Set for further success
One of the bloodstock world's great mysteries was why the 1968 Derby winner Sir Ivor,
a tremendous racehorse who became a tremendous stallion, could be so
good at siring racehorses, so good at siring broodmares, and so poor at
siring stallions. In general, studmasters in America and Europe who set
about standing sons of Sir Ivor became poorer but wiser for the
experience. However, every rule seemingly has an exception, and one son
of Sir Ivor duly atoned for the disappointments of all the others: Sir Tristram
was not one of Sir Ivor's best-performed colts and his arrival in New
Zealand quickened few pulses, but he went on to become arguably the
greatest stallion the dominion had ever seen, establishing Cambridge
Stud proprietor Sir Patrick Hogan as one of the world's great breeders
in the process. Disappointingly, Sir Tristram never sired a Cox Plate
winner, but his son Zabeel has made up for that by siring four winners of Australasia's premier weight-for-age event. Now Zabeel's son Reset has extended the line's influence on the great race, courtesy of the victory of his four-year-old daughter Pinker Pinker, writes John Berry.
While Sir Tristram was indeed a successful sire-son of Sir Ivor, it
would be wrong to view him solely as a son of Sir Ivor: he can equally
be regarded as a member of one of the greatest stallion families in
history. In descending from Lord Derby's 1922 Park Hill Stakes victrix Selene, Sir Tristram came from the family responsible for the likes of Hyperion, Sickle, Hunter's Moon, Pharamond 2nd and Mossborough. (Another stallion from this family, incidentally, was Topanoora, who featured in this column last week as the sire of the featured stallion Even Top).
Sir Tristram was actually only one of two stallions from the family to
thrive in New Zealand during the final quarter of the 20th century. The
other one was the 1990/'91 Dewar Trophy winner Star Way;
and, great sire though Star Way was, Sir Tristram was greater. All
told, Sir Tristram set a new world record (subsequently surpassed by
Sadler's Wells) for individual Group One winners, and eventually 16 of
his sons sired at least one Group One winner. His sons included the
very good stallions Grosvenor, Marauding and Kaapstad, and his record as a sire of sires might have been even more distinguished but for the premature deaths of El Qahira and the 1990 AJC Derby winner Dr Grace. Easily Sir Tristram's most influential son at stud, though, has proved to be Zabeel, his successor at Cambridge Stud.
In a career highlighted by his victory in the Australian Guineas at
Flemington in 1990 in the colours of Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al
Maktoum, the Colin Hayes-trained Zabeel contested the Cox Plate as a
three-year-old but finished last behind the same connections' principal
hope, the imported stallion Almaarad.
Nevertheless, in the fullness of time Zabeel easily outscored Almaarad
at stud, eventually proving to be as effective a sire as his father had
been. While Sir Tristram won the Dewar Trophy (awarded to the NZ
stallion with the highest earnings in Australia and New Zealand
combined) nine times, Zabeel has now won it in 13 seasons. During that
period, Zabeel has sired numerous high-class horses, but his main
stumbling block to establishing a dynasty has been the fact that the
vast majority of his male winners have geldings rather than colts.
However, while two of his Cox Plate winners (Might And Power and Maldivian) were geldings, two were colts: Octagonal and Savabeel. Each duly retired to stud and each has proved influential, Octagonal primarily by siring Lonhro,
who ranks as the only Australian Horse of the Year to have been sired
by a previous Horse of the Year and who is currently Australia's
reigning champion sire. Savabeel is also an upwardly mobile sire at
present, most notably represented by this year's impressive Queensland
Oaks winner Scarlett Lady, as well as by Tullamore,
whose good runs so far this year include victory in the Brisbane Cup
and minor placings in both the Caulfield Cup and the Moonee Valley Cup.
When Sheikh Mohammed decided that he wished to break into the Australian
stallion market, acquiring a son of Zabeel seemed an obvious move. He
duly purchased the best Zabeel colt who was racing at the time: Reset.
This was an interesting move because Reset was far from typical of
Zabeel's stock. Typically, Zabeel's stock have proved most dominant at
races beyond a mile. Their four Cox Plate victories at 2040m have been
complemented by three wins in both the Caulfield Cup over 2400m and the
Melbourne Cup over 3200m. (One of his sons, the magnificent gelding Might And Power,
ranks, incidentally, as the winner of all three races). Sons such as
Reset, who never raced beyond 1600m, were very much the exception to the
rule.
Reset was also untypical of Zabeel's progeny in being Australian-bred (although, obviously, New Zealand-conceived). His dam Assertive Lass visited Zabeel twice at Cambridge Stud. Her 1998 covering yielded a colt (So Assertive)
and her 1999 covering yielded another, Reset. However, she was back in
Australia (where she continued to visit leading sires, including
Redoute's Choice and Elusive Quality) the following spring when Reset
was foaled. Like so many sons of Zabeel (including Efficient,
the 2006 VRC Derby winner and 2007 Melbourne Cup who ran sixth behind
Pinker Pinker in this year's Cox Plate as an ever-green, but almost
snow-white, eight-year-old) Reset joined the Melbourne string of
successful owner Lloyd Williams. Nowadays Lloyd Williams' horses are
trained under his supervision on his property at Mount Macedon by Robert
Hickmott, but at the time they were stabled at Flemington and
officially trained by Graeme Rogerson, who also had large teams in work
in both Sydney and New Zealand.
Although clearly a very fast horse, Reset was not a precocious one. He
did not race at all during his juvenile campaign (2002/'03) but made his
debut as a three-year-old the following summer, winning over 1400m at
Caulfield. He then began to make up for lost time by rattling off two
more quick-fire handicap victories over course and distance before being
pitched straight into Group One weight-for-age company in the Futurity
Stakes, again over 1400m at Caulfield. His performance left observers
in no doubt at all as to his ability: defying his lack of experience, he
disposed of a high-class field headed by Vocabulary, Yell and Thorn Park (whose champion son Jimmy Choux
would, seven years later, finish second to Pinker Pinker in the 2011
Cox Plate). After this splendid victory, dropping back into his own age
group seemed a straightforward assignment, even in Group One company -
and so it proved, as Reset emulated his sire by landing the Australian
Guineas over 1600m at Flemington, beating the mighty Starcraft by a long neck with the also-rans including such top-class colts as Delzao and Elvstroem.
The world was seemingly at Reset's feet - but sadly he was never given
the opportunity to progress beyond the threshold of greatness on which
he then stood.
In recent years, Australian racing has had to get used to some facts of
modern-day life with which many parts of the rest of the world had been
familiar for quite some time. For race-goers, the bitterest pill to
swallow is the fact that the days of racehorses racing for as long as
they are able seem gone forever. More recently, Sheikh Mohammed did not
endear himself to the Australian public when taking Denman
away after the colt had suggested that he was set to compile a great
racing record. The omens are not looking good, either, for the Sheikh's
current star three-year-olds Sepoy and Helmet,
whose days of gracing Australian racecourses seem numbered - but the
writing was on the wall by the autumn of 2004, when Sheikh Mohammed
bought Reset, a top-class, lightly-raced and seemingly sound horse, and
did the unthinkable: he retired him after only five races. European
racegoers had by this time had a couple of decades to get used to the
fact that top-class sound racehorses might be retired long before they
had got anywhere near to fulfilling their potential on the track, but
Reset's retirement was a jolt to their Australian counterparts,
accustomed as they were to a more sporting, less business-like approach
to the game. However, at this time Sheikh Mohammed had seemingly
decided that Darley was to be a challenger to Coolmore's dual-hemisphere
position of dominance, and a key weapon in the Darley armoury would be a
stallion by Zabeel - so Reset was retired to stud.
Another new string to Darley's burgeoning bow that year was to be Exceed And Excel,
whom it also bought and retired to stud to begin covering in September
2004. He, too, was another high-class horse whose racing career was
considerably shorter than traditionalists would have deemed acceptable,
but if the aim was to put Darley on the Australian map, then the
decision turned out to be justified. Exceed And Excel was Australia's
champion first-season sire in 2007/'08 and leading second-season sire
the following term, when Reset finished third in the same table.
Splitting the pair was Lonhro
- who, of course, had also become a Darley stallion by that time,
having been part of the Woodlands Stud package which Sheikh Mohammed had
bought from the Ingham family in March 2008. The same three stallions
dominated the third-season sires' table in 2009/'10, with Lonhro easily
coming out on top of that league, with Exceed And Excel second and Reset
again third. And now, with Lonhro Australia's champion sire, Reset the
sire of the Cox Plate winner, and Exceed And Excel firmly established
as one of the best short-distance stallions of both Europe and
Australia, it is fair to say that Darley's plan has worked.
Reset, as mentioned above, seemed far from typical of the stock of
Zabeel, but it is fair to guess that, had he been allowed to keep
racing, he would have shown himself capable of staying middle distances
at least. His two Group One winners to date have been the dual Derby
winner Rebel Raider
(winner of the VRC Derby and the SAJC Derby in 2008/'09) and Pinker
Pinker, and it is fair to regard him as an influence for class over
middle distances. While Reset's most immediate high-class relative Assertive Lad
(a full-brother to his dam Assertive Lass) recorded his three Group One
wins at distances up to 1600m, Assertive Lad can be regarded as a horse
with both stamina and speed, having won a Group One race at 1600m when
still aged only two. Furthermore, Reset's year-older full-brother So
Assertive recorded his best wins (in the BTC Chairman's Handicap and in
the Canberra Cup) over 2000m, while the best horses a little farther
back in the family were the US 10-furlong Grade One winner Fast Approach and her great-grandson Meisho Doto, runner-up in the Japan Cup over 2400m. Reset's maternal grandsire Zeditave, a terrific sprinter who also ranks as maternal grandsire of the outstanding HK-based sprinter Sacred Kingdom,
stands out in the pedigree as an influence for shorter distances, but
overall Reset can be regarded as a representative son of his sire
Zabeel, notwithstanding his short-distance racing record.
Despite his progeny's successes, Reset still stands at a relatively low
fee ($16,500, inc. GST). This is remarkable considering that he has
come up with Rebel Raider and the admirably tough Group Two-winning mare
Avienus (who joined Pinker Pinker in this year's Cox Plate line-up) in his first crop; with the triple Group Two winner Set For Fame and the Group Two-winning mares Well Rounded and Goon Serpent in his second crop; with the Cox Plate winner Pinker Pinker in his third crop; and with the Listed winners Saxford and the admirably tough Set The Trend
from very limited opportunities in his time shuttling to the UK.
Pinker Pinker's success almost guarantees him increased patronage, and
it is fair to say that Reset looks set for further success and set
further to extend the influence of Sir Tristram.
