It's In The Blood

Swiss Exile

Gerry Harvey’s been at the breeding game for a good few decades now, but still talks about it like a kid who discovered it last week.

Every sentence ends with an exclamation mark. They rise in tone as if to end in astonishment and wonder. He speaks with a boyish enthusiasm, which probably explains why he’s still punching away at the age of 82. Come to think of it, he speaks like he did in those TV commercials for Harvey Norman, which suggests the ad men didn’t need a jigger.

“Every horse is well-bred,” he tells It’s In The Blood, which is a rough old starting point if you’re trying to make a good one.

“People go on about horses but every horseYou have a look at every horse, they’re all well-bred. All the dams are by top stallions, nearly always. All the stallions are well-bred.

“It’s all a big puzzle. We’re all experts, but I’m buggered if I know.”

He might sell himself a bit short, even though with 550-odd mares, at last count, the billionaire can play a bit of a numbers game most can’t. He’s bred many good ones, either through his Baramul Stud in the Hunter Valley or his New Zealand wing, Westbury Stud. Alligator Blood (All Too Hard), Libertini (I Am Invincible) and Royal Descent (Redoute’s Choice) are just a few of the modern stars under his name in the stud book.

Jungle Magnate’s another one, the son of Westbury stallion Tarzino who became a G1 winner over 2500 metres in last Saturday’s South Australian Derby, provoking more wonder.

“And now I’ve got Jungle Magnate, who’s out of a pretty cheap mare that wasn’t much good,” he exclaims. “I sold him for $75,000 as a yearling, kept a quarter, and I’ve just been offered $1.8 million for him from Hong Kong!”

By the way Harvey, with his not insignificant fortune, says he’d prefer to tackle the Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) with Jungle Magnate but – for all that fortune – knows he might be overruled should his co-owners opt to sell.

Despite breaking down breeding as “99 per cent luck and one per cent ability”, Harvey does have many theories. One of the latest is that Westbury’s $5,000 stallion Swiss Ace (Secret Savings) will make a strong broodmare sire, and that was borne out last Saturday when Swiss Exile took Eagle Farm’s Group 2 Spirit Of Boom Classic (1200m) at his fifth start.

The Annabel Neasham-trained colt, out of the mare Swiss Francs, became not only the octogenarian breeder’s latest stakes-winner,  but the first for Arrowfield’s $16,500 stallion Pariah (Redoute’s Choice). 

One of those sires unable to boast a Group 1 success (here’s to you, I Am Invincible), the seven-year-old who won two Group 3s and came second in a Blue Diamond has now climbed to seventh on the first season sires’ table – and he’s the only one other than leader Russian Revolution (Snitzel) with a group winner.

The early numbers support Harvey’s theory. As a broodmare sire, rising 18-year-old Swiss Ace has a strong 25 winners from 45 starters (55.55 per cent), with four black type victors, at 8.9 per cent.

And he’s in form at present, with Swiss Exile’s Group 2 coming a couple of weeks after fellow two-year-old Sharp ’N’ Smart (Redwood) took Pukekohe’s Listed Champagne Stakes (1600m) to confirm an assault on the JJ Atkins (Gr 1, 1600m) in the Brisbane winter.

Neither of these Swiss Ace mares were among Harvey’s leading lights. Swiss Francs had one bush placing from four starts, and Queen Margaret ran ninth in her lone appearance, formlines that push Swiss Ace’s broodmare-sire CV further. Pushing Harvey’s incredulity further still, neither are still with us. Queen Margaret broke a leg in a paddock last year, and Swiss Francs went in late 2020 with laminitis.

“They were Swiss Ace mares that weren’t top mares!” Harvey yells down the phone. “They were just mares! If I put them on the Internet, I’d get five or ten grand if I’m lucky.

“So they were worth nothing, but now they’d suddenly be very expensive mares, but they’ve died. Swiss Francs only had enough ability to be ordinary, but if she was alive now, instead of being five to ten grand I’d put her in foal to Snitzel and get $400,000 or $500,000.”

Trying Swiss Francs with Pariah (Redoute’s Choice) mostly fitted Harvey’s business model. It did produce what he calls “an eight-and-a-half out of ten” on type, but a colt who went to the Adelaide Magic Millions sale instead of the Gold Coast, and fetched $95,000.

“Our top mares, we send them to the most expensive stallions. Those that aren’t our top mares go to the less expensive stallions. So a mare like that didn’t deserve a stallion of more than ten or 20 grand,” Harvey says.

Still, there are some tantalising boxes ticked in Swiss Exile’s pedigree.

There’s ample speed with a triple-up of Mr Prospector at 4Sx5Dx5D. He’s the sire of Pariah’s damsire Hussonet, and comes twice through two more sons in Seeking The Gold (Swiss Ace’s grandsire), and Carson City (Swiss Ace’s damsire).

And Harvey may have happened on something rare in the blending of Seeking The Gold and Pariah. The latter’s sire, Redoute’s Choice, has covered only four mares by Seeking The Gold. Three of them raced, and two of them earned Black Type – Common Objective, who was third in Randwick’s Chairman’s Handicap (2600m) in 2009, and Rakasa, from one of Redoute’s two European crops, who was Group 3-placed over 1400m at Goodwood.

But there may be pure gold in precisely how Swiss Exile is inbred, 3Sx4D, to Danehill.

It’s a gender-balanced cross, through a Danehill son (Redoute’s Choice) and a daughter (Zali, Swiss Exile’s third dam). Keen-eyed readers will know this is usually more advantageous than having two Danehill sons amongst your ancestors, but Arrowfield pedigreesboffin Peter Jenkins has been back down the rabbit hole in the wake of Swiss Exile’s win and unearthed some startling stats.

The data suggests that if you’re doubling Danehill, more crucial than gender-balancing, it’s important he comes through a dam’s mother, rather than her sire (ie. the horse in question’s granddam). Again we remember the strongest path of genetic inheritance is from mother to daughter, since this means that all-important mitochondrial DNA is passed on unaltered.

In Swiss Exile’s case it indeed comes along the bottom line, with that Danehill daughter Zali the dam of Lazulia (Zabeel), the dam of Swiss Francs.

Examining horses by sons of Redoute’s Choice (such as Pariah), when Danehill is duplicated through the sire of the dam, there’s a stakes-winners-to-runners ratio of 1.04 per cent, and a group-winners-to-runners ratio of 0.39 per cent. But where Danehill comes through the dam, those figures soar to 5.91 per cent and 4.01 per cent – more than six times and ten times higher, respectively.

Other key examples include Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Farnan, by Redoute’s son Not A Single Doubt. He has male-male Danehill, but it comes through his dam’s dam African Queen (Lion Hunter/Danehill), and not his dam’s sire.

This year’s Hong Kong Centenary Sprint Cup winner Stronger, also by Not A Single Doubt, has it via his granddam Ain’t Seen Nothin’ (Nothin Leica Dane/Danehill).

There’s Sword Of State, winner of Ellerslie’s Sistema Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m). He’s by a different Redoute’s sire in Snitzel, and his granddam Sharp is by Danzero.

And 2012 Levin Classic (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Southern Lord, by another Redoute’s son in Stratum, had a granddam by Danehill himself.

“Pretty clearly, if you’re going to breed to Redoute’s sons, and you’re going to duplicate Danehill, do not do it through the sire of the mare, but through the dam of the mare,” Jenkins says.

“Swiss Exile has a gender-balanced duplication of Danehill, but with Farnan it’s double-male. So it’s not gender-balance that’s important in this case, it’s the parentage of the horse’s dam.”

There’s some exceptional female quality struck when you reach Swiss Exile’s fourth generation. As mentioned, third dam Zali is by Danehill, as a result of his mating with the outstanding Skating (At Talaq). 

That grey mare won two Group 1s in the 1993 Doncaster and Winfield Classic (now the Coolmore), and the Surround Stakes, which was a Group 2 then but is Group 1 now. And Skating threw three lower-level stakes-winners in the cleverly-named Bradbury’s Luck (Redoute’s Choice), Murtajill (Rock Of Gibraltar) and Sunset Run (End Sweep).

Bradbury’s Luck went on to sire West Australian dual Group 1 winner Luckygray, while one of Skating’s daughters, Skates, threw two Group 1 winners in Golden Slipper victor Vancouver (Medglia D’Oro) and Robert Sangster Stakes-winner Juste Momente (Giant’s Causeway).

Jenkins also notes there’s an intricate genetic relationship elsewhere in Swiss Exile’s pedigree through two mirrored blendings: Pariah is by a son of Danehill in Redoute’s Choice out of a great-granddaughter of Sir Tristram. And Swiss Exile’s granddam Lazulia is by a son of Sir Tristram (Zabeel), out of a daughter of Danehill.

All of which would probably sound good to Harvey. In theory at least.

“It’s a bloody mystery,” he says with a typical dose of realism. “We’re all trying to solve the unsolvable mystery.”

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