Fireburn
As many maths nerds or dodgy politicians know, you can have some great fun with statistics. Have a look at these:
Rebel Dane, as a sire, has a stakes-winners-to-runners ratio of 15.4 per cent. In fact, that’s Group winners to runners, since he hasn’t bothered stooping to Listed level.
That’s Extreme Choice-esque. Better in fact. That stallion has only 8.6 per cent Group winners to runners, amongst a 16.7 per cent stakes winners ratio.
Rebel Dane’s (California Dane) part-owner and breeder Louis Mihalyka, of Laurel Oak Bloodstock, joked about it with Extreme Choice’s (Not A Single Doubt) Newgate people. It’s a joke because Rebel Dane’s stats come from a grand total of 13 starters. Mind you, the famously sub-fertile Extreme Choice has only had 36. Still, Mihalyka knows it would be something phenomenal, if his under-patronised boy’s figures can hold up over longer time.
At least the late-starting Rebel Dane is off to a flyer. The 12-year-old’s second-cropper Fireburn – trained, like her dad, by Gary Portelli – joined Gold Coast Group 3 winner Subterranean on the stallion’s stakes winners list by taking Saturday’s Sweet Embrace (Gr 2, 1200m) at Randwick, loudly trumpeting her Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) credentials.
While the above percentages flatter Rebel Dane, whose oaks-running dam Texarcana (More Than Ready) was also trained by Portelli, his covering books have been disappointingly low because of racetrack stats that went the other way – deceptively against him.
The sprinter won “only” eight races from 40 starts, and “only” two Group 1s. He took Caulfield’s Rupert Clarke Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) as a four-year-old in 2013, then had to wait three years for his second, in the Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Moonee Valley in 2016.
Pure figures, of course, can be deceptive. No fewer than 25 of those 40 runs were at Group 1 level. In nine of them, the entire drew among the widest four barriers. He also competed amongst an immensely strong cohort of sprinters, with regular rivals such as Horse of the Year Lankan Rupee (Redoute’s Choice), five-time Group 1 winner Chautauqua (Encosta De Lago), and Buffering (Mossman), who won seven times at the top level, including in Dubai. Considering all this, just a couple more inside gates might have changed Rebel Dane’s story drastically, turning his elite level tally from a pair to maybe three or four, vastly altering his stud career.
In the event, he was a hard sell.
“I guess he was unfashionably bred,” Mihalyka said of Rebel Dane, whose sire was one of Danehill’s (Danzig) lesser lights in California Dane – who was unplaced in his four Group 1 starts – and whose dam Texarcana won three out of town and took part in two Group 1s, over 1600 metres and 2500 metres, and came last in both.
“We raced him on at six and seven and retired him at eight, because no one much wanted to buy him. His earning power on the racecourse was worth more than what some people were offering for him at stud.”
Rebel Dane started as a waif, but grew into an outstanding performer.
“When I first got him, he weighed 400 kilos,” Portelli told It’s In The Blood. “I couldn’t even ride him as a yearling. When he came back from the breakers, I didn’t have a girth small enough to go around his belly. Basically I sent him straight back to the farm and I was like ‘What do we do with this?’
“But when he came back, a little more solid, I put a saddle on him and jockey Dean Greville, who was riding work for me at the time, and after his first ride ever around a track, he got off and said, ‘This horse will win a Group 1’.”
Greville was wrong, of course, since he won two, but it could have been more.
Rebel Dane won his first four, including a Group 2 and then ran Pierro (Lonhro) to a nose in the Hobartville Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m). Portelli only had to wait till his third preparation for that Group 1 breakthrough in the Rupert Clarke, but then came his litany of frustrations – three Group 1 placings, five fourths, including one in the Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1350m) on a horror trip when he drew 10 of 11 before 18 of 18 in the Stradbroke (seventh, beaten two lengths).
“He’s the best horse I’ve trained,” Portelli says. “She Will Reign brought my best result, winning the Golden Slipper, as well as the (G1) Moir, but Rebel Dane – the longevity, the horses he raced against year after year.
“While you’ve got these horses, you take it for granted a bit. You think, ‘This is just the way it is’. But when they retire it leaves a very big hole. All of a sudden you’re watching these races instead of being a part of them.
“He was unlucky to have raced in an era where we had a lot of top class sprinters. And his record could have been a lot better had we had more luck in a couple of races. From wide alleys, we were going a long way back to get in, and so setting yourself up for some sectionals that are almost impossible at that level, and giving great horses too big a start.”
At Moonee Valley, with more forward positions amongst smaller fields, Rebel Dane could excel. His Manikato win came against eight Group 1 winners among nine rivals, Buffering and Chautauqua among them. His narrow fourth to Lankan Rupee in the same race in 2014 – when among five horses within a head of each other on the line – came when he was blocked for a run on the fence until the dying strides, and is the race Portelli feels sure should have added to his Group 1 tally.
Once it did come, the stud journey has been just as torturous as his racing career (if it’s possible to be tortured by earnings of $2.4 million). Starting in 2017, Rebel Dane stood his first two seasons at Victoria’s Swettenham Stud and lured books of 36 and 31 mares, at service fees of $12,500 (inc GST) and $9,900 (inc GST) respectively. In 2019, his owners moved him to Glen Eden Stud, starting at $6,600 (Inc GST). There, he served books of just 11 in 2019, 14 in 2020 at a fee of $5,000 (inc GST) and 49 in 2021, when Subterranean’s promise triggered higher patronage and a service fee bump to $8,800 (inc GST).
With only his two Swettenham crops having hit the tracks, Rebel Dane is now about to find his third breeding barn. The destination and fee are as yet undecided. Fireburn’s Golden Slipper performance will have an influence.
The filly came to be after Mihalyka and Laurel Oak purchased a So You Think (High Chaparral) mare named Mull Over at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale in 2018 for just $22,000. Bred by Think Big Stud, she seemed ordinary on the track, with one Newcastle win from 11 starts.
“But we did some homework and her connections reckoned she was city class but she’d hurt herself,” said Mihalyka, who was further entranced upon mulling over her pedigree.
She is out of a winless mare named Zahani (Zabeel) who produced a dual Listed winner in Galizani. Zahani was by the great broodmare sire Zabeel (Sir Tristram), but, more crucially in this case, was out of Danarani (Danehill). Not only was Danarani good enough to win the 1994 edition of the Flight Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) and two other black type races, the fact she was by Danehill gives Fireburn a 3×4 cross of the great sire, which is, importantly, gender balanced.
Mihalyka, who kicked off in breeding 37 years ago buying Rebel Dane’s third dam Georgian Gold (Blue And Gold) at Dubbo for $5,000, delves fairly deep into pedigrees.
“I can go back eight or nine generations occasionally, but I really prefer a six with support in seven,” he said, adding four and five are of course nothing to sneeze at. In putting Mull Over to Rebel Dane, he’d see lights going off in many columns.
“I particularly like having Danehill as Fireburn’s third damsire. It usually means they’ve come from good families.
“And because Rebel Dane is out of a More Than Ready mare, and Mull Over is a Danehill line mare, it’s very strong. If you go back seven generations, you see all these daughters of (US Blue Hen) La Troienne, you see (La Troienne family Blue Hen) Striking repeated, there’s Buckpasser three times, Natalma’s everywhere (10 times in fact).
“And having the 3×4 to Danehill in those positions actually runs at about 13 or 14 per cent stakes-horses-to-runners, and out of a decent number now where there’s about 100 of them,” he said of a blend that has produced Mick Price’s Group 1 winner Seabrook (Hinchinbrook), among others.
“It wasn’t the be all and end all, but we were looking to buy a mare for Rebel Dane and it had that, so I’m bloody glad I did.”
With Fireburn a $17 chance for Rosehill’s big day on March 19 – odds that will shorten if Sydney’s current rainfest is repeated for yet another wet Golden Slipper – Mihalyka is “absolutely getting excited” over the hope he may come to celebrate breeding a winner of the two-year-old highlight.
And with Portelli also set to saddle $15 shot Sejardan (Sebring), the Warwick Farm trainer has a major spring in his step. While he regards them both as strong chances, victory for a daughter of his finest, yet one of his unluckiest, runners would be sweet indeed.