Where the hell did that come from?
Knight’s Choice (AUS)
By Trevor Marshallsea
Where the hell did that come from?
That was the question on most people’s lips following Tuesday’s stunning Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) victory to $91 bolter Knight’s Choice (Extreme Choice).
It was asked not just because of form but in terms of how possibly could the winner of this ultra-tough two mile marathon have sprung from such a pedigree?
Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt) is an outstanding, if fertility-challenged, sire, as shown by his equal country-topping $275,000 (inc GST) service fee.
But his Group 1s came in the Moir Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m) and the Blue Diamond (Gr 1, 1200m), his sire Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) won from 1000 metres to 1200 metres, and his most notable performers had been Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) hero Stay Inside, and Espiona, a five-time stakes-winner at up to 1500 metres.
Yes, Extreme Choice sired VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m) winner She’s Extreme, but her dam Keysbrook (So Secret) was placed in a Western Australian Derby (Gr 2, 2400m).
Plus Knight’s Choice’s dam Midnight Pearl (More Than Ready) was by the sire of Slipper winners Sebring and Phelan Ready, for heaven’s sake, and was surely best known for his speedsters. Or was he?
Aside from all that, Knight’s Choice is the ONLY stakes winner amongst his tail female line – stretching back through his first five dams!
Co-trainer Shiela Laxon commented post-boilover, words to the effect that you don’t have to be by Teofilo (Galileo) out of Makybe Diva (Desert King) to win a staying race. Settling calmly in the run and conserving petrol for a finishing burst was the key, which went on display in that last 200 metres from a gelding whose previous longest win was over 2000 metres.
Laxon had won one of these Cups before, with Ethereal (Rhythm) in 2001, so she ought to know.
However, we asked Jane Henning of Pedigree Dynamics for a thorough assessment of Knight’s Choice’s bloodlines, and there’s a bit more stickability there than first meets the eye.
“Knight’s Choice’s sire, tail male and tail female lines give the illusion of a pure sprinter’s pedigree,” Henning told It’s In The Blood. “But there are several stamina elements which have joined hands in the mating.”
American 1967 drop Naskra (Nasram) doesn’t bob up often in Australian pedigrees, but Henning points to his 5m x 5f duplication. He’s the sire of Extreme Choice’s second damsire, and is More Than Ready’s second damsire.
“Naskra won two stakes races over 1800 metres and was fourth in the Kentucky Derby [2000m],” Henning said.
She also highlighted Knight’s Choice’s only other first-five duplication – Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native) at 4m x 5m, through Extreme Choice’s damsire Hussonet, and More Than Ready’s damsire Woodman.
“While Mr. Prospector can certainly produce a sprinter, many of his Grade 1 winners tended to be able to win to at least 2000 metres or even further,” Henning said.
And despite perceptions, this Melbourne Cup winner’s damsire More Than Ready (Southern Halo), has had 16 stakes winners – 11 at Group/Grade level – between 2200 metres and 2500 metres.
In Australia they include VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) winners Prized Icon and Benicio, Queensland Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) hero Eagle Way, and WA Oaks (Gr 3, 2400m) and WA Derby (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Dreamaway.
Midnight Pearl’s second damsire The Commander is a son of Sir Tristram (Sir Ivor) – now just one of two stallions to have sired winners of the Golden Slipper and Melbourne Cup. Sir Tristram in fact sired three Melbourne Cup winners in Gurner’s Lane, Empire Rose and Brew.
The Commander sired two stakes winners including the Queensland Derby’s De Gaulle Lane. His Ballarat Cup (Listed, 2200m) winner Command ‘N’ Conquer also won over 2875 metres.
“Both The Commander, and Midnight Pearl’s third damsire Kreisler (NZ), are products of arguably New Zealand’s best staying families,” Henning said, adding both traced to the dam of Kiwi Blue Hen Eight Carat (Pieces Of Eight), Klairessa (Klairon).
Indeed, Kreisler is a half-brother to Eight Carat, who was a huge influence in the pedigree of another Melbourne Cup winner, Verry Elleegant (Zed). Eight Carat’s daughter Cotehele House (My Swanee) appears at 4f x 4f in Verry Elleegant’s pedigree, on the tail lines of both her sire and dam.
And so, on pedigree, Knight’s Choice sort of picked himself really! Or at least there’s usually something there when you dig a little deeper.
***
Fancify (NZ)
Two races after the Cup, Tuesday’s black type win by Fancify (Niagara) in the HKJC Stakes (Gr 3, 1400m) came as a welcome tonic for New Zealand’s Hau Ora Farm, which is now in its second-season of standing Niagara (Encosta De Lago).
Hau Ora, south of Hastings on the North Island, is one of the more interesting farms you might see. Run by the multi-talented studmaster, trainer and equestrienne Vicki Wilson, it stands two thoroughbred stallions, and five warmbloods for the show world, while also providing equine therapy and agistment services.
Wilson had also trained at the property – preparing two time winner Red ’N’ Surf (Redwood) among others, while also tutoring apprentice jockey Lily Sutherland.
But early last year the farm and surrounding areas were devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle.
“We were training our own racehorses, and we could do everything on our own track,” Wilson told It’s In The Blood. “But with the cyclone taking out virtually most things, that made it all a little bit hard.
“It wiped out six kilometres of fencing, took out our track and our 2500-kilogram starting gates, that were staked a metre into the ground, and 300 trees. Luckily, we’d moved the horses away early.”
Wilson and partner Michael Whittaker have now had to “reset and rebalance and work out a plan”. That’s included Sutherland transferring to Wanganui’s Kevin Myers, where she became New Zealand’s champion apprentice last season.
Wilson has remained busy in her other pursuits. She competes on the equestrian showjumping Grand Prix circuit, and in March will return to the Road to the Horse World Championships in Kentucky seeking a third World Championship colt starting title – a pursuit requiring participants to break in a three-year-old quarter horse from scratch to saddle over three days.
Then there’s standing her farm’s stallions – Niagara and Mongolian Falcon (Fastnet Rock).
Formerly trained by Gai Waterhouse, Niagara secured his racetrack highlight in taking Rosehill’s Ajax Stakes (Gr 2, 1500m) in 2012, a year before crossing the Tasman. Initially he stood at the Lime Country Thoroughbreds farm of Jo and Greg Griffin at Hawke’s Bay. After they transferred their operation to the Hunter Valley, Niagara stood at The Oaks Stud in the Waikato, before moving to Hau Ora before last season.
Despite limited numbers in recent years the 16-year-old has a solid 127 winners from 206 runners, with six stakes victors. He’s served fewer than 20 mares in each of the past three seasons, but Wilson expects some more late bookings for this term following Tuesday’s result.
For their $2,500 (inc GST) stallion to have a battler’s Cup day story to his name has put a spring in the step of all at Hau Ora.
“He’s very under-utilised for how consistent a sire he is in terms of winners to the track,” Wilson said. “He consistently leaves a winner every week here in New Zealand, in Australia Fancify and few others have been pretty consistent as well, and he consistently has winners in Hong Kong and Malaysia.
“We’ve got some good mares coming to him at the moment, and this season his numbers will have gone up. It’s always good news when you get a winner on Cup day.”
The Michael Hickmott-trained five-year-old mare Fancify has won five of her past seven starts, for seven from 13 in total, and now ranks as Niagara’s third-best performer.
His top one – Waikato Guineas (Gr 2, 1600m) winner Xbox – was bred by the same person – Auckland breeder and prominent horse photographer Trish Dunell.
She’s had a long association with Niagara, buying a share in him soon after his racing retirement, and in fact crossing the Tasman to photograph him for the Griffins’ stallion brochure.
“I’d already bought into him without seeing him,” she said. “I went over to Australia primarily to make sure he was as beautiful as Jo and Greg said he was – and he was – but also to get the photos.
“He just had that wow factor – a perfect-looking horse, and with a beautiful nature. He still has that, and his offspring do too. They are becoming very good horses off the track, like in the show world, because they’ve got beautiful natures. There’s quite a demand for them.”
On Jo Griffin’s recommendation, Dunell went to the Karaka National Weanling, Broodmare and Mixed Sale of 2014 and bought a rising four-year-old mare by Keeninsky (Stravinsky). She was named Laced Up, but Wound Up might have been better.
Aside from being less than easy on the eye, she also soon developed a reputation for playing hard to like – which he still has aged 14.
At least she was well-bred, being a half-sister out of Cierzo (Centaine) to Jimmy Choux (Thorn Park) – who’d won five Group 1s across both sides of the Tasman – and Miss Wilson (Stratum), who would go on to win one herself.
“Unfortunately, Laced Up didn’t want to be a racehorse,” Dunell said. “She had two starts, got fractious in the barriers and cut her leg pretty badly. She didn’t want to know anything about being in work really, so I pretty much sent her straight to the breeding barn.
“She’s also not the most fantastic looking mare you’ve ever seen. There’s lots of strange bits of white about her, weird markings over her face.
“And she’s, let’s just say, a bit of an individual. She likes to be left alone in her paddock, and she’s pretty hard to catch still, even though she’s been a broodmare for a long time now.”
Thankfully, Laced Up does have redeeming features – if not facial – leaving what Dunell calls “very nice individuals”.
One of these – with white markings in the right places – was her fourth foal, and fourth winner, in Fancify.
“It was more of a type crossing than anything else, to get a little more bone. Niagara has really good bone, and Laced Up is a little on the light side,” said Dunell, who has now put the mare to Niagara five times in her nine covers.
If there is one factor portending class in an otherwise unfancy pedigree for Fancify, it’s a 5f x 5m duplication of influential US mare Special (Forli), in strong places on both sirelines.
Special is there with daughter Fairy Bridge (Bold Reason), the dam of Niagara’s second sire Fairy King (Northern Dancer), and she’s also the dam of Laced Up’s third sire Nureyev (Northern Dancer).
Borne of Niagara’s 26-mare 2018 book, Fancify was sent by Dunell to Hickmott after two barrier trials. After four city wins in nine starts, capped by a Caulfield Benchmark 78 (1400m) success in May, Dunell sold out to new Hickmott client Andy Yau, who has reaped the benefits of three victories in four starts.
Dunell is stiff chuffed to have bred a Cup day stakes-winner.
“It’s pretty exciting,” she said. “I’ve had lots of people congratulating me. Even though I don’t still own her, it’s good for the family.”
Fancify may end up the best Dunell has bred. She still has a way to go to catch Xbox and the breeder’s finest product Spalato (Elusive City). The five-time Singapore stakes winner, including of the Singapore Derby (Listed, 1800m), is now enjoying retirement – at Lime Country in the Hunter.