Hayasugi set Slipper mission after completing rare Blue Diamond clean sweep
Talented filly becomes the first elite-level winner for Leneva Park’s stallion Royal Meeting
Hayasugi (Royal Meeting) added a gilt edge to her sire’s buoyant start to stud life – and a juicy twist over his future – with another brilliantly defiant triumph as the fillies struck back in yesterday’s Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Caulfield.
Continuing a family tradition for trainer Clinton McDonald, Haysugi was barely fancied on the seventh line of betting at $16, but stormed home once more to become only the second filly – after Midnight Fever (Luskin Star) in 1987 – to clean-sweep the Blue Diamond’s Preview (F) (Gr 3, 1000m), Prelude (F) (Gr 2, 1100m) and main event.
Also the first horse overall to achieve the treble since Sepoy (Elusive Quality) became the third male to do so in 2011, Hayasugi became the first filly to win the race since Lyre (Lonhro) in 2019, in an edition in which the females resoundingly made up for lost time.
The first four home were fillies. Hayasugi, ridden by the country’s leading female rider Jamie Kah, settled worse than midfield on the outside from gate ten, and swooped in the last 100 metres to beat brave Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained on-pacer Lady Of Camelot (Written Tycoon), who was sent off the $4.40 second-favourite, by a head.
Another daughter of Yulong’s Written Tycoon (Iglesia), South Australian raider Kuroyanagi ($11), was a length further back in third, just ahead of $12 shot Eneeza (Exceed And Excel), while the sixth-placed Matisse (Microphone) gave fillies five of the first six.
Highly-fancied colt Coleman (Pierata), the $3.40 favourite, saved his worst run for the big stage, firing no shots and eventually finishing 13th. Team Snowden colt High Octane (Deep Field), the $8 third-favourite, was a well-beaten eighth, while Stay Focused (Cosmic Force) was the first colt home in fifth position.
Hayasugi had also been relatively unfancied in betting in the Preview and Prelude, and it was the last-gasp nature of those wins that had people doubting her again yesterday.
But once again it was her withering late burst that told the tale, as she came from seventh, four lengths off Lady Of Camelot at the 200 metres, to prevail. As in the lead-ups, she astonished Kah with her late strength after the jockey felt she’d merely been travelling adequately entering the straight.
“She gives you a nice enough feel on the turn, and then she just finds ten lengths,” Kah said after her tenth Group 1 success.
“I don’t know how. Today she gave me a nice feel, I thought she’d run on well, and she wins. She’s just so tough.
“The team’s done an amazing job with her but the horse itself, she’s just coped with everything. She was the quietest horse out there, she was a pony. She just loves her job, loves her work.”
Hayasugi, continuing a run of longer-priced Blue Diamond winners, with four of the past five starting between $13 and $26, has put Royal Meeting (Invincible Spirit) on the map in a major and very immediate way as the shining light from his first crop of 60 live foals.
And her performance adds spice to some expected manoeuvrings around the eight-year-old’s future – between the stud that holds his standing rights. Aquis Farm, the stud whose three-year deal to stand him expired last year, Leneva Park, and potentially a range of rival farms who may want to acquire the stallion.
A two-year-old Group 1 winner in France who later had two Group runs in an Australian visit for a third and a last during a brief career, Royal Meeting was later moved here for good after being identified as a suitable stud target by bloodstock agent Dermot Farrington and Aquis Farm’s then CEO Shane McGrath.
After he was secured for some $750,000, he began standing in Victoria for his group of around ten shareholders, who include Aquis, Seymour Bloodstock’s Mark Pilkington, McGrath and Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum.
Initially, Royal Meeting stood at Aquis Victoria, siring the first crop that now includes Hayasugi. When Aquis moved out to focus on its Queensland base and Leneva Park took over the lease on the property, Royal Meeting stayed put.
Aquis still retains the standing rights on the stallion, and its director of sales Jonathan Davies this week told ANZ Bloodstock News that no decision had been made as to where the stallion would stand. With negotiations ongoing over his standing rights, Leneva Park subsequently put its case to keep hold of Royal Meeting, alongside its other stallion Fierce Impact (Deep Impact).
And the efforts of Hayasugi – Royal Meeting’s glowing sole winner from just six runners – are expected to trigger interest from rival farms in the stallion, who stood for just $11,000 (inc GST) in his first four years in Australia.
One thing that can’t change is Hayasugi’s standing as a rare-as-gold Blue Diamond clean-sweeper, an effort which brought McDonald a fourth career Group 1, and continued his family’s strong record in the race.
McDonald’s father Ross trained Courtza (Pompeii Court) to win the Blue Diamond in 1989, after which she added the other jewel in Australia’s juvenile crown, the Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
And McDonald’s maternal grandfather Bon Hoysted prepared the great Manikato (Manihi) to also complete that double in 1978 (before Bon’s death led to the sprinter continuing his glorious career with his brother, McDonald’s great-uncle Bob Hoysted).
A jubilant McDonald said he would now attempt to repeat that familial history by taking Hayasugi to the $5 million Slipper at Rosehill on March 23. Bookmakers wound her in for the world’s richest two-year-old race yesterday, but at $17 she’ll once again have many rivals ahead of her in the market, including the filly she beat yesterday in Lady Of Camelot, who’s at $13. McDonald won’t be complaining.
“She’s determined, she’s tough and I thought it was stupid coming in today thinking she was 20-1. I just thought her last run was fantastic, for a two-year-old to be able to do that – she had no favours – and again today,” said McDonald, confirming Haysugi’s Slipper mission.
“I used to say to my mates, ‘History’s got to repeat – Blue Diamond and Gold Slipper’. We’re lucky enough now to have a live chance and I think the Golden Slipper will really suit this filly, the way she attacks the line.
“For a young two-year-old, her tenacity is second to none.
“She’ll go straight to the Slipper. I’m sort of following the same programme we did with Courtza.”
McDonald revealed a timely omen appeared this week as to Hayasugi’s chances wearing the No.11 saddlecloth yesterday.
“It was quite funny – we’ve got a picture in our stables of Courtza winning the Golden Slipper and mum got my young fella Harry to pull it down, and she had number 11 on the saddlecloth, so we said. ‘There’s a bloody omen’,” McDonald said. “I said, ‘We are a good thing today!’”
Bought for just $47,5000 by James Bester and associates at the 2022 Inglis Australian Weanling Sale, Hayasugi is the fourth foal of the unraced China Road (Commands), a mare trouble by having only one ovary. Having missed on five matings since bearing Hayasugi, China Road was covered by Jacquinot (Rubick) last November.
Of the beaten brigade, Lady Camelot’s rider Adam Hyeronimus said he regretted being unable to lead as longshot Spywire (Trapeze Artist) shot just ahead of him from the outside gate of 16.
“She was brilliant. I would have liked to have led and dictated the race,” Hyeronimus said. “We weren’t able to do that, but she copped her medicine and found a good rhythm and gave a good kick. I would have liked the leader to take us a little bit further than it did, but – very good effort and she’ll be very competitive heading towards the Slipper.”
Ben Melham said his mount Coleman had appeared overawed in the large field, having won in fields of eight and five in his first two runs.
“First time he’s been exposed to a big field and he was literally a deer in the headlights. I suppose the other horses have had a bit of experience in larger fields,” Melham said. “Just the occasion got the better of him, I think. He’s a good horse, he’s a quality colt, but he just got found out today a bit.”