here,” he said
“You couldn’t have anticipated a 94 per cent clearance and lift in the indices of 30 per cent. Forty-three yearlings made a million rand or more. It was shake-my-head stuff.
“The Hong Kong Jockey Club bought four, including the top-priced yearling at six million. It was the strongest sale I’ve sold at this year.”
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There was a time when Melbourne trainer Clinton McDonald was going to go into a partnership with Tim Martin, then he was going to relocate to Pakenham when Caulfield closed as a training venue.
It was a period when it felt as though McDonald was in a state of flux about his career, seemingly overshadowed by the evergrowing stables such as Weir, Waller and Maher.
But that all now appears to be behind him, having relocated to Cranbourne and training winners left, right and centre.
McDonald had Hayasugi (Royal Meeting) win the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m) in February and fellow two-year-old Stanley Express (Starspangledbanner) in the $1 million The Showdown (1200m) at Caulfield in April.
McDonald also has on his hands another juvenile in Angel Capital (Harry Angel), an Upper Bloodstock-owned colt who was an emphatic Cranbourne winner on April 26, a victory that saw the trainer label him as a horse of elite ability. Angel Capital will be put to the test in Saturday’s Spirit Of Boom Classic (Gr 2, 1200m) at Doomben at just his second start.
Shane McGrath, who purchased Hayasugi and Stanley Express and entrusted them with the Cranbourne horseman, is not surprised about the training renaissance of McDonald who also has the Harbour Racing-owned sprinter Star Patrol (Starspangledbanner) in his stable.
“I’ve known Clint for 30 years and we obviously got going with Star Patrol, who is missing the winter and he will be back in the spring, and one thing I like about Clint is, he’s a horseman at heart. He is a very straight shooter. I speak to him every day and if he tells me what’s happening it’s generally what happens,” McGrath told us recently.
“Since he’s moved from Caulfield to Cranbourne, he’s got a real focus on quality. You don’t see a lot of mediocre horses in his stable. It’s not like he’s got 80 to 100 boxes he’s got to fill and keep in his system.
“He likes having horses in the stable that makes him get out of bed and train. I suppose, like anything, people go to where there’s success and he’s attracted some really good new owners into the stable off the back of the success.
“He’s a character and he’s got the pedigree for the job and now he’s got the cattle. He’s doing a great job for us.”