Williamsburg
In the space of 80 minutes one day at Randwick a few years back, descendants of remarkable blue hen Denise’s Joy won three races in a row.
That’s fairly astounding. But wait, there’s more.
One of them was a Group 2. The next two were Group 1s.
Jeez, Denise. No need to show off.
That dizzying, probably unprecedented hat-trick, on April 26, 2003, began when Pentastic (Pentire) – David Hall’s best stayer until Makybe Diva’s (Desert King) first Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) a few months later – took out the JRA Plate (Listed, 2000m).
He was by Pentire (Be My Guest) from Melbourne Listed-winning mare Miss Minden (Bellotto), who was out of Denise’s Joy’s third foal Clifton Gardens (Mighty Kingdom).
Forty minutes later, the All Aged Stakes (1600m) was claimed by Gai Waterhouse’s Arlington Road, a daughter of Danehill (Danzig) out of Joie De Vivre (Vain), Denise’s Joy’s sixth named foal.
And to cap it off the AJC Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) then went to Waterhouse again with Sunday Joy (Sunday Silence), another who called Denise’s Joy gran due to her dam Joie Denise, who was also by Danehill.
Joie Denise, her dam’s eighth of nine named foals, and winner of the 1995 QTC Oaks (Gr 1, 2400m) and a Listed race at Randwick, was in fact Denise’s Joy’s only stakes-winning son or daughter. But the stream of success that has sprung from the daughter of French stallion Seventh Hussar (Queen’s Hassar), has been nothing short of incredible.
Among 1,210 runners who have descended from Denise’s Joy, there have now been 72 stakes-winners, headlined by Sunday Joy’s famed eight-time Group 1 winner More Joyous (More Than Ready) and quadruple top-level winner Tuesday Joy (Carnegie), who like Sunday Joy was also out of Joie Denise. That’s a stakes-winners to runners ratio of 5.95 per cent that most stallion owners would love to own.
It’s not quite as ballistic as Scandinavia (Snippets), that matriarch of the Black Caviar (Bel Esprit), All Too Hard (Casino Prince), Ole Kirk (Written Tycoon), etc family, at 18.75 per cent. But, born 22 years after Denise’s Joy in 1994, Scandinavia’s descendants number only 64 runners, for 12 stakes-winners, so her essence has been diluted far less.
Given Denise’s Joy, trained by Waterhouse’s own well-performed sire Tommy Smith, won five races in the 1970s that became Group 1s – (Scandinavia won one Group 2 and a Group 3) – her impact on Australian racing history has been profound.
A granddaughter of British mare Holiday Scene (Fun Fair), who was imported to Australia in the 1950s and produced two stakes-winners, Denise’s Joy racked up stakes-winning descendant No 72 last Saturday, when Williamsburg (Snitzel) emerged from the rain and gloom at Rosehill to win the Schweppervesence (Gr 3, 1400m).
The Gerald Ryan and Sterling Alexiou trained two-year-old colt packs an especially potent pedigree. His Denise’s Joy line comes through his third dam Joie Denise, via her seventh foal Deedra, a dual provincial winner by Zabeel (Sir Tristram), who’s had two stakes-winners from eight named foals so far.
The first was her first foal War (More Than Ready), who took a Randwick three-year-old Group 3. Second foal Fenway (High Chaparral) then eclipsed her big brother by taking out the 2015 version of last weekend’s (scheduled) fillies’ feature, the Vinery Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m), as well as a Group 2 at Moonee Valley.
Bred by John Singleton’s Strawberry Hill Stud, Fenway was herself a royally-priced $700,000 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling purchase for Colm Santry, later being acquired by Arrowfield and Jonathan Munz of GSA bloodstock, the partnership which has bred her offspring.
Williamsburg, bought by Tony Fung for $470,000 at the 2021 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale, is Fenway’s third foal, after $600,000 yearling and city-winning four-year-old gelding Zudin (Redoute’s Choice) and Awakening, Williamsburg’s year-older full sister who’s been retired unraced.
The pairing of Fenway and Snitzel may have looked obvious, given the mighty son of Redoute’s Choice (Danehill) stands at Arrowfield and is, after all, a four-time champion sire.
But, as Arrowfield matings maven Peter Jenkins explained, an examination of the dam and sire’s pedigrees shows it had much going for it, on many levels.
At face value, that’s because of proven success through the pairing of High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells) mares with Snitzel, as also for Snitzel’s sire Redoute’s Choice, as also for his sire Danehill.
“And it’s been successful working the other way – with horses by High Chaparral, or by his sons like So You Think or Dundeel, over Redoute’s Choice mares. That’s probably what inspired us,” Jenkins told It’s In The Blood.
“The Thing about Snitzel is you can look at other sons of Redoute’s Choice who have similar patterns of compatibility, like Not A Single Doubt. It’s a coincidence they stood at the same farm, but we can safely say what has worked for Not A Single Doubt will quite often work for Snitzel.”
From limited exposure, Snitzel over High Chaparral mares has produced five winners from seven runners, including a second stakes-winner in another current two-year-old star, Best Of Bordeaux.
This season, through another son of Danehill in Rebel Dane over a So You Think (High Chaparral) mare, we’ve seen the Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) winner Fireburn.
And as for the reverse cross: put over Redoute’s Choice mares, High Chaparral has left dual Group 1 winner Ace High; So You Think has sired Rosehill Guineas (Gr 1, 2000m) winner D’Argento and Randwick Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Inference; and Dundeel has sired Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Super Seth and last year’s VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) -placed Teewaters.
There’s also sprinter-of-the-moment Shelby Sixtysix, by another High Chaparral son in Toronado out of a Danehill-line mare.
“It doesn’t matter which way you throw it ,” Jenkins says. “You can have the High Chaparral over the Danehill or vice-versa – they tend to work quite well.”
So, where’s the magic? The matching of the Danehill line with High Chaparral brings potent repetitions of two towering broodmares, the great French dam La Troienne (Teddy), born in 1926, and the British-bred Plucky Leige (Spearmint) (1912).
But, as Jenkins explains, it’s not just repetition, but repetition done in the right way, through different offspring who inherited different characteristics from those two mares. Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but put simply, the genetic qualities of these mares were sent off a century ago in separate vessels – different offspring who were passed on different chromosomes. Now, all these decades and generations later, these matings hope to put them back together again.
High Chaparral’s pedigree contains a double-up of 1950s American mare Lalun (Djeddah), through two different sons of hers. Lalun’s damsire was Bimelech (Black Toney), the most successful son of La Troienne.
“Having La Troienne there is good, of course,” Jenkins said. “But then you look for other lines of La Troienne.”
Bimelech had a three-quarter blood sister called Businesslike, who’s the granddam of Buckpasser (Torn Fool), who’s the sire of Spring Adieu, the granddam of Danehill. Therefore, bringing in Redoute’s Choice with High Chaparral fuses multiple lines of La Troienne.
Then there is Plucky Leige. She threw four French sons who won major races and became breeding forces. High Chaparral has six lines tracing to the great mare through three of those four sons – Bois Roussel (Vatout) (1935), Admiral Drake (Craig An Eran) (1931) and Sir Gallahad (Teddy) (1920). But he has no trace of the fourth one, Bull Dog (Teddy) (1927).
Fortunately, Danehill does. In fact he has a duplication of him. And in this case it looks clear that of Plucky Leige’s two X chromosomes, Bull Dog got one, and the other three brothers the other.
“One gets passed on to every offspring, so if a mare has ten toals, two might have got her chromosome A, and eight got chromosome B, or four and six, etcetera,” Jenkins said.
“You can identify, with a lot of research, which Xs different sons got. And it looks, very strongly, that Bull Dog got a different X to the other sons of Plucky Leige, so you need to combine Bull Dog with the other three to make it work.
“When you look at photos of Bull Dog and Sir Gallahad, they were quite different physical types too, and that’s another big clue as to them receiving different X chromosomes. So this is what suggests that re-combining them later in pedigrees should be quite useful, and complementary.
“So, one side of a pedigree is looking for factors it doesn’t have and finds it in the other side. That’s why it doesn’t really matter which way it goes.”
With more genetic information passed from a mother than a father, this is why repetition of power broodmares, as prescribed by the breeding greats, is considered so important. And as Jenkins noted, the impact of successful mares such as Denise’s Joy and Scandinavia, will often be acute. A stark example was how Scandinavia’s daughter Helsinge (Desert Sun) “improved a couple of fairly nondescript stallions” in Bel Esprit and Casino Prince to throw Black Caviar and All Too Hard.
“The incredible thing is, look at how many foals mares have in a lifetime – about ten – so their opportunity to influence is a lot smaller than a stallion’s. But their pre-potency, if they’re great, is rock solid and will descend on down,” said Jenkins.
Also shown again in Williamsburg’s pedigree is the boom often achieved by a gender-balanced duplication of Danehill done not through the dam’s sireline.
In this case it’s a 3Sx4D cross, through Redoute’s Choice-Snitzel at the top and as third-dam Joie Denise’s sire at the bottom.
In horses by Snitzel, Danehill duplications through the mare’s sireline currently boasts a 3 per cent stakes-winners-to-runners ratio. Done not through the mare’s sireline, it’s at 10 per cent. Looking at group winners the figures are 1.5 per cent and 6.4 per cent.
“That’s a staggering difference – more than four times. To the untrained eye it just looks like the same duplication but it’s not,” Jenkins said.
“In fact it’s reaching the point now where this duplication has a better strike rate than Danehill’s overall average. So when something like that starts to happen you can consider it a good factor, rather than just not a negative factor,” he says, adding similar numbers for the cross have been recorded by that other Danehill descendant, Not A Single Doubt.
Fenway, meanwhile, has a sister to Williamsburg on offer at next week’s Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in Lot 166 in the Arrowfield draft.
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Trevor Marshallsea is the best-selling author of books on Makybe Diva, Winx, and Peter Moody.