Yao Dash
Yao Dash – the compact gelding with the tiny weight in the Doncaster Mile – can truly be said to be riding on giants’ shoulders.
The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained four-year-old led throughout to streak away with the Doncaster Prelude at Rosehill last weekend – his fifth win from 13 starts. Dropping 2.5 kilograms to just 50.5kg, he’s in serious contention for this weekend’s $3 million feature at Randwick.
By Smart Missile out of Rahy Storm, he would write another page of some glorious history if he can take it out, continuing the rich association between his breeders Newhaven Park Stud and Tulloch Lodge, as seen with the likes of dual Group 1-winning sprinter English, and 1972 Golden Slipper winner John’s Hope, trained by Waterhouse’s legendary father Tommy Smith.
There would also be some neat symmetry if Yao Dash can lift the Group 1, with Newhaven’s Kelly family also owning the renowned trackside racing pub, the Doncaster Hotel – which will also host the race-eve party for Saturday’s Newhaven-sponsored Country Racing Championships final.
The Dynamic Syndications-owned galloper is also in the frame to add another star to the resume of the famed Rahy, the great US stallion and broodmare sire.
The regally-bred Rahy – by Blushing Groom out of Eclipse Award winner Glorious Song – won six of his 13 starts either side of the Atlantic in the late 1980s, including two at stakes level. Standing at the famous Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky, he sired the champion Fantastic Light, who was the 2001 European Horse of the Year, as well as 11-time Grade 1 winner and US Hall of Fame mare Serena’s Song, in addition to a host of other top-tier performers.
But Rahy’s potency was also shown in the deeds in the breeding barn of his daughters. In 2000 – while Fantastic Light was making headlines on the track – Rahy was crowned the top broodmare sire in Britain and Ireland, his flag borne most gloriously by the great Giant’s Causeway in his streak of five straight Group 1 races in England and Ireland.
Remarkably, more than two decades after his crowning moment in the category and ten years after his death, Rahy could be about to score another Group 1 as a broodmare sire.
The story behind Yao Dash begins at the Keeneland November Breeding Sale in 2009, where a chestnut daughter of Rahy, out of the unraced Mr Prospector-line mare Western Vision, was bought for US$120,000 for the Moss Vale-based Waratah Thoroughbreds.
A February foal, she was brought to Australia and named Rahy Storm. But after showing little in two barrier trials she was entered by Waratah for the 2013 Inglis Easter Broodmare sale as a three-year-old filly, only to be withdrawn before the auction.
She then had her first three starts for trainer Guy Walter, among them a second place in a Canberra maiden, before being offered for sale again – this time at the Magic Millions National Broodmare sale on the Gold Coast in May, 2014, a week after Walter’s sudden death from a heart attack.
She hadn’t exactly shown a great deal of ability on the track, but Newhaven’s John Kelly was interested.
He’d been at Eagle Farm the day before for Queensland Oaks day and, a little worse for wear after some apres-races socialising, made the trip to the Gold Coast for the Sunday sale.
“Julian Blaxland, from Blue Sky Bloodstock, identified her for us,” Kelly tells It’s In The Blood. “She wasn’t good enough to make the first session of the sale, but we were fans of Rahy as a broodmare sire.
“I drove from Brisbane early on the Sunday morning to get back to the Gold Coast with a rather large hangover. It was a tough drive, but at least when I got there I thought she was quite attractive, so we bought her.”
Last week we brought you the story of the Golden Slipper winner whose dam had sold for $1,000. This week it’s not much more, with Kelly purchasing Rahy Storm for $14,000.
“I think probably the reason she was such good value was she was a little bit small,” Kelly says. “But Rahy is renowned for that, and yet he’s still one of the greatest broodmare sires the world has seen, so that didn’t put me off at all.”
Current figures bear that out. As a broodmare sire in the US, Rahy boasts 968 winners – 94 at stakes level – from 1,336 runners. In Britain it’s 191 winners – 21 in black type – from 328 runners, while in Australia it reads 87 winners – nine at stakes level – from 112 starters.
Kelly opted to race Rahy Storm on, seeking a boost in value under trainer Joe Pride. She achieved it with two wins – one of them at Canterbury – and six placings from a further 13 starts, before retiring in May, 2015. Physicals and nicks suggested a stand-out mating that would ultimately produce Yao Dash.
“The mating with Smart Missile was quite obvious and fortunately we’ve proved that correct with Yao Dash,” Kelly says. “The mare was from America, and Smart Missile is from an American family himself, so the nicks turned up back in America.”
Multiple stakes-winning sprinter Smart Missile, aside from being by a son of the US-bred icon Danehill in Fastnet Rock, was from all-American mare Comical Smile (Comical Strip-Explosive), so the US history runs deep.
And the statistics are encouraging. Sons of Fastnet Rock over Rahy mares have produced seven winners from ten runners. Yao Dash the star performer, while Oriental Lily, by Hinchinbrook, won four races from 18 starts, including a Sandown victory in which she defeated subsequent Group 2 winner Quantum Mechanic.
The cross of Fastnet Rock over Rahy mares has produced four winners (of 18 races) from four horses, including, aptly enough, Try Four, a Melbourne city winner of 12 from 43 starts.
Smart Missile over a Rahy mare stands at one from one – Yao Dash.
Meanwhile, the cross of another Danehill sire, Flying Spur, over the Rahy mare Grilse produced Alverta, winner of Rosehill’s Group 1 Coolmore Classic in 2010.
And Rahy has also been represented as a broodmare sire in Sydney recently by British import Spirit Ridge – by Nathaniel out of Tates Creek – who won Randwick’s recent double of the Group 3 Summer Cup and Listed January Cup.
Yao Dash yielded Newhaven $90,000 at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale in 2018, with Dean Watt snapping him up for Dynamic Syndications.
“He was always a very athletic, attractive sort of horse,” Kelly says. “We were pleased to get that price for him and to see he’d be going to Gai and Adrian. Tulloch Lodge have been long-term supporters of ours and it’s great to see them going into the Doncaster with a live chance.”
Rahy Storm’s second mating, with Not A Single Double, produced the $160,000 Gold Coast yearling Win Tech, who’s unplaced from two runs in Hong Kong. The third produced a filly by Spirit Of Boom who sold at the same sale this year for $80,000.
Kelly reports he now has a “lovely” Written Tycoon weanling colt at Newhaven out of Rahy Storm, but sadly he was her last offspring, the mare dying due to complications from the foaling.
Certain other things have been tough to take in the recent past for the Kellys, with the Doncaster Hotel having been forced to close for 14 weeks during the toughest times of the Covid pandemic.
But the pub is now back in its traditional robust state, and Kelly is hoping that the other Doncaster can bring he and his renowned farm another laurel on Saturday.
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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.