Victoria’s premier two-year-old race, the Blue Diamond, benefits from generous sponsorship by leading New South Welsh stud Arrowfield. As such, it is fitting that the race continues to be something of an Arrowfield benefit. The four runnings from 2005 were won by the Arrowfield-sired juveniles Undoubtedly, Nadeem, Sleek Chassis and Reaan, the first two of whom were sired by Redoute’s Choice while the latter pair are by Flying Spur and Hussonet respectively. This year a different Arrowfield stallion came up with the winner, while a daughter and a son (Shaaheq and Beneteau, both of whom were co-bred by Arrowfield) of the ever-reliable Redoute’s Choice filled the placings to complete an Arrowfield-sired trifecta. Beneteau – who is trained at Arrowfield by Paul Messara, son of the stud’s principal John - went off favourite but, fast though he finished, he didn’t finish as fast as the winner Star Witness, who thus provided his sire Starcraft with a Group One winner from his first Australian crop of two-year-olds, writes John Berry.
Star Witness should be regarded as a very exciting prospect. He did a lot of things wrong in the race, lurching on the home turn as if he had never previously galloped around a bend and thus entering the short straight with nearly the whole field in front of him. He is also, compared to his rivals, noticeably unfurnished, and as such he can be expected to show considerable improvement even on the top-class form which he has already shown in his three winning runs to date. If that is indeed the case, he will be an outstanding horse – which will make him his father’s son in more than just looks, because Starcraft was a tremendous racehorse who became even better as he matured.
Bred by Waikato Stud in New Zealand, Starcraft was always a striking-looking individual but, being a very large colt with a pedigree which wasn’t necessarily fashionable, he didn’t seem to be one of that stud’s most coveted yearlings at Karaka in 2002. Starcraft’s sire Soviet Star had spent most of his stud career at Ballylinch Stud in Ireland (where he is still active, aged 26) but curiously, having been at stud for ten years, he was dispatched for a dual-hemisphere stint to New Zealand in 1999. This was possibly prompted by the fact that he had enjoyed a run of success in the mid ‘90s in Europe, courtesy of the likes of Soviet Line (winner of the Lockinge Stakes in 1995 and ’96), Ashkalani (winner in 1996 of the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Prix du Moulin, the latter contest being a race in which Soviet Star had beaten the great Miesque eight years previously) and Starborough (winner of the St. James’s Palace Stakes and Prix Jean Prat in 1997). Starcraft might not have been everyone’s cup of tea as a yearling, but he caught the eye of colourful Australian racing identity Paul Makin, who duly paid $80,000 for him and sent him to be trained on the Gold Coast by Gary Newham.
Unsurprisingly, bearing in mind his size, Starcraft couldn’t win as a two-year-old, but nevertheless he did show some promise. Newham started him off in Brisbane at Eagle Farm in February 2003, when, despite starting at 20/1, he ran well to finish third of ten in a two-year-old handicap. He didn’t run again for another four months, but when he did he was dispatched to the country to try to land a soft maiden win – only to get turned over as the $1.70 favourite at Ipswich. In fact, he didn’t win until his fifth start, when he landed a metropolitan maiden at Doomben the following November. Once he had won, however, he continued to do so, taking four consecutive races in two months, culminating down in Melbourne with an emphatic victory at Group Three level over 1400m in a competitive nenewal of The Debonair in which third placed was filled by another future star, Elvstroem.
Starcraft’s winning run came to a halt on his first venture into Group One company – but only by a neck and only against a genuinely top-class colt (the unbeaten Reset). He regained the winning thread, however, when sent up to Sydney where he won three out of three, landing the Group One Chipping Norton Stakes over 1600m at weight-for-age, the Group Two Tulloch Stakes back against his own age group, and finally the Group One AJC Australian Derby over 2400m. Thus ended a tremendous Classic campaign in which Starcraft had proved himself one of the most progressive horses in training, as well as one of the toughest, one of the most versatile and one of the best.
What happened next was something which a year or two previously would have been unthinkable. New Zealand has traditionally been the poor relation of Australia and, while the country had flirted with million-dollar races in the boom of the late ‘80s, the end of the twentieth century had seen stake money in the dominion at a very low level by international standards. The best horses in New Zealand would automatically head across the Tasman in search of the richer stakes on offer in Australia, but the reverse was unthinkable. However, Sam Kelt, owner of Kelt Capital Ltd and a great supporter of racing in New Zealand, generously decided to promote the feature race at his local track, Hastings, massively boosting the prize money for the weight-for-age Kelt Capital Stakes. In 2002 the race’s value shot up to $500,000; in 2004 a million was on offer, the first time for over a decade that a race had boasted such a prize in New Zealand. This prize, particularly as it came at the end of a convenient three-race weight-for-age sequence, proved quite an inducement, and NZ racing received a massive boost when the connections of Starcraft, arguably the best horse in Australia at the time, took the bait. Sadly for Makin, Starcraft won the first two legs of the treble (the Group One Mudgway Stakes over 1400m and the Group Two Stoney Bridge Stakes over 1600m) but failed in the third leg, finishing ‘only’ second in the Kelt Capital Stakes (Group One, 2040m) behind a decent NZ-trained horse, Balmuse. Undeterred, team Starcraft headed back to Australia, going to Melbourne for the spring carnival, where he finished third in both the Yalumba Stakes at Caulfield (beaten by Mummify and Grand Armee) and the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley (beaten by Savabeel and Fields Of Omagh). These were slightly disappointing runs from such a good horse – but not disappointing enough to deter Makin from his next ambition: taking on the world’s best in the northern hemisphere.
Early in 2005, therefore, Starcraft duly headed to England to take up residence in Luca Cumani’s Newmarket stable. Cumani had a history of taking on overseas celebrities, most recently the ex-Italian Falbrav, who had thrived under his care as a five-year-old in 2003, winning five Group One races and proving himself arguably the best horse in the world. Starcraft couldn’t quite match that level of achievement but – after a few teething problems when he proved rather headstrong in his first couple of European races – he thrived in the Bedford House academy, winning consecutively two of Europe’s best Group One mile races, the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp (thus emulating his sire’s success 17 years previously) and the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (usually run at Newmarket, but contested in 2005 at Newmarket while Ascot’s grandstand was being rebuilt). In the latter race he outran Dubawi to consolidate his reputation as a genuine international star. Sadly he couldn’t further bolster his status at the Breeders’ Cup at Belmont Park, at which Makin’s fearless nature ensured that he took the tough option of contesting the Classic on dirt (which required an $800,000 supplementary entry fee) rather than facing weaker opposition on his usual turf surface. As it was, he still ran well in the Breeders’ Cup Classic despite the double whammy of drawing the outside barrier and then missing the start, finishing a respectable seventh of 13 behind Saint Liam.
Starcraft thus retired to stud as a champion proven in both hemispheres and over a variety of distances. Sure his size could be construed as a drawback by those for whom early two-year-olds are the be-all-and-end-all, and his pedigree was solid rather than fashionable – but, for anyone who appreciates the qualities necessary to make a racehorse special, this magnificent horse had to be rated as a stallion to take seriously. On the debit side, Soviet Star was 22 by the time that Starcraft retired to stud and had not produced a stallion of note (notwithstanding the fact that Starborough is now the sire of the brilliant Hungarian-trained sprinter Overdose) while Starcraft’s family could not conventionally be called ‘a stallion’s family’. However, it contains many good winners, including Starcraft’s Group One-placed older half-sister Forum Floozie, the Group Two-winning sprinter Century Kid, and several good gallopers in South Africa (including the Group winners Dahlia's Legacy, Neo Star and Happy Heiress).
All in all, the magnificent Starcraft had plenty to recommend him to breeders, and Paul Makin, who bought several good mares to give his star a flying start at stud, was merely one of many to support him when he began covering at Cheveley Park Stud, near Newmarket, in February 2006. After that initial British season, Starcraft then headed back down under to Arrowfield later that year, where he has remained after his shuttling days were put on hold when he injured himself en route to the airport when set to travel back to England in January 2007. His first-crop English juveniles achieved some success last year, with his first winner, Don't Tell Mary, following up her maiden victory with success in the Listed Hilary Needler Trophy at Beverley en route to a run at last summer’s Royal Ascot, and Keep Cool being stakes-placed in Germany.
Now Starcraft’s first Australian-bred sons and daughters are starting to appear and Star Witness, who provided his sire with his first Australasian success by scoring at Moonee Valley in November, has done plenty to ensure that the mighty chestnut remains a stallion with a big future. Star Witness, who is now heading off to the spelling paddock to give himself every chance of maturing into a champion at three and beyond, looks a potential star of next spring, and on the early evidence of this promising start it would be no surprise in the future to see Starcraft commanding a fee considerably in excess of the $22,000 (inc. GST) at which he covered last season.
