Rivellino
Brian Ireland was 15 when he first went to the races, at Randwick. It was pretty soon after World War II ended, 1949.
“I backed four winners, and had two bob each-way on each of them,” he recalls. “If that isn’t going to get you hooked, I don’t know what will.”
In that era of huge crowds, a hundred bookies and hats tossed into the air, of “Demon” Darby Munro and Billy Cook, of horses like Flight, Hydrogen and, a little later, Tulloch, Ireland and his best mate became regulars.
“We’d start off on the flat, ‘cause it was free to get in,” he says. “If we backed a winner we’d pay to get into the Leger, and if we backed a winner there we’d pay to get into the Paddock.”
Ireland left school at 15 and started work the next day as a compositor – the now extinct trade of arranging words and letters on bits of “hot metal” in the printing trade. In 1963 he started his own printing business and built that up till it had 150 employees when he sold it to industry giant Visy in 2006 and retired to the Gold Coast.
He’s now a fit and effervescent 90-year-old, enjoys daily walks, weekly golf, and regular swims in the ocean.
“I saw my doctor the other day and said, ‘Doc – what am I going to die of?’” he says.
“He said, ‘I dunno – come see me again in ten years and ask me then’.”
In this prime of his life – is he proving 90 is the new 40? – the beach-loving Ireland is on the crest of a wave.
Along with old friend Scott Murray, he’s one of two breeders of Rivellino (Too Darn Hot), the Inglis Millennium (RL, 1100m) winner and Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) fancy.
The 60-year-old Murray is absorbed in breeding, and has a good man for that sort of thing close at hand. He’s an executive at Steggles chickens, and thus works closely with the boss of that empire, the breeder of Winx and many other stars, John Camilleri.
Murray looks after the pedigree side, and was the man behind the choice of Too Darn Hot for Rivellino’s dam Intrinsic (So You Think), which looks an astute choice for several reasons.
Ireland, who’s trying to convince Murray to retire too, is there for the love of it, which is why he, like Murray, stayed in the ownership of Rivellino when trainer Kris Lees bought him with Bahen Bloodstock at Inglis Classic for $180,000.
The nonagenarian is hoping Rivellino can bring him and Murray a Slipper, but they’d be happy just to have a runner, which leads back to how this all started.
Looking to spread his wings in ownership around his retirement time in 2006, Ireland went to the Magic Millions Gold Coast sale with a then fairly young bloodstock agent named Vin Cox, looking to buy a filly, for the hope of residual value.
“We were having lunch and this one filly we’d looked at wasn’t getting many bids,” Ireland says. “Vin said, ‘Jeez – I thought she’d go for more than this. Do you want her?’ I said, ‘Why not?’”
The filly was knocked down to them for $75,000. Ireland and wife Pat wanted an Italian name, since she was by Testa Rossa (Perugino). They named her after their cherished local Italian restaurant.
Vecchia Roma, or “Old Rome”, was good from a young age. Trained by David Payne, she would quickly take her owners on a wild ride – literally.
Having won two of her first four starts, all at the Slipper’s home of Rosehill, she came home from the back to run a 2.3 lengths seventh in the Gold Coast’s Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) to Mimi Lebrock (Show A Heart).
Vecchia Roma ran a 0.3–length second in the then Group 3 Sweet Embrace Stakes. It seemed should wouldn’t make it into the Slipper, so the Irelands went to the islands, fulfilling a booking made months earlier for a Caribbean cruise.
“About midway through the cruise I got a phonecall from Scott on a Tuesday. We’d got into the Slipper field!” Ireland says.
“I went and saw the captain and said, ‘Where’s our next port of call, and does it have an airport?’ He said it did. I said to Pat, ‘Pack your bags – we’re getting off.”
The Irelands hurried from seaport to airport, caught the next flight to Los Angeles and then on to Sydney, arriving on the Friday night, and were at Rosehill the next morning.
“Luckily, we had some nice clothes with us from the cruise,” Ireland says.
“Pat said, ‘You’re dead-set mad, you are’. But what owner is gonna miss watching their horse in the Golden Slipper?”
Even at $51.
Alas Vecchia Roma settled last before making good ground late to run eighth, 2.7 lengths off winner Forensics (Flying Spur).
Vecchia Roma would finish with three wins from 20 starts – including becoming the first Australian winner for Payne’s fellow South African expat Jeff Lloyd, at Rosehill in late 2007. She never scored a stakes win, but her four career placings were all in black type races – and then she went to the breeding barn.
She would have nine foals co-bred by Ireland and Murray, the best of them Sagacious (Foxwedge), who won seven times, including in city class.
Before him, she bore Intrinsic (So You Think), who was given to Lees by Ireland and Murray to train. She won three, including two metro races, and placed in eight from 26 starts, before retiring in 2020.
Intrinsic first went to Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry) to produce the unraced Vucciria, before Murray’s selection of Too Darn Hot in his second Australian season at Darley for $44,000 – a choice now looking very darn prescient.
Too Darn Hot has of course become a sensation. So good, he’s not shuttling anymore. And so anyone with an Australian colt by the stallion might just be sitting on a goldmine. Especially one who’s unbeaten after two starts, like Rivellino.
“I saw Kris Lees at the Classic sale last year and told him we were selling a son of Intrinsic there,” Ireland said. He said, ‘I know – I’ve already looked at him’.
“Then at the presentation on Saturday after the Millennium I turned to him and said, ‘I wish I hadn’t sold him to you’. He said, ‘I’m bloody glad you did!’”
Whatever Too Darn Hot is mated with seems to be working just now. But putting him over a So You Think mare looks particularly clever, since it brings a 5m x 4m duplication of the great Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer), via two different sons.
His good producer In The Wings, who left ten Group 1 winners, comes into Too Darn Hot’s female side as his second damsire. The even better producer High Chaparral, who left 23, is So You Think’s sire.
Even better in the case of Intrinsic, the mating effects a triplication of Sadler’s Wells’s highly influential dam Fairy Bridge (Bold Reason), at 6m x 5m, 5m, coming in strongly since she’s the mother of Testa Rossa’s sire Perugino (Danzig), Sadler’s Wells’s three-quarter brother.
Another noteworthy factor of Rivellino’s pedigree is three appearances in each half, in the first eight generations, from key US-bred broodmare Almahmoud (Mahmoud) – five through blue hen Natalma (Native Dancer), and via another daughter in Cosmah (Cosmic Bomb), in Too Darn Hot’s half.
Emerging broodmare sire So You Think’s father High Chaparral is a decent nick for Too Darn Hot’s dad Dubawi, with one stakes winner from seven runners, although it’s far from the super sire’s best. Street Cry, for example, is running at 33 per cent with seven from 21.
Duplicating Sadler’s Wells with Too Darn Hot has had other strong results, with some standouts in the northern hemisphere. Doncaster Futurity Trophy (Gr 1, 1m) winner Hotazhell’s second damsire is Sadler’s Wells, while Alyanaabi, a winner of a Group 3 and Group 1 placed in the UK, is out of a mare by Kitten’s Joy (El Prado, by Sadler’s Wells).
All of which doesn’t mean a great deal to Ireland, who’s in it for different reasons.
When Rivellino won his second barrier trial, at Rosehill, his owners rejected a half-million dollar offer from Hong Kong. When he won his debut, at Randwick on January 4, they politely declined $1.2 million.
“You don’t sell horses like that. Not when you’re 90,” Ireland says. “I’m in for the long–term.”