It's In The Blood

Southport Tycoon

From very nearly losing his life in a dramatic flood when just a yearling, young stallion Southport Tycoon (Written Tycoon) is now one of the most valuable horses in Australia – a rare jewel indeed.

It’s not just the two Group 1s on his resume, two months into his four-year-old season.

And it’s not just the fact they’ve come over 1600 metres and then back to 1200 metres, in the Australian Guineas in March and last Friday night’s Manikato Stakes – a win which has raised interest from three stud farms.

That breathtaking, wing-sprouting Manikato triumph has been hailed as some training feat by Ciaron Maher. And rightly so. You don’t see many Guineas winners be deployed for more top-tier success dropped back to six furlongs.

But in fact, such is the horse’s versatility, Maher had come close to eschewing the Guineas and instead running the then three-year-old colt in Flemington’s Newmarket Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m) which, significantly in terms of a training program, was run a week later.

Following Friday night’s victory, which makes four wins and three seconds from ten starts, the turf world may now take more notice of Bennett Racing’s entire, who started $19 in the Guineas and $21 in the Manikato.

He’s firmed to an $8 equal second-favourite for Rosehill’s $10m Golden Eagle (1500m). And he may yet have another chance to show his sprinting prowess on the way, in the richest sprint of all, the $20 Everest (1200m). He’s currently an $18 shot, with connections putting out feelers to slot holders.

But what else makes Southport Tycoon so priceless is that not only is he from an outrageously successful American family, with his mother’s desperately unlucky and sad breeding tale, there’s precious few like him about.

Dam Ready To Rule (More Than Ready) was brought to Australia by south coast NSW farm Bell View Park in 2014, and was sold the following year to Queensland’s Daandine Stud and their chief advisor Craig ‘Boomer’ Rounsefell, for $260,000, in-foal to Zoustar (Northern Meteor).

Since then, it’s been mostly wretched fortune. Ten covers in nine springs have yielded just two live offspring, offset by three deceased, four misses, and one slip.

With that first Zoustar filly dying after birth, Ready To Rule’s second foal, a colt by I Am Invincible, was one of the luckier ones. He fetched Daandine $500,000 as a Magic Millions Gold Coast yearling in 2018, sold to Orbis Bloodstock. Named Impudens, he won at Wyong on debut and was swiftly sold to Hong Kong. There, the luck turned sour once more, with only one (last placed) run at Sha Tin before his apparent retirement in 2020.

After a miss to Hinchinbrook (Fastnet Rock) – himself ill-fated – and a deceased foal by Capitalist (Written Tycoon), Ready To Rule was given a year off in 2018, before a trip to Victoria and a cover by Written Tycoon produced Southport Tycoon.

And since then, five covers have yielded just one foal – a reportedly stunning filly by Farnan (Not A Single Doubt). She was found dead in her paddock when still a yearling.

From this regally bred dam’s ten covers, there is only one horse standing, and what a horse he is.

And to think, just three months after being bought by Bennett Racing as a yearling, he also came perilously close to proving beyond doubt that his mother was cursed, when he almost died in severe flooding near Sydney while being broken in.

Nathan Bennett has recounted the story before, of how he beseeched a mate with a truck to go to Muskoka Farm and rescue a dozen yearlings he had there.

“A lot of them were panicking and going off, and they basically had to swim them to the truck,” Bennett tells It’s In The Blood.

“But afterwards, [Muskoka Farm’s] Robbie Hewetson said to me, ‘Jeez I think that chestnut colt by Written Tycoon’s a pretty smart fella. He was so well behaved – he knew we were trying to save his life’.”

If he could keep his head when all about him were losing theirs…

Typically, Southport Tycoon was a drifting $11 shot when he won his debut at Geelong. He then did what so many can’t – went straight to 64 class and won again, at Sandown no less.

Despite a 0.1 length second in the Caulfield Guineas Prelude (Gr 3, 1400m), he went to the main event unfancied. The Caulfield Guineas – and a bog track ninth in Randwick’s All Aged Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m) – are now the only two blotches on his formline. But his ninth in the Guineas was a run to forget, with hopeless traffic helping consign him to ninth.

Two Group 2 seconds over 1200 metres and 1400 metres sent him to the Australian Guineas at $19, but he scored comfortably over next-start George Ryder Stakes (Gr 1, 1500m) winner Veight (Grunt). After the All Aged, he spelled, then resumed with a fifth in Joliestar’s Show County Quality (Gr 3, 1200m) which ensured his juicy Manikato odds.

“Ciaron left him pretty fat for that first-up run, but his sectionals were great,” Bennett says. “He was going to improve, and he showed that in the Manikato.”

Southport Tycoon is now the seventh-ranked horse in the land according to ratings guru Dan O’Sullivan’s Power Rankings, and the highest rated entire, with Veight the next in 18th.

Bennett told ANZ Bloodstock News three stud farms had been in touch since Friday, after news last month Widden had taken up a minor share.

Southport Tycoon has now won almost $2.1 million in prize-money  from ten starts. He’s still behind The Astrologist’s (Zoustar) $2.9m among Bennett Racing’s earners, but he’s their first Group 1 winner – more than justifying the lengths to which Bennett went to secure him, at the Gold Coast in 2022.

“It was the first time I’d gone over $250,000,” he said. “I made a few calls to get a bit of backing behind us. I could probably have gone to half a million, but I got him for $300,000.

“He was beautiful, a real athlete, really leggy and so with a great length of stride. He might have been better suited to a later sale, since he didn’t look like an early type, but you could see he was going to grow into a lovely colt.”

Rounsefell and Daandine’s Jan Clark had felt lucky to buy Ready To Rule for $260,000 at Inglis’s Sydney Weanling and Broodmare Sale of 2015.

“I knew the family very well,” Rounsefell said. “When I worked for Gai Waterhouse, her racing manager Steve Brem and Greg Perry, who Steve advised, had brought out the family from America, with much success.”

Ready To Rule had had just four starts for two minors in the US, but that worried Rounsefell none. It’s easy to see why.

It starts with Southport Tycoon’s fifth dam, Priceless Gem (Hail To Reason). A 1963 drop, she won two stakes races in the US including the (subsequent Grade 1) Futurity Stakes (1200m), beating into second another horse later highly influential in American pedigrees, Buckpasser (Tom Fool).

More importantly, Priceless Gem became the dam of champion mare Allez France (Sea Bird), who won 11 French stakes races – eight of them Group 1s, including the 1974 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr 1, 2400m).

Put to another Futurity winner – Secretariat (Bold Ruler) – in 1975, Priceless Gem threw Lady Winborne, dam of no fewer than five stakes winners, headed by her colt Al Mamoon (Believe It), winner of seven stakes races including a Grade 1.

Lady Winborne also threw Lady Lady (Little Current), dam of one stakes victor and the winning mare Lady In Power (Defensive Play).

Lady In Power also threw one stakes winner, Grace And Power (More Than Ready), who was brought to Australia and boomed at stud. She threw Delectation (Shamardal), winner of the VRC Darley Classic (Gr 1, 1200m) and the ATC Royal Sovereign Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m), and second in the VRC Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).

Grace And Power also threw the unraced Gracie’s Lass (Redoute’s Choice), dam of the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) hero Artorius (Flying Artie)

And finally, Lady In Power threw Ready To Rule, who despite her horrid misfortune, is the dam of Southport Tycoon.

“She’s a lovely mare with a great temperament,” Rounsefell said. “But she has had a bit of bad luck. We’ve done lots of tests on her, but there’s nothing the vets have detected. Then she’s had other bad luck too, such as with her Farnan filly dying in the paddock.”

Rounsefell and Clark are trying again, with Ready To Rule about to be covered by Swettenham Stud’s Toronado (High Chaparral). They’ll be hoping the mare’s trip to Victoria echoes the success of another such mission, when they put her to Written Tycoon (Iglesia), producing Southport Tycoon.

“I really liked that mating,” Rounsefell said. “It was the first time we’d sent a mare to Victoria, but we thought it was one of the last opportunities we’d get with Written Tycoon, just with his age mainly.”

Written Tycoon – then a 17-year-old standing at Woodside Park for $110,000 – would prove doubters wrong, kicking strongly after that. Now with Yulong, his fee rose to $165,000 in 2022, the year his daughter Coolangatta won the Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m). Now 22, he’s standing at Yulong under fee on arrangement, fresh from claiming the two-year-old sires’ title thanks to his Golden Slipper winner Lady Of Camelot.

Rounsefell is “a huge fan” of Ready To Rule’s sire, More Than Ready (Southern Halo), who also represents Written Tycoon’s third-best nick, with 31 runners for 25 winners and three at stakes level, including Southport Tycoon and the aforementioned Coolangatta.

Putting Written Tycoon over Ready To Rule produced only three duplications in the first six generations. They include Buckpasser at 6f x 6f via two daughters, and former champion British two-year-old and keenly-sought sire of the 1940s, the French-bred My Babu (Djebel), at 6m, 6m x 6f, through three different offspring.

But part of the magic of Southport Tycoon’s pedigree is its outcross value. He’s from an all-American family, and Written Tycoon and Ready To Rule are completely Danehill-free.

That would also make an attractive stallion prospect out of this horse who’s continually beaten the odds.

He might just be fated to succeed.

He’s certainly racing like it.

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