Mumbai Jewel
A well-known set of a black and lime colours carried with distinction in Melbourne and Caulfield Cups, several other Group 1s and – very importantly – a Woodend Cup (1850m), are set to fly high again.
When two-year-old filly Mumbai Jewel (I Am Invincible) stormed home to take out Saturday’s Pierro Plate (1100m) at Randwick, it marked another new dawn for Morning Rise Stud and the silks of Robert McClure.
The 80-year-old breeder comes from a family deeply involved in racing. He recalls race days with parents James and Claudia as a boy, and most Sundays heading to their trainer Stan Smithers’ stables at the Mentone track in Melbourne’s east, which is long gone and is now a housing estate.
An early highlight was the 1950 Woodend Cup – at another venue, an hour north-west of Melbourne, where racing stopped decades ago, though the overgrown track is mostly still there.
“I would’ve been nine, and mum’s horse Job’s Gully, trained by Stan Smithers, held on to win the Cup. It was a huge thrill,” McClure told It’s In The Blood.
He would’ve been as thrilled as the bookies. In digging up an old newspaper report for this article, McClure found Job’s Gully was the 25-1 outsider of the field (of 14 runners, for anyone complaining about today’s bookies). He also found one of the beaten brigade was Sir Archibald, trained by his future step-father Joseph O’Connor, a horse who’d later buck young McClure off at O’Connor’s farm in another of those episodes you don’t forget.
Soon McClure was working at racetracks, mostly selling refreshments, and the sport would always be an interest, but the involvement diminished.
His father died young, aged 48, and his mum followed in the early 1960s. Those colours essentially vanished, while McClure set about making his way in business.
Showing an eye for opportunity, he sensed a coming wave in the late 1970s. For a couple of prosperous decades, Australians had largely lived off the fat of the land, and had grown pudgy themselves, concerning their government enough to launch the Life, Be In It ads. Now, nudged by ads’ star – portly cartoon character Norm – the rotund masses were coming round to a novel idea: exercise.
McClure looked to the nation leading the way in most things, the USA, and gained the Australian distribution rights for Life Fitness, the world’s largest manufacturer of exercise equipment.
“When I first got the licence, I’d go to the US every year. The whole industry was booming over there. It was obvious we were going to follow,” McClure said.
He was soon selling the large multi-station apparatus called the Universal Gym to football clubs and schools. Gyms sprung up like mushrooms, people rallying to another Australian’s cry of Let’s Get Physical, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.
As McClure explained, many gyms plunged in deep early on, but made the mistake of signing up clients to – unfathomable now – three year contracts. Gyms received money up front, then ran out of it. McClure had “some moments” himself, until monthly payments eventually fortified the industry.
McClure became able to indulge his old passion again. Another promising thing from America – the stallion Seattle Dancer (Nijinsky) – had a son named Dance The Day Away. McClure bought a share along with John Tickell and Terry Henderson. Trainer Gerald Ryan took the horse to Perth for the old Australian Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) in 1992, and with a wiry 20-year-old named Damien Oliver in the saddle, the horse flew home from last to win as 7-4 favourite.
“I’ll never forget it,” McClure said of his first elite level success. “We were in the stands watching and Gerald said, ‘He can’t win. He’s too far back.’ Our faces dropped because we’d flown all that way. And then the caller says ‘And here comes Dance The Day Away!’ He just got there at the death.”
Things grew from there. Tickell became a part-owner of Doriemus (Norman Pentaquad), who took Oliver to his first Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) win in 1995. Henderson would become OTI Racing boss, and early this century McClure and wife Barbara bought 80 acres at Red Hill they’d call Morning Rise Stud.
“I had a consultant come and see me and he said: ‘The first thing you’ve got to do is meet some big trainers and then they’ll come and look at your horses at the sales’,” McClure said.
“So I did that, and once you know Gai Waterhouse, you’re on her sales list. So one day, I got a phone call, and Gai had brought Glencadam Gold and The Offer from Europe.”
McClure would thus cheer more Group 1 success when Glencadam Gold (Refuse To Bend) took The Metropolitan (Gr 1, 2400m) in 2012, while The Offer (Montjeu) landed the 2014 edition of the Sydney Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
“Another day, Gai rang and said: ‘I’ve bought a horse from Europe for $1.2 million, so ten per cent is $120,000. His name is Fiorente’. So my son Paul and I bought in, and of course he won the Melbourne Cup and the Australian Cup.”
Earlier, McClure had taken up a call to buy half of a 2007 filly by Irish sire Invincible Spirit (Green Desert), to be named Yosei.
“Part of the deal was it would be in our colours,” he recalled.
He just had to make sure what those colours would be. Recalling his mother’s silks carried so gloriously by Job’s Gully at Woodend 58 years earlier, McClure checked and found they were still available.
And so Yosei carried the black with lime sleeves and cap to victory in three Group 1 races; the AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) and Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) in 2010, and the Tattersall’s Tiara (Gr 1, 1400m) the following year.
The silks were back in the spotlight two years ago through the remarkable rise of young stayer Persan (Pierro), who went from winning a Bendigo maiden to finishing fifth in a Melbourne Cup in the space of six months and the gelding also finished third in last year’s Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m).
Now, the black and lime are flying anew thanks to Mumbai Jewel and trainer Annabel Neasham, the young gun whose methods probably echo those of Stan Smithers very little.
The filly is another good thing for McClure with an American link. In 2010, Kia Ora Stud imported US mare Mani Bhavan (Storm Boot), winner of the 2008 Saratoga Spinaway (Gr 1, 7f), a top-flight race for two-year-olds. She was sent to Fastnet Rock (Danehill) and then at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in 2013, the offspring sparked a fierce battle of the behemoths.
“James Harron and James Bester had a bit of a bidding war, because she was such a beautiful, well constructed filly,” McClure recalled.
Bester, doing McClure’s bidding, emerged as James The First, landing the prize for $1,550,000. The filly, named Mumbai Rock, earned $1,520,265 less than that, a Kembla Grange maiden win highlighting a career limited to nine starts by a fetlock injury. But with McClure still owning her fully, she’s begun to balance the ledger.
Hatching five fillies in a row, Mumbai Rock started with Splendoronthegrass (So You Think), who carries McClure’s colours to five wins and a Listed Sunshine Coast placing.
Next came Bombay Rocket (Snitzel), a smallish $160,000 yearling placed twice over 1000 metres at Flemington before a Gold Coast win. Then came a sizeable payoff, when McClure stumped up for a first visit to that son of Yosei’s sire Invincible Spirit – I Am Invincible – and the resulting filly sold for $650,000 to Katsumi Yoshida at Magic Millions sale on the Gold Coast in 2020.
“She disappeared off the face of the earth, but then we discovered that, racing as Jazz Etude, she’d won a couple of races in Japan, though not Black Type … yet,” McClure said.
A return to Yarraman’s superstar produced Mumbai Jewel, a $575,000 purchase by Neasham at last year’s Magic Millions sale, with McClure retaining half of the filly whose pedigree is spiced by multiple mentions of American Blue Hen Natalma (Native Dancer) (once in the male and four times in the female half).
Those three fillies sold have thus netted an aggregate of $1,385,000. Filly number five, by Zoustar (Northern Meteor) is expected to put McClure well ahead on that Mumbai Rock purchase when she goes under the hammer at this year’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, while – finally – a colt by the same sire is on the ground.
Mumbai Rock is once again in foal to I Am Invincible, and Mumbai Jewel’s deeds are set to ensure McClure rich sale returns in the near future. The breeder of dual Group 3 winner So Si Bon (So You Think) said Mumbai Jewel “might turn into one of the best ones we’ve bred” as she heads towards the Reisling Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), with McClure expecting big things of her as a spring three-year-old.
“She’s a beautiful mare, Mumbai Rock, and she throws good types, mostly with good size,” said McClure, who runs some 20 mares at Morning Rise and keeps others in the Hunter at Coolmore.
“Mumbai Jewel now is quite a significant looking animal, and I Am Invincible adds a bit of grandeur to them as well.”
With involvement in 11 Group 1 victories in total, it’s tempting to call McClure a man with a Midas touch.
But he defers to others with his golden rule of breeding: “Listen to good advice.”
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Trevor Marshallsea is the best-selling author of books on Makybe Diva, Winx, and Peter Moody