Prompt Response underlines the magnitude of loss of Beneteau
In the end, though, the ultra consistent four-year-old mare Prompt Response (Beneteau) came home a comfortable and deserved winner by a length and a quarter after a gem of a ride by Blake Shinn, defeating the fast-finishing Shillelagh (Savabeel) with Super Cash (Written Tycoon) just a half-head further back in third place in a time of 1:18.51.
Prompt Response’s victory was an overdue reward for her breeder and part-owner Ron Hamer and for co-trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott as the mare was runner-up in last year’s Tatt’s Tiara and had recorded a second and a fourth in other Group 1s she had contested. Now the winner of six races, including four other black type contests and placed in another 11 stakes events, Prompt Response has earned $1,481,350 with connections hoping to gain a slot for her in next October’s The Everest (1200m).
Breeder Ron Hamer bought Prompt Response’s non-winning dam Prompt (Exceed and Excel) for $45,000 at the 2011 Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale at the Gold Coast, sending her to Arrowfield Stud’s inexpensive first season sire Beneteau (Redoute’s Choice), a mating which resulted in the first of the sire’s 10 stakes winners when Prompt Response’s year older brother Prompt Return (Beneteau) came out as a spring two-year-old to win the 2014 VRC Maribyrnong Plate (Gr 3, 1000m).
After Prompt Return was born in 2012, Ron Hamer bred the mare back to Beneteau for an even better result but he later sold Prompt to SF Bloodstock LLC, breeder of her two subsequent foals, a Dissident (Sebring) rising two-year-old colt and a Medaglia d’Oro (El Prado) weanling colt with the mare covered late in the 2017 season by Capitalist (Written Tycoon).
Prompt is a half-sister to four winners, among them stakes placed Montoux (Montjeu) from the well-performed Amnesia (Desert Sun), a winner of five races and a placegetter in nine black type races in Australia and New Zealand where she was also fourth in the One Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m)
Her family is American, tracing in tail female to Prompt Response’s fifth dam Make Plans (Go Marching), who is duplicated on Prompt Response’s male side as dam of Monde Bleu (Last Tycoon), sire of Beneteau’s second dam Oceanfast.
Prompt Response’s stakes performances underline the magnitude of the early loss of her sire Beneteau who stood only two seasons at Arrowfield Stud in the Hunter Valley before his death in January, 2013.
Of the 131 named foals he left, 73 have won with 10 becoming stakes winners to give Beneteau a very high 9.5 per cent stakes winners-to-runners with his first Group One winner Lasqueti Spirit (Beneteau) well remembered for her bold, front running effort to win the 2016 VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m).
Beneteau’s stud record gains added merit when it is realised most of the mares he covered were of only average quality on pedigree and racing performance but it also highlights yet again the outstanding achievements of his father Redoute’s Choice as a sire-of-sires, most prominent of them Snitzel, who will earn his second successive Australian general sires title this season, Not a Single Doubt and the deceased Stratum.
While Beneteau was not among the best runners by Redoute’s Choice, he was a very smart two-year-old, a winner of the MRC Blue Diamond Prelude (C&G) (Gr 3, 1100m) and placed third behind Star Witness (Starcraft) in the 2010 MRC Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
As a $1 million yearling, Beneteau was obviously an outstanding type and his female pedigree left very little to be desired, out of Slice of Paradise (Encosta De Lago), a stakes-placed sister to champion Alinghi, a four-time Group 1 winner with earnings in excess of $3.55 million.
The match between Beneteau and Prompt to produce two stakes winners is an interesting one as it creates a powerful 3m x 3m cross of Danehill (Danzig) plus a third line of Danzig (Northern Dancer) coming through his other leading sire son, Green Desert, sire of Prompt’s maternal grandsire Desert Sun.
In all, Prompt Response carries seven lines of Northern Dancer (Nearctic) and 10 crosses of his dam Natalma (Native Dancer). Attention should also be drawn to the similarities in the breeding of Dancing Show (Nijinsky), second dam of Redoute’s Choice, and Green Desert in Prompt’s background as Dancing Show and Green Desert are both by sons of Northern Dancer from daughters of champion Sir Ivor (Sir Gaylord).