Crown of Thorn
‘Keep
yourself in the best company and your horses in the worst’ is a
time-honoured maxim, most notably propounded by the Hon George Lambton
in his classic memoir, ‘Men and horses I have known’,
writes John Berry.
One man who failed to adhere to Lambton’s advice was the recently
deceased one-time Adelaide trainer Les Samba, whose failure to keep
himself in the best company arguably led to his recent murder. However,
Samba was equally guilty of failing to keep his horses in the worst
company. That apparent failing, however, proved to be no disadvantage:
being a good judge of horseflesh, Samba, for whom David Hayes has
provided the perfect epitaph of “a good bloke”, bought nice horses who
were well able to hold their own in good company. The perfect example
of his selections was Thorn Park,
who has provided another happy tribute to his former owner, less than a
week after Samba’s death, by siring the New Zealand Derby winner Jimmy Choux.
In truth, one didn’t need to be too prescient a judge of young horses to
pick Thorn Park out as a yearling: he is a magnificent specimen who
boasts a lovely pedigree. Being a member of the first-crop of the
top-class and regally-bred miler Spinning World and a descendant of the top-class racemare and great matriarch Denise's Joy,
Thorn Park was always an obviously exciting prospect. Having been
bought by Samba for $200,000 at the William Inglis Easter Yearling Sale
in 2001, he joined Bobby Thomsen’s stable at Randwick before showing
over the following three seasons that he could live up to his looks and
lineage.
On both sides of his pedigree, Thorn Park descends from horses who had
been very good at two and even better in subsequent seasons. Spinning
World, whose first Group/Grade One victory came in the 1996 Irish 2,000
Guineas and whose fifth and final such success came in the 1997
Breeders’ Cup Mile 18 months later, had been a Group Three winner at two
before graduating to the top at three and four. Denise’s Joy, Thorn
Park’s fourth dam, had been a very good two-year-old, finishing second
to Toy Show
in the Golden Slipper in 1975, before becoming a true star at three,
when her haul included victories in the VRC Oaks, WATC Australian Derby
and the QTC Oaks, as well as minor placings in the VATC Thousand
Guineas, AJC Oaks and QTC Derby. The following season (1976/’77) saw
Denise’s Joy’s half-brother Great Lover
land the AJC Derby. It has become the norm for Denise’s Joy’s
descendants to improve as they get older, a trend typified by her
Queensland Oaks-winning daughter Joie Denise,
the only one of Denise’s Joy’s ten foals to score at either Group or
Listed level. Thorn Park fitted perfectly into the family tradition by
being very good at two and even better thereafter.
Bobby Thomsen would have been well aware of the traits of Thorn Park’s
family. Prior to becoming a trainer in 1976, the former jockey had
spent nine years as foreman to Tommy Smith, the latter part of this
period coinciding with Denise’s Joy’s time at Tulloch Lodge. He duly
mapped out an appropriate campaign for Thorn Park: a light two-year-old
season in preparation for busier times at three and four. Thorn Park
consequently made his debut towards the end of the 2001/’02 season,
easily winning a 1200m two-year-old handicap at Rosehill towards the end
of June, ridden by Darren Beadman. The champion jockey was impressed,
saying that the colt was “pretty special”, while Thomsen explained, “He
showed that sort of ability eight months ago, but I put the lid on him.
He’s got the acceleration of a good horse and he’s got the looks; he’s
intelligent and he’s bred in the purple. He’s a very, very exciting
horse”. Thorn Park won again the following month before turning three,
at which point Thomsen started to aim higher.
Thomsen’s hopes that Thorn Park would be competitive in the Caulfield
Guineas in the spring proved premature, but come the autumn the colt was
indeed able to graduate to the highest class. He ended the Autumn
Carnival in Melbourne with a good third in the Group One Australian
Guineas over 1600m at Flemington, chasing home Delago Brom and Tycoon Ruler,
before returning to Sydney. During the Autumn Carnival there he
continued his progress by winning two Group Two races: the Hobartville
Stakes at Randwick over 1400m and the Peter Pan Stakes at Rosehill over
1500m. As a four-year-old Thorn Park was better still. He recorded his
first weight-for-age victory very early in the season when landing the
Group Two Premiere Stakes over 1200m at Rosehill, beating the subsequent
Doncaster Handicap winner Patezza
by a long head. Taken back down to Melbourne, he won the Group Three
Moonga Stakes over 1400m at Caulfield early in the spring before ending
the Carnival with a Group One placing, finishing third to the seasoned
Group One mare (Our) Egyptian Raine
in the Emirates Classic over 1200m on the final day of the Flemington
meeting. In a busy campaign (he raced 13 times as a four-year-old)
Thorn Park again showed up for the Sydney Autumn Carnival, but it was in
Brisbane towards the end of the season that he finally broke through
with a Group One victory. Having landed the Group Two BTC Cup at
weight-for-age over 1200m at Doomben, he won Queensland’s premier
sprint, the Stadbroke Handicap, over 1400m at Eagle Farm in June 2004,
ridden by Les Samba’s son-in-law Danny Nikolic.
Thorn Park’s future had already been secured in advance of his trip to
Brisbane: Windsor Park Stud proprietor Nelson Schick had concluded a
deal which would see the strong chestnut begin his stud career in New
Zealand as a spring five-year-old later that year. Thorn Park’s
well-travelled father Spinning World had spent one season at the
Cambridge property (in 2000) and Schick was delighted to have signed the
star of the stallion’s first crop, especially as that season's fillies
races had been dominated by a member of Spinning World's second crop:
the tremendous Special Harmony,
whose victories had included both the MRC Thousand Guineas and the VRC
Oaks in Melbourne. Thorn Park thus ended his racing career at the end
of the Brisbane Carnival, still in peak form after 22 starts, which had
yielded nine victories and four minor placings. Spinning World,
incidentally, ranks as merely one of several Coolmore shuttlers to have
stood at Windsor Park, a list which has also included Montjeu and High Chaparral, and which next season will feature Mastercraftsman and Thewayyouare.
Thorn Park’s first foals were born in 2005 and consequently are now
five-year-olds. Star of his first bunch of two-year-olds was Te Akau Coup,
winner of one of New Zealand’s premier juvenile races, the Matamata
Breeders’ Stakes, in February 2008. Like her sire, this filly bore a
pedigree dripping with both speed and class, her dam (the US-bred Gone
West mare Beyond The Sunset) being a daughter of 1992 Yorkshire Oaks place-getter Bineyah and a great-granddaughter of the great broodmare My Charmer, the dam of Seattle Slew, Lomond and Seattle Dancer. A second Group winner emerged from Thorn Park’s first crop when Glamorous Girl
landed the Group Three Desert Gold Stakes over 1600m at Trentham as a
three-year-old, while the stallion had his first stakes winner in
Australia when Pricked, another member of his first crop, won a three-year-olds’ Listed race in Adelaide.
The fourth stakes winner from that crop, Centennial Park,
has ultimately proved to be its best: after landing his first stakes
victory in the Darby Munro Stakes over 1200m at Rosehill in the Sydney
Autumn Carnival in 2009, Centennial Park (who, too, is bred to be fast,
his dam Trephina being a Last Tycoon half-sister to the good young sprinting stallion Foreplay)
has proved to be a redoubtable campaigner, his current season as a
five-year-old including victory in the Group Two Expressway Stakes over
1200m at Rosehill and, most recently, second place in the Group One
Chipping Norton Stakes over 1600m at Warwick Farm on the same day that
his paternal half-brother Jimmy Choux won the NZ Derby.
Thorn Park’s second crop has so far thrown up the stakes-winning two-year-olds Hollows and Te Akau Rose
(who became the second successive Matamata Breeders’ Stakes victrix
both for her sire and for her trainer, the then-Te Akau Stables
incumbent Mark Walker) as well as Swiss Rose (a Listed winner in Australia as a three-year-old) and The Party Stand
(a Listed winner in New Zealand during the current season as a
four-year-old). However, clearly the best horse sired to date by Thorn
Park is Jimmy Choux, undisputed star of his third crop.
A Group Two winner last season as a two-year-old as well as being placed
in both of New Zealand’s Group One juvenile races, Jimmy Choux has won
six Group races this season: the Hawkes Bay Guineas over 1400m, the NZ
2,000 Guineas, Great Northern Guineas and Wellington Stakes over 1600m,
the Waikato Guineas over 2000m and, most recently, the NZ Derby over
2400m. This most recent Group One victory was superb: in common with
Thorn Park and most of his progeny, Jimmy Choux is not a natural stayer,
but his class was enough to get him home ahead of the best of his
contemporaries, with his trainer John Bary observing after the race,
“He’s not a true stayer. He’s a sprinter/miler. He’ll probably never
see 2400m again in his life – but after this he doesn’t have to!”
Clearly an influence more for speed than for stamina, Thorn Park is
truly a product of his pedigree, notwithstanding that Denise’s Joy’s
family has enjoyed more than its fair share of success in Derby and Oaks
races. Denise’s Joy herself was a perfect illustration of Tommy
Smith’s philosophy that the way to win top-class races at 2400m is to
start off with a fast horse and train him/her to stay. Although the
best winner bred by Denise’s Joy was the 1995 Queensland Oaks winner Joie Denise (who won that Group One 2400m race despite being by the sprinter/miler Danehill), the first high-class descendant of Denise’s Joy was her grandson Christmas Tree, a son of Star Kingdom’s brilliant son Biscay and winner of the Pago Pago Stakes over 1200m at Rosehill as a two-year-old in 1987. Joie Denise’s daughters Sunday Joy and Tuesday Joy
were both Group One winners at 2400m, but each also showed high-class
form over considerably shorter trips, with Tuesday Joy having won the
Group Two Apollo Stakes at weight-for-age over 1400m as a five-year-old.
Sunday Joy’s current star daughter More Joyous has won 11 stakes races at distances from 1100m to 1600m, including four Group Ones.
Thorn Park descends from Denise’s Joy via Christmas Tree’s dam Joy And Fun, a daughter of the brilliant sprinting stallion Showdown. Having produced Christmas Tree to Biscay, Joy And Fun then produced Thorn Park’s second dam Christmas Spirit to Biscay’s champion-sire son Bletchingly, a high-class sprinter who sired the Golden Slipper winners Star Watch and Canny Lad, as well as the great racemare Emancipation and, most notably, the mighty Kingston Town. Christmas Spirit never ran but proved to be a great producer of fast horses, including the Group Two-winning Rory's Jester filly Light Up The World, herself the dam of the Group Three-winning juvenile World Peace. Her foal by the top-class imported sprinter Bluebird, named Joy,
failed to race, but she too has now made her mark by breeding Thorn
Park. Interestingly, Thorn Park proved to be one of two notable
products resulting from this family’s visits to sons of Nureyev: Tycoon Joy, a Last Tycoon half-sister to Joy, visited Peintre Celebre two years after her half-sister Joy visited Spinning World – and the result was Bentley Biscuit, winner of three Group One sprints in 2007 from the stable of Tommy Smith’s daughter Gai Waterhouse.
By siring Jimmy Choux, Thorn Park has bred a true champion. Horses of
Jimmy Choux’s calibre, though, do not grow on trees, so no stallion can
come up with his like on a regular basis. Even so, it is fair to
predict that Thorn Park will continue to prove himself a regular source
of high-class, fast and tough horses.
