Roch ’N’ Horse
There are some extraordinary figures behind Newmarket Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Roch ’N’ Horse (Per Incanto), and we don’t just mean her breeders, Little Avondale Stud’s Sam and Catriona Williams.
For a starting point there’s the starting price – the classic hundred-to-one in the old school, making the five-year-old daughter of Per Incanto (Street Cry) the longest-priced winner of Australia’s greatest sprint race in living memory, eclipsing Better Beyond at 66-1 in 1979.
She’s the third foal of a mare whose first one sold for $200. Do not adjust your screens, that was all it cost to buy that daughter of Nadeem (Redoute’s Choice) and Rochfort (Cecconi) at the New Zealand Bloodstock Weanling Sale of 2015. That, in fact, is not all that unusual for weanlings that side of the Tasman. But still, a two dollar coin was thrown hastily on her big half-sister last Saturday and she could’ve been yours.
Racing as Naderca, that filly was placed twice in the country in New Zealand from ten starts.
Rochfort’s second foal, a colt by Pins (Snippets), went to the subsequent edition of that weanling sale and fetched a good bit higher, at $16,000. On the small side, however, he was turned around for just an extra $4,000 as a yearling. Subtracting the inevitable fees, it might have left things behind on the ledger, a situation not improved by his two career placings from 13 starts in Singapore.
Then along came Roch ’N’ Horse. She didn’t sell at all.
Lining up in Book 2 at Karaka in 2018, she failed to meet her reserve of $40,000 and Sam Williams took her home and has kept 70 per cent of her, and she’s now won that reserve figure – plus a million dollars more.
“I wasn’t prepared to just give her away,” Williams told It’s In The Blood. “We thought she’d go for $70,000, and that was going to be her reserve. Things were going quietly at the sale, so we reduced it to $40,000, but she still didn’t go.
“She was still a bit of a truck-and-trailer – she was up behind, and still hadn’t popped her wither up at that stage – but she was actually a really athletic filly, with a great hindquarter, and a great attitude, which she’s never lost. She had that toughness about her, which I liked.
“I guess Book 2 fillies are never that easy to sell at any sale. That was more the case than anything else. But the page didn’t really grab people, even though you’ve got Weissmuller and Travolta there. But Cecconi, the broodmare sire, I don’t think he set the world alight.”
Rochfort’s sire Cecconi (Encosta De Lago) won a Blue Diamond Preview (C&G) (Listed, 1000m) in 2007 but nothing else from 14 starts, stood in New Zealand for several seasons and is now at Victoria’s Moorookyle Park for a fee of $2,200.
But there was a little page behind Roch ’N’ Horse. Her granddam Belongs In Lights (Belong To Me) – raced by Tommy Heptinstall of Tavistock (Montjeu) fame and was unplaced from one start – had as a first foal Weissmuller (Handsome Ransom) – winner of the Wellington Stakes (Gr 3, 1600m) at Trentham. Second foal was his full-brother Travolta (Handsome Ransom), who took two Sydney Listed races.
Third out came the unraced Rochfort – now leased by Williams from Heptinstall – before Belongs In Lights made the first of five straight visits to Tavistock. The first of those yielded the accomplished Harlow Gold, whose placings in two Group 1s – including a second in Lasqueti Spirit’s (Beneteau) memorable 2016 VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) – helped her fetch $600,000 as a broodmare. Peter Gelagotis has her younger full-sister Hereforagoodtime, a dual Victorian provincial winner who’s been placed in Melbourne.
Belongs In Lights was bought two years ago by Victoria’s Rosemont Stud, who have retained her Tavistock yearling colt and have a half-brother by So You Think (High Chaparral) on the ground.
Rochfort, meanwhile, has had a chequered, and limited, career as a broodmare, but the fact her third and latest foal was passed in at Karaka put her in quite good company. Little Avondale offered two others that were retained that year, and all three won their first starts. Aside from Roch ’N’ Horse, another was Belluci Babe, also by Per Incanto, who carried the Little Avondale colours to a breakthrough black-type success for Bjorn Baker in Randwick’s Wenona Girl Quality (Gr 3, 1200m) on March 5. There was also Keke Star (Shooting To Win), who won at Taupo on debut, and who’s now in foal to Tivaci (High Chaparral).
Trained in New Zealand by Mike Moroney and his training partner Pam Gerard, the mare was a slow starter.
“She had a couple of injuries early on so we just took our time and she didn’t start until she was a four-year-old,” Williams said of the chestnut, who won on debut at Te Aroha in October, 2020, but injured a tibia soon afterwards.
Much of her early years were spent in dressage-style work, the trotting and cantering in which Williams places great faith for enhancing physique and temperament.
“She’s a bit quirky. She can be extra fresh every time they go to get on her back,” he said. “That’s why we wanted her to do a fair bit of dressage work just for that bit of extra education.
“Dressage takes time. Some people just like to get them fit. We like to build those muscles up before they go out there for fitness, to get them into shape but also to get them nice and settled, head on their chest. And dressage is all about discipline, the connection between rider and horse, getting a really good feel for leg and hand for that connection, and to really give them that good mouth.
“I’d rather them do that that go round and round in a circle on a walking machine.”
The patience shown appears to be paying off in a major way, with Roch ’N’ Horse having won three out of 12 in New Zealand before her Flemington triumph, including a narrow second the start before in Trentham’s Telegraph Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m) in her second top-flight race.
Of course what appears to have really set Roch ’N’ Horse apart is Rochfort’s introduction to Little Avondale’s burgeoning sire Per Incanto (Street Cry), who in fact bookended the market for Flemington’s historic sprint. Most might have expected John O’Shea’s $4.20 favourite Lost And Running to have provided the sire with a fifth Group 1 winner, but it came via the rank outsider, with his more fancied hope only 14th.
Per Incanto, who distinguished himself on the racetracks of Italy, has been following an irrepressibly upward trajectory since Williams imported him to Little Avondale in 2012. After standing for just $4,000 (plus GST) then, his fee was $25,000 (plus GST) last spring.
Nicknamed Magnum (for his initials), he started well by ranking second on New Zealand’s first season and two-year-old sires tables in 2015, mostly thanks to Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Dal Cielo. Like his standard of mares, his progeny’s earnings have been smoothly building each year. This season’s tally so far of just more than $10 million is just $150,000 less than his figure for the whole of last season.
The rising 18-year-old now has a career 286 winners from 439 runners at 64.7 per cent. He’s once again the top performing New Zealand-based stallion in Australia this season by virtue of his 25 winners from 52 starters, four of them stakes-winners.
But it is in Asia where he’s particularly thriving. In Hong Kong he’s had 30 career winners from 41 runners, or 73.2 per cent, while in Singapore it’s 23 from 29 at 79.3 per cent. Williams believes the results reflect the breed’s capacity to adapt to the stable-and-trackwork based lifestyles of those jurisdictions, which he links to the progeny’s trait of having a strong appetite and eating well, seemingly no matter what.
“Per Incanto is a great eater. If he has to service a mare and there’s a bucket of feed there, he’ll go straight past the mare to get to the feed,” Williams said with a laugh.
“And the progeny are good eaters, who thrive in that environment where they don’t necessarily have to go to a paddock. Some horses, some breeds, have got to get out, and they don’t acclimatise to that environment. But Per Incantos are one example of the equine breed who do, purely because of their temperament and the fact they’re good eaters.”
Mindful that Per Incanto is “not a big book stallion”, Williams will be reducing his workload this year, from 133 covers last season to 110, knowing the quality will be high. He’s not sure yet what his 2022 service fee will be, but says “it won’t be $25,000”.
“The mares now pregnant to him are easily the best bunch he’s ever served,” he says. “He’s got better and better mares, but it’s not like he started at a $25,000 fee and got these good mares straight away. He’s had to do it the hard way, and it’s great to see him getting such results now.”