Sunfall
There are cascades of class in the pedigree of Saturday’s Flemington three-year-old winner Sunfall, including the dam of a Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m)-winning cult hero, and a mare who played a large role in two other intriguing chapters of Australian racing folklore.
The Mick Price-trained Sunfall is by Widden’s flagbearer Zoustar, who’s just finished seventh for a second year running on the Australian sires list, with the oldest of his progeny – laced with speedsters Sunlight and Zoutori – now five.
Blended with a potent female line nurtured by Hunter Valley force of nature Stuart Ramsey, the ingredients are there to portend a glowing future for Sunfall, who’s now won two from six after Saturday’s resolute 1400-metre success.
Follow the bottom line back six generations and you’ll find the taproot American import of the family, Wiley Trade. A 1967 drop, she threw stakes winners Bensynd and Confederate Lady. But she saved the best till second-last – her 1988 foal Subzero (Kala Dancer), the grey who splashed home in the 1992 Melbourne Cup, and later became just as famous for his cheer-bringing visits to hospitals and hospices.
Sunfall’s third dam was Bracken Bank (Sir Tristram), who won two stakes races including Caulfield’s Champagne Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) in 1995, but she also gained fame for a mating with Danehill that produced Niagara Falls, a handy mare in her own right but also a cameo player in two key scenes of the turf.
Raced by Turangga Farm’s Ramsey and trained by his great mate Peter Moody, Niagara Falls, most usually seen leading a field, was taken near and far in quest of black type. She won her first three in 2003, the last over 1000 metres in Listed class at Morphettville. Then came a long wait of 15 more starts for her second stakes win. Having never started on her home track of Caulfield before, she cracked it by winning the Lord Stakes (Listed, 1700m) there – by 5.5 lengths in record time, before repeating the dose in her only other home start in the Carlyon Cup (Gr 3, 1600m) of 2005.
“We never raced her at home until those two, so perhaps we should’ve done that some more,” Ramsey laughs.
A year earlier, in another tilt at a Group 1, Ramsey believes Niagara Falls helped end one glittering career. She set a fearsome pace in the 2000-metre Arrowfield Stakes but was run down and finished eighth to Lee Freedman’s Special Harmony. That mare had won ten of 16.
“Niagara Falls set the pace that day and Special Harmony chased her and it buggered her,” Ramsey says of Special Harmony, who never placed again in seven more starts.
But after her later Carlyon Cup victory, Niagara Falls had one more start and one more trick. She led again in the 2005 Australian Cup (Gr 1, 2000m), and while fading to finish last of the seven, her pace helped Makybe Diva to her stunning winning time of 1:58.73 – still the Australian record.
Niagara Falls went to stud for Ramsey and had an equally noteworthy career there. Her third named foal, by More Than Ready, was Elite Falls, a precocious filly trained by John O’Shea who won almost $800,000, placing third in the Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) and second in an Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m).
Before Niagara Falls’ mating with More Than Ready, however, her first foal was Queen Of The Falls, by the former Moody-prepared speedster General Nediym. She won two from eight in the bush, though she also started in the Thousand Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m), to no avail. But the now 16-year-old Queen Of The Falls looks to have thrown a smart one, in our topic for today, Sunfall.
It’s taken her a few attempts. She first had full brothers by Nicconi in the bush-class Tuscan Falls and Wilker. A third son of Nicconi showed more toe, winning at Rosehill as a two-year-old called Falcon Turbo, and then multiple times in Hong Kong, as Falconic.
Ramsey then made a telling switch to Zoustar with the mare. First out was Charge, a colt who – helped by Falcon Turbo’s debut win at Rosehill – fetched $450,000. He’s won only three of 22 but one was a Group 3. A second trip to Zoustar in 2016 yielded the $490,000 colt Bold Tropic (who debuted as a four-year-old at Ballarat this week, ingloriously).
Ramsey backed with Zoustar, but sold Queen Of The Falls in foal to him for $155,000 to Queensland’s Eureka Stud, which then made $150,000 for the colt that is now Sunfall.
As for any possible magic in Sunfall’s pedigree, there’s a good record in blending Zoustar with mares by General Nediym, a proven broodmare sire came a solid 14th in the season just finished.
That General Nediym nick is among Zoustar’s best three, producing eight winners and a stakes-winner in Charge. (It’s also Spirit Of Boom’s second-best, again with eight winners and a stakes-winner in Outback Barbie, which in part inspired that stallion’s home stud, Eureka, to purchase Queen Of The Falls).
But Ramsey was more excited by a more obscure, and partly ancient, batch of ingredients in devising the mating.
Sunfall has double-Danehill in his pedigree in a 4×3 cross in the coveted gender-balanced way. It comes via Redoute’s Choice, sire of Zoustar’s dam Zouzou, and through granddam Niagara Falls. Even better, Ramsey says, is that five generations back, in either half of the pedigree, you’ll find full brothers Star Of Heaven (1961) and Biscay (1965), both by Star Kingdom.
Star Of Heaven’s son Star Shower sired Meteor Mist, Zouzou’s dam. Biscay influences the bottom line as sire of Sunfall’s fourth dam, Country Garden.
Star Of Heaven was a multiple stakes-winner who placed in a Golden Slipper and won a race in the US, while the flying Biscay, also a multiple stakes-winner, was an unbeaten two-year-old who became a champion juvenile sire of the 1980s. Their other full brother, Tattenham, was also exceptional, winning nine races.
“It’s better if you can have gender-balanced Danehill, and the main way to get it is to have a stallion from a dam line with Danehill in it. In this case with Zoustar, Redoute’s Choice mares will be sensational,” Ramsey tells It’s In The Blood.
“But the biggest thing for me with Zoustar is Star of Heaven. He was Tattenham and Biscay’s full-brother, and probably better than both of them. They were three champion two-year-olds, and you don’t get that very often.
“I think Star Of Heaven only stood one year, so you didn’t get many foals, but I do like the double Danehill plus him in any pedigree. And if you get Biscay back to Star Of Heaven in the same pedigree, you’re pretty much in business.”
For further proof, another with the same awesome foursome – Danehill, Danehill, Star Of Heaven, Biscay – is Zoustar’s best daughter Sunlight. A nice blend if you can find it, as Ramsey says.
As for the future, Eureka are now hoping the Spirit Of Boom-Queen Of The Falls cross brings more good fortune. A late-blooming colt of that parentage sold to trainer Chris Anderson at the Gold Coast National Yearling Sale this year for $80,000. Queen Of The Falls is in foal to Spirit Of Boom again, and will return to him this spring.
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Trevor Marshallsea is the best-selling author of Makybe Diva and Winx – Biography of a Champion. Click on the links to purchase yours.