Geegees Mistruth
Here’s an idea for a new pop-up race, certain to captivate all the punters who wonder where so many of these names come from. And we mean so many.
You take all the horses called Gee Gee something, all the Mishanis, all the Oakfields and all the Ausbreds, and they go in a series of heats until we’re down to a field of 12 for a final at Randwick, non-black type for a billion dollars. We could call it The Smytzer (1200m).
Now, Tasmania is somewhat niche in terms of Australian racing and breeding, but for sheer weight of numbers you’d back a Gee Gee to win.
A look at the Australian Stud Book shows there have been 430 horses carrying the prefix Gee Gee … or Geegee, Geegees, and Gee Gees.
That’s a pretty staggering number, but wait there’s many more. Those are just the ones sired by Wordsmith (Testa Rossa).
Some of the finest horses to have graced the tracks of Tassie have carried the name. The best so far was Geegees Blackflash (Clangalang). He raced till he was ten, won a Tasmanian Derby (Gr 3, 2200m), two Hobart Cups (Gr 3, 2400m), a Launceston Cup (Gr 3, 2400m) and almost $1.2 million in prize-money. Not a bad haul considering he never saw Bass Strait, and thus is widely known as the best horse to do a Gilligan, and never leave the island.
Now, it appears we have another one, and she’s one of Wordsmith’s 430. She’s the three-year-old Geegees Mistruth, and she won her first four races before heading to the mainland for last Saturday’s important fillies’ event, the Quezette Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m).
The striking chestnut (like her dad) is from humble stock. Her sire is little known outside of Tasmania. Her dam didn’t race until five, had seven unplaced runs, and cost all of $250 when bought and shipped to Tassie, where’s she’s managed just four live foals from ten covers.
Yet Geegees Mistruth appears all class.
At odds-on, she had comfortably accounted for her opposition in Hobart and Launceston without winning by gaping margins, including at Listed level in the January’s Elwick Stakes (1100m) and Launceston’s Gold Sovereign Stakes (1200m) in February, her last run before Saturday.
Amid the usual doubts about Tasmanian form, she drifted from $8 to $9.50 but showed her ability by flying home to come a 0.5 length second to the highly rated Drifting (Zousain). It was enough to show connections and punters had been right in their assessments.
“She’s usually found the front a long way from home and had a bit of a look around,” her trainer Stuart Gandy tells It’s In The Blood. “But Saturday was the first time she had something to chase.
“It was the first time she’s really run the last 600 metres like that [a race-best 33.56 sec], and that she’d had a good race tempo where she could relax, get into a rhythm, balance up and work through her gears.
“We’ll give her a bit of a freshen-up for about a month and then go back to Melbourne. Maybe something like the Thousand Guineas could be on her radar.”
If successful, she’d be the first Group 1 winner among all Gee Gees (and variants), a name that has almost come to define Tassie racing. And if you’re curious to know where it all came from, it came from cows, and it works on two levels.
Gee Gee is the brand of the late Tasmanian mega owner and breeder Paul Geard, who had a dairy farm named Green Glory Holsteins. When he branched into horses he carried over the two Gs, and turned it into a play on words from the slang term for racehorse. Something of a wordsmith himself.
Geard died in March last year, aged 78, a few months after he and wife Elizabeth’s induction to the Tasmanian Thoroughbred Hall of Fame.
The family is winding down their thoroughbred holdings, which had been centred around the multi-million dollar Gee Gee Stud and Racing Stables, but at the height of the operation they had some 120 horses on their 300–acre property, and around 50 in work. And yes, they were all called Gee Gee something.
“At first Gee Gee was at the front of some names and the back of others, but then he settled on the front,” says Gandy, who became a private trainer for the Geards, who also had horses with other stables.
“Yes, it would get confusing sometimes. It was a bit hard to keep track of who was who. Stable names make it easier.”
Geegees Mistruth is “Bonnie”, but not from the adjective that by federal law can only be applied to female horses.
“Her full brother was big. He looked like a Clydesdale, so he got called Clyde. So then we went for Bonnie,” says Gandy, who also spares a thought for Tasmanian racing legend, caller Colin McNiff.
“When Paul had 50 in work, sometimes there were races that had as many as five Gee Gees running. Poor Colin would pull his hair out a bit! At least it’s got a bit easier now there’s not so many running around.”
Incidentally, like Montagues and Capulets of the turf, Gandy does keep an eye on the other main mob.
“I do follow the Mishanis in Queensland and what they’re up to. Now the Gee Gees have started to wind down, I actually think they’ve taken the mantle,” he says of the northerners (whose names, incidentally, come from owner Mike Crooks and his daughter Shani).
Paul Geard didn’t get to see Geegees Mistruth race, but he knew he had bred another good one.
“When I broke her in,” says Gandy, “she was a really big, strong filly – a little wayward but very athletic. With her size and the way she covered the ground, we knew she was a nice horse.
“We didn’t think she’d be a two-year-old, but we put her through the process. In her first trial she did a lot wrong and came second. But she won her second trial and showed ability, so we raced her.
“She was very raw but we knew she was good, since she could gallop against class horses. She just kept improving.”
Yes, Gandy breaks them in as well. At the risk of jokes about not many people living in Tasmania, he’s also in the mating shed at the stud when the business is going on, and he’s there foaling them down and weaning them, with help from wife Ruth.
The couple now live on the farm with their children, and 42-year-old Gandy trains his half-private, half-public string of about 50 from the Brighton training centre, near Elwick on Hobart’s northern outskirts.
“I love following the horses all the way through – from foaling them, rearing them, then racing them until they retire,” says Gandy, who hailed from an equestrian background.
“When you go to sales and see beautiful horses it’s lovely, but there’s something about being there to foal them down, and all the dramas that go along with foaling.
“And breeding to race is a great teacher. It teaches you to be very forgiving of conformation and things like that. You get what you’re given.
“It’s definitely taught me that a lot of the time, you’re better off to let them be the way they are.”
The richest example of doing nothing is I Wish I Win (Savabeel), born with his lower near fore leg jutting out, but who naturally laid down enough bone to straighten it. He’s now won almost $11.9 million.
“Or else their ligaments might strengthen on one side to compensate,” Gandy says. “And at the end of the day, they don’t know they throw a leg. It’s only us who look at ‘em and say, ‘Crikey!’
“It’s definitely taught me that a lot of horses overcome things that would put you off in a sale ring. As they grow, they’re just like people – they get used to doing it with what they’ve got.”
Gandy has had a smooth ride with Geegees Mistruth, daughter of the obscure Wordsmith.
Trained by Shane Nichols, he ran sixth in Wonderful World’s 2006 Caulfield Guineas and eighth in Miss Finland’s Australian Guineas in his two Group 1 attempts. He won the MVRC Debonair (Gr 3, 1200m), and after his racing career was truncated at 17 starts, Geard bought him for $26,000 at the Inglis Great Southern Sale.
The handsome, flaxen-maned chestnut has sired eight Tasmanian stakes-winners, all called Gee Gee something except Derby winner The Nephew. Now 21, and with 163 individual winners from 260 runners, the stallion Gandy describes as a “beautifully natured” family pet has just about retired from stud duties.
With most Gee Gee matings done on type, there’s little trickery in the pedigree of Geegees Mistruth. There is, however, a possibly influential blend of three sons of Star Kingdom (Stardust) at 6m x 5m, 6m in Star Affair (who ended up siring in Japan from 1972-84), Biscay and Todman.
Many breeders love Biscay blended with one or two of his brothers Tattenham and Star Of Heaven, but Geegees Mistruth’s combination should have still packed some colonial punch.
Also, little recent black type comes through the female family of dam Miss Mana (Jetball). Her third dam Yvette (Sovereign Edition) threw South Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Lady Liberty (Noble Bijou) and New Zealand Group 3 scorer Marquess (Stunning), but that’s about it.
Still, having been there at her conception and birth, Geegees Mistruth’s trainer is extremely happy to have “got what I was given”.