Shining Smile
As a jockey who presented Ethereal (Rhythm) at precisely the right points to win the 2001 Caulfield-Melbourne Cups double, Scott Seamer knows the value of timing.
It’s something that’s also worked in his favour in his other career of breeding which, perhaps surprisingly to some, was something he pursued with great passion throughout his time in the saddle, and continues 13 years after his retirement.
In April 2005, Seamer bought a mare, by an Australian breeding titan, named National Song (Vain) at an Inglis broodmare sale, when in-foal to Choisir (Danehill Dancer).
She was 13 and had raced only once, for no good, but was a half-sister to another mare from rich colonial blood in Circles Of Gold (Marscay), who’d won four stakes races capped by the Australian Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m).
Circles Of Gold’s son Elvstroem (Danehill) was a qualified star by then, with five Group 1 wins.
Plus, National Song was a half-sister to Gold Wells (Barathea), who’d won Flemington’s Blamey Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) a year earlier, so Seamer felt it was good buying to secure National Song for $145,000.
But it was about to look far better.
Circles Of Gold’s sixth foal would start racing the following year, 2006, winning four of his first five, including three Caulfield stakes races. Named Haradasun (Fusaichi Pegasus), he’d win three times at the top level in an 18 start career, culminating in Royal Ascot’s Queen Anne Stakes (Gr 1, 1m).
Also in 2006, National Song’s 1999 drop, the stakes-placed Gold Anthem (Made Of Gold), gave birth to a colt also destined for Royal Ascot triumph, amid four Group 1s split evenly between Australia and England, before becoming a successful sire – Starspangledbanner (Choisir).
For good measure, Gold Anthem produced the dam of MRC Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) 2014 winner Amicus (Fastnet Rock), in a family that became overflowing with black type.
“So I got in good with the timing, buying National Song when I did,” Seamer told It’s In The Blood. “We got her home, and then we got $150,000 for the Choisir inside of her.” Named Agnes Flash, the colt won four races in Japan.
National Song ended up a prolific producer, with 16 foals, seven of them bred by Seamer. A fan of Australian speed lines, Seamer put her to Canny Lad (Bletchingly) three years in a row from 2009-11.
“Luckily, I got three fillies,” he said of Elldarragh, Nataya Rose and Olympique.
The first won a maiden and the next two were unraced, but in Nataya Rose, Seamer appears to have struck gold.
It’s taken some patience, but after two of her first six foals became city winners, the seventh is Shining Smile (Spirit Of Boom).
The Team Hayes-trained colt has made Seamer, the stakes-winning jockey, also Seamer the stakes-winning breeder, having won Sandown’s Blue Diamond Preview (Listed, 1000m) last month before sharing first place in Saturday’s Talindert Stakes (Listed, 1100m) at Flemington.
Now 56, Seamer is a phlegmatic character, who’s happy to pause his task of loading hay bales at his farm near Ballina to talk us through things.
“I don’t get excited too much, but it is quite pleasing,” he said. “Winning stakes races with horses you’ve bred – it’s a good feeling.
“It’s a different feeling to winning a stakes race as a jockey. The effort you put in is a bit different. It takes a lot of patience, breeding. Luckily I’ve got a bit.”
Since he finished riding in 2012, Seamer has kept himself busy, partly through his breeding enterprise which yields around five foals a year, but mostly through working the three cattle farms owned by his wife Louise.
He never wanted to take up training: “I’m not that keen on early mornings. I did enough of them as a jockey.”
And he doesn’t punt: “As a jockey, you know what can go wrong in a race. You’ve only got to have something happen in front of you for it to be all over, and it usually does.”
Probably unbeknownst to most punters who followed him throughout his 22 Group 1-winning career in the saddle, Seamer has been in breeding for four decades, producing around 150 horses in that time. He was breeding before he was race riding, in fact, thanks to his first boss, Northern Rivers trainer Ron Gosling
“I’ve been breeding since I was 16,” he said. “Ron had a stallion and we used to cover mares. Then I bought my first broodmare when I was about 20.
“I’ve always bred one, down the years. My mum has race a few that I’ve bred over the years.
“I’d reckon that because of my breeding, when I was riding I was probably a bit more in tune with pedigrees than most jockeys.”
When his riding successes allowed it, Seamer made a bigger splash. Seven months after his Cups double, he paid $280,000 for Hill Of Peace (Danehill), an import who’d won once in France. He’s bred eight winners and a placegetter from her nine foals.
Three years after that he bought National Song, the purchase which has led to him becoming a stakes-winning breeder.
It’s also led to his largest sale, with the Hong Kong Jockey Club paying $400,000 for Nataya Rose’s first foal at Magic Millions Gold Coast in 2017. Named Wonder Win, he won twice in Hong Kong.
Seamer sold that colt through the Hunter Valley’s Holbrook Thoroughbreds’ draft, one of his main two avenues of sale along with Darling Downs-based Robin Wise. It was through Wise he sold Shining Smile to Boomer Bloodstock’s Craig Rounsefell – who’d bought two earlier Nataya Rose foals – at the Gold Coast National Weanling Sale of 2023.
“We decided to sell all our foals as weanlings that year. Our daughter was on a university exchange to England, so we thought we’d have Christmas over there, so we didn’t want to prep horses for yearling sales that year,” Seamer said, reflecting his philosophy in a breeding pursuit which is both business and hobby.
“We only try to have five or six foals a year. They get born in the Hunter or the Darling Downs, and when their mums are back in foal they come to our place to get raised.
“We prepped nine yearlings for the sales one year and it was pretty hard work. We’re busy enough with my wife’s farms as it is.”
Seamer knows pedigrees, but is perhaps more inclined to breed by type. Nataya Rose – whose Zousain (Zoustar) colt fetched him $80,000 at last week’s Inglis Classic Yearling Sale when bought by Yulong – is now in foal to Pinatubo (Shamardal), who Seamer said was “faultless” at Darley’s stallion parade.
He said his choice of Spirit Of Boom (Sequalo) that produced Shining Smile was “very easy”, since he owns a share in Eureka Stud’s flagbearer.
There has been a little more to it than all that, however.
“I’m a bit of a stickler for tradition, and that’s why I sent the Vain mare [National Song] to Canny Lad to get that colonial speed,” he says.
“Things have worked out OK. It’s taken a while, but Nataya Rose has produced a Hong Kong winner and a few other winners, and now Shining Smile has come along.
“It’s too good a family for something not to come out of it. Craig Rounsefell said the same thing. It looks like Shining Smile could be it, and hopefully more will come after.”
Australian speed abounds in Shining Smile’s pedigree. Seamer likes “the precocity of Sequalo” coming through his son Spirit Of Boom, who’s enjoying a stunning season with a nation-leading eight two-year-old winners. He also likes the speed of Vain and Canny Lad on the dam’s side.
Shining Smile boasts only a piece of in-breeding, but it also looks fast, a 5f x 3m of Bletchingly (Biscay). He’s the sire of Wing Space, dam of Spirit Of Boom’s damsire Special Dane (Danehill), and of Nataya Rose’s sire, who’s of course Canny Lad.
The brilliant Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m)–winning Canny Lad is unusually recent in Shining Smile’s pedigree, as a damsire born in 1987, thanks to siring 2010 drop Nataya Rose when he was 23.
And with three Canny Lad mares, this leaves Seamer with some guesswork to do, apropos Australia’s modern sires.
“Canny Lad mares are quite rare these days,” he said. “I might nearly have the last of them.
“So to find crosses with today’s stallions is more trial and error. Thinking back to when Canny Lad mares were to the fore, all those stallions are gone now. There’s a new bunch of stallions and none have got any nicks and clicks to Canny Lad, so I’ve got to work it out myself.
“I waited a bit in sending my Canny Lad mares to Spirit Of Boom, but now I’ve had two runners from two winners, so it looks like it’s not a bad cross.”
But overall, pedigrees for Seamer are just one piece of the puzzle, and not necessarily the most important.
“It’s pleasing to see your young ones sell, but as a breeder we’d rather take less money and see them go to the right trainer, than get more money and you know the horse is doomed,” he said.
“I do know a lot of the trainers, and I know how they train, and I have my particular likes in a trainer.”
Seamer’s crowning moment in the saddle taught him much about this. Shiela Laxon took a horse not bred to stay 3200 metres and won a Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m). Three months ago, she did it again, co-training a son Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), winner of the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m) and Moir Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m), to do the same in Knight’s Choice.
“Ethereal was by a champion miler by Mr. Prospector, and was probably only bred to get 2000 metres. She got two miles, but was really effective once she got to 2400 metres,” he said.
“Her breeding didn’t say that. Shiela, a champion horsewoman who rode work back then, knew how to ride her and get her to relax.
“And now she’s done it again with Knight’s Choice. You wouldn’t think a 1000-metre Group 1 winner would sire a Melbourne Cup winner, but Shiela’s defied the breeding again.
“It doesn’t matter what the breeding is, if they’re not in the right hands to look after them, nurture them, give them a spell when they need a spell, that can make or break a horse.”
Raced by Hong Kong’s Victor Lee, Shining Smile wasn’t nominated for the Blue Diamond or next month’s Golden Slipper.
Seamer hopes the colt might still contest the Slipper, which he won in 2002 on Calaway Gal (Clang) – after her connections paid a $110,000 late nomination fee.
Should history repeat fully, and Seamer becomes a Slipper winner as a jockey and a breeder, it would be some feat indeed.