Pinstriped
The story around Pinstriped’s (Street Boss) Group 1 coronation in the Memsie Stakes (1400m) has been a bit like a sputtering engine, full of fits and starts, near misses, mare misses, and the occasional smooth bit, until it roared to a crescendo on Saturday.
He’s a son of Street Boss (Street Cry), the headline act at Darley’s Victorian Northwood Park base. In short, Street Boss struggled to launch as a stallion after missing a year with a cut leg, came back and sired nine-time Group 1 winner Anamoe, and is now battling fertility problems.
Pinstriped has some real quality in his female side. His fourth dam was American blue hen Danseur Fabuleux (Northern Dancer). She was a half-sister to Group 1 winner Joyeux Danseur (Nureyev), a stallion imported to stand in Australia but who died midway through his second season in 2005.
Danseur Fabuleux is the dam of British Group 1 winner Noverre (Rahy) and of 1991 European Horse of the Year Arazi (Blushing Groom), a four–time Group 1 winner. Noverre and Arazi stood in Australia, but unsuccessfully, though Arazi at least lived to the age of 32 before dying in Victoria just three years ago.
Another of Danseur Fabuleux’s offspring, Darley’s British-bred mare Phantom Creek (Mr Prospector), winner of one from three, arrived in Australia in 2000. She spent seven years here (before going to the US) and threw nothing of note including Francophile (French Deputy), who was unraced.
Francophile fared a little better at stud. Her second foal Moreau (Snitzel) won at Caulfield and was Group 2-placed, and his class prompted a return to Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice) in 2010, which produced Snitzel Blitz, a humble $24,000 weanling and $60,000 yearling.
Hopes were high when she won at Donald on debut in 2014 and ran a nose second at Morphettville second-up, but she lost form in five more runs and was shipped out of Mick Price’s stable. That’s where trainer Leon Corstens comes in.
He tried to get the mare going but, due to knee problems, she could not, prompting retirement.
Breeding is full of stories of cheap mares who do well. Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Stay Inside’s (Extreme Choice) dam cost a thousand bucks, for example. But it trumps all tales like that to learn the mother of Pinstriped cost $0.00.
“I said to her owner, ‘You should retire her and move her on’,” Corstens tells It’s In The Blood. “He said, ‘Oh you can just have her’, which was lovely of him. You don’t get given many horses. That never happens.”
Corstens, a man fully aware of twists of fate, was probably due some good fortune. He was the underbidder on Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) winner Efficient (Zabeel) and dual Group 1 victor Rangirangdoo (Pentire).
And on outstanding mares Invincibella (I Am Invincible) and Stefi Magnetica (All Too Hard).
And on another Group 1-winning mare, named Black Caviar (Bel Esprit).
He can still manage to laugh about it. What else can you do?
“It breaks my heart when I go back and look at what I’ve written on my catalogue about those sorts of good horses. That hurts more than anything,” he says.
Corstens brought long-term bloodstock partner Dean Harvey in for half of Snitzel Blitz and the pair put her to Unencumbered (Testa Rossa) to produce a colt, put her in-foal to Street Boss, and put her up for sale.
The foal inside her turned out to be Pinstriped, but unlike underbidder blues, Corstens has no regrets about the ones that got away who he deliberately sold.
“I had to be reminded I bred Pinstriped the other day,” he says. “But I’ve got no regrets about selling the mare. I’m a buyer and a seller and these things happen.”
After Corstens comes another character, Jamie Withers, a knockabout Melburnian who was a high school maths and PE teacher, then had a pest control business for 20 years, then sold it and used some of the proceeds to go into breeding.
“I’d never been into racing, till I was about 45,” says the 63-year-old. “Then a mate who’d been a very small breeder went more serious, and bought a farm. I’d go up there for the whole weekend, just walking around, staring at these beautiful mares and foals and yearlings, and I had a dream I could one day sell my business and buy a farm and do the same thing.
“Slowly, I just kept reading up on bloodlines. It took me ages to even work out what ‘first dam’, ‘second dam’ and ‘third dam’ meant! But I fell in love with it.”
Thankfully, Withers “surrounded myself with talented people”. Sullivan Bloodstock’s Sherah Sullivan, and leading agent Sheamus Mills, were with him when he accidentally saw the pregnant Snitzel Blitz in a paddock one day at Victoria’s Noorilim Park, where Sullivan worked at the time. With her was her Unencumbered foal.
“I was actually there to look at some other mare,” Withers says. “But I can still visualise glancing over at Sheamus, and he sees this Unencumbered foal and goes, ‘Ooh!’. Then Sherah gave it a wrap as well, so I ended up with a three-in-one deal.
Withers sold the Unencumbered colt as a weanling for $22,000. Pinhooked for $110,000, he became Menindee, now a seven-year-old winner of 14 races, albeit mostly in the Queensland bush.
Snitzel Blitz bore her straightforward Street Boss colt – at Willow Park Stud – then he was reared at Noorilim. In a small administrative matter, this is why the breeder of the Group 1-winning Pinstriped is not listed as Withers, or even Corstens and Harvey, but Noorilim.
Withers also offered this colt as a weanling, at the Gold Coast, and sold him for $80,000 to his now trainer Enver Jusufovic and Gary Mudgway, the bloodstock agent who may have had some inside mail, given he used to lease the farm that became Noorilim.
“I’ve got no regrets about selling him,” says Withers. “It was a pretty good price for a Street Boss weanling. I was up on the deal after buying the mare, although not by a huge amount.”
At the same weanling sale, however, Withers also offered a Written Tycoon (Iglesia) colt from the other mare he bought privately on his entry to breeding, the unplaced La Llorona (Choisir), and sold him for $290,000.
“Sherah said, ‘Who’s this bloke with all this luck?’” Withers recalls. “I thought, ‘This is easy! What’s everyone complaining about?
“But then I grew too quickly. I bought a few mares, sent them to pricier stallions – my eyes were poking out of my head. Everyone was telling me to take it slowly, but I probably got a bit greedier, and it didn’t go so well. That came back to bite me on the arse.”
Withers has deployed these harsh lessons into a more measured approach to his semi-retirement hobby these days.
He did try to raise some cash by selling Snitzel Blitz at the 2022 Inglis Chairman’s sale, after Pinstriped had won three of his first five before his famously unlucky fifth in the Australian Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m).
“I was exasperated, and thought maybe it’s time to move her on,” he says. “Thank God I put a high reserve on her.”
When reminded the reserve was $600,000, Withers bursts out laughing.
“Did I? I can’t remember,” he says. “That is way too high. That is funny.”
He can only wince, though, at another piece of breeding fate. At this year’s Inglis Premier sale, he “struggled to sell” two yearlings fillies by The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice), who was taking his time as a sire, eventually getting $50,000 for each. Two months later, the young stallion had his first three Group 1 winners in Autumn Angel, Vibrant Sun and Coco Sun.
At least since Pinstriped’s emergence, Snitzel Blitz’s produce has become far more valuable. Flying Luck (Written Tycoon) was bought by Hong Kong trainer Caspar Fownes for $380,000 at the 2022 Karaka Ready To Run Sale.
He’d been sold as a weanling for $90,000, but Withers was the beneficiary at Easter this year when Snitzel Blitz’s colt by Capitalist (Written Tycoon) fetched $450,000, sold to another Hong Kong trainer in Ricky Yiu.
The pendulum has swung back for the 13-year-old Snitzel Blitz, however, with misses from all four covers in the past two years – to Street Boss (twice), Zoustar (Northern Meteor) and Pierata (Pierro). Withers is hoping for better fortune from the fabulously fertile Tassort (Brazen Beau) this spring.
The career of Pinstriped himself – who has a strong 4m x 4f duplication of the great Mr Prospector (Raise A Native) on his top and bottom lines – also hasn’t run quite to plan.
He won his first three, the last being Flemington’s CS Hayes Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m), before being one of the best things beaten in modern history when fifth in Hitotsu’s (Maurice) Australian Guineas. His owners batted back offers from Hong Kong, which eventually hit $2.6 million.
But the anticipated highs became reluctant to appear, with his next 18 starts bringing three wins capped by last spring’s MVRC Feehan Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m), and four more Group 1 starts yielding no more than a fifth.
But all the waiting, and a roundabout tale from humble beginnings, climaxed in a golden moment when Pinstriped claimed the Memsie Stakes, crashing the expected match race between Mr Brightside (Bullbars), who took second, and the fifth-placed Pride Of Jenni (Pride Of Dubai).
“The funny thing was he was a moral beaten in the Australian Guineas, and we thought that was his first and only opportunity to win a Group 1,” Withers says.
“Then he ran second in some big races, finally got a Group 2, and then last Saturday he comes up against the two best horses in Australia and beats them.
“It wasn’t a surprise in terms of his ability, but it was a shock. The feeling was phenomenal. I screamed. I’m not a screamer, but I screamed. I screamed until I could not scream any more.”