Harry Angel / Arkansaw Kid
The new season is no longer all that new. Results and standings that may have been anomalous are giving way to the more reliable. And though these are still relatively early days, it’s easy to see why Darley – and numerous individual breeders – are growing increasingly wild about Harry Angel (Dark Angel).
He started shuttling to Darley’s Kelvinside Farm in 2019, a young five-year-old stallion with an imposing CV and a funny name.
The back half of it derives from his sire; the front comes from his dam being Beatrix Potter (Cadeaux Genereux), a slight mashing of literary references leading us to the wizard kid Harry Potter, though Beatrix’s Peter Rabbit might have sounded faster.
And the naming trickery has extended to his star offspring: by Harry Angel comes Tom Kitten. Watch out for Dick Darling sometime soon.
What needed no explanation was Harry Angel’s ability. At just three, he was the highest-rated sprinter on the planet. On Timeform, he rated 132, higher than all six Everest winners so far, with Nature Strip (Nicconi) coming closest on 131.
He won his two top flight contests that year, against older horses in Haydock’s Sprint Cup (Gr 1, 1200m) and Newmarket’s July Cup (Gr 1, 1200m) and, needless to say, was also named Europe’s Champion sprinter and Europe and Britain’s Champion three-year-old sprinter.
Still, bringing European sprinters to stand in the hotbed of the pursuit does involve an amount of hit and hope. As a result, Harry Angel stood his first season at Kelvinside for $22,000 (inc GST), and his next three for $16,500 (inc GST).
The decision to shuttle is now looking emphatically vindicated.
Last season, Harry Angel ranked 54th on the general sires’ list, a solid result for a second season sire, with 40 winners from only 81 runners. He also had a robust four stakes winners, of five stakes races, including Group 1 success courtesy of Tom Kitten’s Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m).
Only five sires who ranked above him had fewer starters. One of those – Discreet Cat (Forestry) – had just one, in Golden Eagle (1500m) winner Obamburumai. Another had only seven, in Mr Brightside’s sire Bullbars (Elusive Quality). Another was the outstanding – but fertility challenged – Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt). And Teofilo (Galileo) ranked 15th thanks to the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) / Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) double of Without A Fight.
By stakes winners, Harry Angel ranked equal 17th, above the likes of Exceed And Excel (Danehill), Pierro (Lonhro) and Maurice (Screen Hero). Darley raised his fee for this spring and he is serving a full book capped at 140 mares at a fee of $38,500 (inc GST).
In the current term, Harry Angel has continued to surge. With just three crops racing he sits 20th on the general sires’ table. His number of runners – 41 – is the lowest in the top 20. At time of writing, table-topper Zoustar (Northern Meteor) had exactly four times that amount.
Harry Angel’s stakes winners – two – put him equal third by that score. And his winners-to-runners ratio of 26.8 per cent is the fifth best in the top 20. He’s behind Hellbent (I Am Invincible) on 33.01 per cent, Justify (Scat Daddy) on 30.95, Toronado (High Chaparral) with 28.57, and Divine Prophet (Choisir) on 27.5. Zoustar sits on 21.95, with I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) 25.5.
“He’s steadily climbing his way up the stallion ranks,” Darley’s head of stallions Alastair Pulford told It’s In The Blood. “He’s developing into a really good stallion actually.
“To be 20th on the general sires’ table is very good. It is early in the season, but he’s definitely a horse who’s, A – getting lots of winners, but B – getting some classy ones too.”
With his racetrack speed and being free of Danehill (Danzig), Harry Angel appealed to Darley as a likely shuttling prospect.
“The fact he was such a good horse himself, a world champion sprinter and so highly rated was attractive,” Pulford says.
“The Dark Angel sireline hadn’t been tried here, but obviously it’s very formidable in the northern hemisphere. And being an outcross to Danehill is always attractive. He seems to work well with the Danehill line, and multiple others.
“He’s only going to get better books of mares. His numbers and his quality have increased over the years. This season he’s at $38,500, the highest he’s stood for, and with that you do get better quality mares.
“His last book and this season are probably his best books to date. There’s still a bit to play out but he’s proven he can do it, and he’s done it off a reasonably low base. When the better mares come along, he’ll hopefully just keep climbing.”
Harry Angel has 15 global stakes winners from 270 runners (5.55 per cent). Only five are Australian, but three rank as his best performers: Godolphin’s triple black type victor Tom Kitten, quadruple stakes winner Arkansaw Kid, and Phillip Stokes’s two-timer, the Group 1-placed Stretan Angel.
Another highly rated runner, three-year-old Angel Capital, joined the group last start by taking Moonee Valley’s McKenzie Stakes (Listed, 1200m). He’ll step up again this Saturday in the Caulfield Guineas Prelude (Gr 3, 1400m) en route to the Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
But one horse who seems to have Group 1 success in his future is the Team Hayes trained Arkansaw Kid.
Backing Darley’s reasoning, he’s a product of Harry Angel’s top-rated nick, with a son of Danehill (Danzig) in Exceed And Excel, which has yielded five winners from 14 runners.
He showed great promise at two, winning the Inglis Banner (RL, 1000m) on debut at Moonee Valley, running third in the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m) and a decent seventh in the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m).
Arkansaw Kid took Caulfield’s Gothic Stakes (Listed, 1200m) in his second run at three, but then proved a little frustrating in his next seven starts, albeit at a high level, coming no worse than sixth but managing just three minor placings.
Gelded before his four-year-old spring, he’s come back oozing star quality with two victories from three starts – Caulfield’s Regal Roller Stakes (Listed, 1200m) first-up, and Flemington’s Bobbie Lewis Quality (Gr 2, 1200m) last Saturday.
Bought by the Hayes’s Lindsay Park from Sledmere Stud’s draft at Inglis Classic Yearling Sale for $190,000, Arkansaw Kid is from a rich New Zealand female line.
With traces to the same family as Kiwi-bred great Rising Fast (Alonzo), Arkansaw Kid’s fifth dam was the outstanding Key (Fair’s Fair), winner of nine New Zealand principal races and one in Australia, the 1963 AJC Villiers Stakes (1600m).
Fourth dam Chubb (Faux Tirage) ran third in a New Zealand Oaks (Gr 1, then 2000m). Third dam Saving (Pevero) was unraced but was a star in the breeding barn, throwing four stakes winners of 12 stakes races.
The flagbearer was Shindig (Straight Strike), who won the 1998 STC Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m) plus one other stakes race, and became Arkansaw Kid’s second dam. She’s also our introduction to the gelding’s breeder, though it wasn’t a seamless tale.
Philippa Duncan was New Zealand’s first female racing journalist, and was from a family steeped in the sport. Great grandfather John Rollo–owned, rode and trained horses. Grandfather Harry Andrews stood stallions. Uncle Phil Andrews trained successfully in the South Island, and his brother Rouen gifted Philippa her first stud book, for her 16th birthday.
Duly hooked into the industry, years later Philippa, by now living in Australia, was a buyer at the New Zealand National Sale in 1994, primarily for clients John and Sue Suduk.
“There was only one filly I wanted to buy, and that was Shindig,” Duncan says, “but John said he wasn’t buying a Straight Strike. I couldn’t persuade a couple of other clients either.”
Then along came Arthur Baxter, founder of Macquarie Stud near Wellington, which stood sires including Irish-bred shuttler Waajib (Try My Best).
“He asked me if there was anything I like,” Duncan says. “I said, ‘There’s only one filly I want to buy and I haven’t got a client’.”
Baxter took a look, and duly bought the filly for $100,000 from Westbury Stud’s draft – through another agent.
Despite that disappointment, Duncan followed Shindig’s career closely as John Morish took her to seven city wins, one at Listed level. When Baxter died in the late 1990s, Macquarie held a dispersal sale, and Duncan saw her second chance.
“I told John Suduk we were buying Shindig regardless,” she says. “We paid about $310,000, and beat out George Altomonte and Jack Denham to get her. I said she’d go back into work with Max Lees.”
Shindig won the Coolmore Classic in her second run for the Newcastle trainer, had four more without winning, and was retired to stud.
There, she spun breeding gold, becoming a Group 1 winner who threw another one, in 2008 CF Orr Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) hero Shinzig (Danehill), as well as leaving his dual stakes winning full brother Strada.
When John Suduk died in 2000, Duncan continued managing the bloodstock of Sue Suduk. After her death in 2010, Duncan bought from her estate Shindig’s final foal, Florabella (Exceed And Excel).
Trained by Lees’s son Kris, Florabella only won a Newcastle maiden, but has landed a major blow at stud as the dam of the Duncan-bred Arkansaw Kid, her sixth foal. Duncan’s other shrewd move was staying in him for 25 per cent.
“I was looking for an outcross for Danehill, and Harry Angel had a tremendous racing record,” Duncan says. “I usually like to find some nicks and crosses but there weren’t any there, as can be the case with an outcross stallion, but I just thought Harry Angel was great value for the record he had.”
Two other strands tie up a sweet ending to the story.
Arkansaw Kid’s fifth sire is none other than that stallion stood by the man who bought his second dam – Waajib.
And when Duncan crossed the Tasman, it was to take a position partly created by Colin Hayes.
“It’s a huge thrill,” Duncan says. “It’s the first time I’ve had a horse with the Hayes brothers, and I first came to Australia because of their grandfather. When they asked if I’d stay in the ownership – how could I say no? It’s just one of those things that was meant to be.”