“He’s been well received already”
Telemon Thoroughbreds is first and foremost a stallion farm, but studmaster Dan Fletcher was reticent to add a new boy to the Queensland farm’s roster just for the sake of it.
The game’s too hard as it is and the family owned Telemon doesn’t have the outside financial backing to be able to play the numbers game that the big corporate style studs can afford to play.
But when Sir Owen Glenn, the owner-breeder of this year’s Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Lady Of Camelot (Written Tycoon), reached out about standing Red Resistance (Russian Revolution), Fletcher couldn’t resist (pardon the pun).
The winner of the Canonbury Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m), beating King’s Gambit (I Am Invincible) and Slipper winner Shinzo (Snitzel), and splitting fellow first season sires Cylinder (Exceed And Excel) and Militarize (Dundeel) in the Todman Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), Red Resistance will be up against Don Corleone (Extreme Choice) (Eureka), Empire Of Japan (Snitzel) (Hopetoun Farm) and Officiating (Blame) (Aquis Farm) as freshman sires standing in the Sunshine State.
He will stand for $11,000 (inc GST) alongside Sidestep (Exceed And Excel), The Odyssey (Better Than Ready), Sun City (Zoustar) and Jungle Cat (Iffraaj) on the Telemon roster.
“As a stallion farm, it’s a really tough game and the market’s more polarised than ever at the moment, so you’ve got to remind yourself of those challenges, I suppose,” Fletcher told this column on Thursday.
“On the one hand, we’re looking for the right sort of articles and on the other hand we’re being incredibly critical as to what attributes a horse would have to have before we’d go down this path.
“One of the big criteria I’ve said for my own mentality was a young stallion’s got to have good shareholder support and he’s got to have the support of quality mares behind him as a foundational aspect.
“Sometimes you can create that through syndicating horses or, in this case, we have a scenario … where Sir Owen Glenn is so staunchly behind him and he’s focused on backing him to the hilt with some of [Go Bloodstock’s] best mares. That’s a massive attraction for us to give us the impetus [to take him on].”
Feedback prior to and after going public with the former Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Red Resistance’s acquisition has also bolstered Fletcher’s confidence that he’s made the right call.
“We’d spoken to people on the quiet in the lead-up about what we were doing just to get some comfort to make sure we weren’t seeing things one way and the market seeing it differently,” Fletcher says.
“We had someone say this week that there’s absolutely no question he was as good as any two-year-old getting around that year. When that’s not coming from us or the inner circle and coming from the market, it’s reassuring because we were sure he had that quality as a racehorse and it’s an incredibly good looking horse to go with it.
“We feel you’ve got to aim for that 100-plus book of mares to launch a young stallion. We were hopeful of being able to attain that a couple of weeks ago and now I’m really confident that’s where we are at because he’s been so well received already.”
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In between working the phone and tending to farm duties, Telemon’s Dan Fletcher also has Saturday week circled in the calendar for his talented homebred filly Party For Two (Sidestep), the multiple stakes-placed two and three-year-old.
Trained by Steven O’Dea and Matt Hoysted, Party For Two is likely to bring her autumn-winter carnival campaign to a close in the Gai Waterhouse Classic (Listed, 1200m) on Ipswich Cup day on June 22.
The QTIS filly won a barrier trial at Deagon on Tuesday.
“Speaking of QTIS and speaking of wonderful examples of what you can do with QTIS, she’s been incredible for us and she’s having a great campaign,” Fletcher said.
“She kicked off winning the 3YO Jewel first-up and one thing we’d dearly love is for her to be a stakes winner.
“She was Group 2-placed as a two-year-old and multiple stakes-performed, but we’re really hoping she can attain that and she’s deserving of it.
“She’ll get a crack at it on Saturday week and she’s got the rest of her career ahead of her for that to happen.”
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Kiwi owner Gary Harding has transferred the Group 1-placed Tulsi (The Autumn Sun) to Goulburn trainer Matt Dale.
The rising four-year-old, who was placed in the Sistema Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Pukekohe as a two-year-old, had her New Zealand Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) campaign cruelled by a virus.
Tulsi was initially trained by Johno Benner and Hollie Wynyard before joining the Darryn and Briar Weatherley stable last preparation.
“Unfortunately, she got a virus and we did the wrong thing. We thought she was over it and the vets thought she was good enough to race and we raced her and ran a shocker,” Harding said.
“Then they freshened her up and raced her again but she wasn’t over it, so we turned her out.”
Tulsi was spelled in New Zealand and then spent more time in the paddock upon her arrival to Australia. She is in the very early stages of her preparation with Dale who has previously trained stakes winner Meg (Sebring) and Key (Exceed And Excel) for Harding.
“It’s a good environment there, it’s nice and quiet, it’s different to what she’d be used to over here [at Matamata]. Matt’s not a bad sort of bloke, either,” the owner said.
Harding also revealed that the Weatherleys had put a big rap on his Proisir two-year-old filly Gossip, an impressive barrier trial winner at Te Aroha last month.
“They’re telling me she’s the best I’ve ever had, but I don’t know if she is or not. [Group 1 winner] Bounding was pretty good,” Harding said.
“She looks like she might be pretty special by all accounts, but time will tell, of course.”
Gossip, who was bred by Fairdale Stud, cost NZ$110,000 at the 2023 NZB National Online Yearling Sale.
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Aussie flyer Asfoora (Flying Artie) will ramp up her UK campaign on Tuesday night when the Henry Dwyer-trained mare contests Royal Ascot’s King Charles III Stakes (Gr 1, 5f), a race won two years ago by Nature Strip and in 2009 by Scenic Blast.
Asfoora’s trip is heavily subsidised by Royal Ascot, which invited the Group 2 winner to make the trip north just as the likes of Black Caviar and Takeover Target have in the past, but it’s an expensive exercise regardless.
American trainer Wesley Ward, a regular visitor to Royal Ascot, indicated that his owners were becoming increasingly inclined to skip the pomp and pageantry of the famous meeting in favour of keeping their horses racing in the US where the prize-money was far more lucrative.
“The money we run for at Ascot wouldn’t be even the equivalent of a maiden race in the States,” Ward told Racing Post.
“You’re running in $140,000 to $170,000 maiden races at our next big meeting at Kentucky Downs. I just won a [maiden] race last week with my own horse that was a $120,000 purse, which is nearly what the [juvenile] races are over there.
“For what you can run for here, and based on what you can get over there, monetarily you stay home, but there’s nothing like Royal Ascot for sure.
“At least for the Group 1s there’s a little bit of a stipend but the owners I have have to foot the whole bill, which just makes it very hard.”
And that’s why the subsidies offered to some international visitors is necessary if Royal Ascot wishes to remain a target for internationals, particularly from Australia.
Footnote: Darley shuttler Blue Point also won what is now known as the King Charles III Stakes in 2018 and 2019.