Racehorse TALK

Second Aussie Winner High Chaparral
Tara Madgwick - Wednesday, 20 May 2009

High Chaparral (IRE) has emerged in Europe this year with a very strong hand of Classic contenders and after siring his first Australian winner at the Gold Coast last Saturday in Shoot Out has followed up immediately with his second after the New Zealand bred colt So You Think scored impressively at Rosehill on Wednesday.

The Bart Cummings trained colt showed ability in a recent barrier trial and ran up to that in travelling midfield and deep throughout most of the 1400 metre journey, before surging clear at the finish to take the restricted juvenile event by more than a length on debut.

“We expected him to get back and run on and he’s actually raced a bit more forward than we thought,” said Bart Cummings stable foreman, John Thompson.

“He’s a quality colt and quality will take you a long way.”

A $110,000 purchase for DGR Thoroughbreds from the Windsor Park Stud draft at the 2008 NZB Premier Yearling Sale, So You Think is the seventh living foal of Group Two winner Triassic, who has now produced five winners.

A regular shuttler to Windsor Park Stud in New Zealand, English Derby hero High Chaparral (IRE) (pictured) is the sire of nine stakes-winners in the Northern Hemisphere including this year’s exciting three year-olds Golden Sword, Above Average and Redwood.

His oldest Australasian bred progeny are two year-olds and the son of Sadler’s Wells is due back in New Zealand this spring at a service fee of $12,000.

Monaco Consul Becomes High Chaparral's First G1 Winner

Tuesday, 6 October 2009: The reputation of Windsor Park Stud's young sire High Chaparral was gilded on Saturday, after the exciting Sadler's Wells stallion landed his first Gr.1 winner with the dashing display of Monaco Consul (NZ) in the Spring Champion Stakes (2000m) at Randwick.

Monaco Consul Photo by Racing and Sports

Considered a 50/1 longshot owing to his one win NZ record, Monaco Consul (NZ) made his first Australian task look all too easy, sweeping home along the inside for an authoritative 1.5 length win from Gathering (Tale of The Cat).

Held on a heavy track, the time for the 2000m Gr.1 feature was 2:09.93.

Highly thought of by trainers Mike and Paul Moroney, the important Gr.1 win came at just his 5th career start, with ability earlier shown to advantage at Ellerslie over 1400m and with a second placing at Ruakaka over 1600m.

"Paul said he'd win -- he said he was the best horse we've had since Xcellent, and it looks like he might be right," Mike Moroney reported to the NZPA afterwards.

All told, the impressive 3YO gelding has won 2 of his five starts (one placing), with earnings now showing NZ$9,800 and A$180,000 for prominent owners, Owen Glenn and Gerard Peterson's GG Syndicate.

Purchased by Paul Moroney from the Windsor Park Stud's 2008 NZB Select Yearling Sale draft for $100,000, Monaco Consul (NZ) is now likely to take aim at the Gr.1 VRC Derby at Flemington on October 31, where he is likely to meet another highly rated High Chaparral galloper in the shape of So You Think (NZ).

A Windsor Park Stud product through and through, Monaco Consul (NZ) heralds from the first crop of High Chaparral and is out of Star Way mare Argante.

To date, High Chaparral has produced 97 winners for 15 stakes winners, with the leading lights here comprising Monaco Consul (Gr.1), Shoot Out (Gr.2) and The Miniver Rose (Gr.2).

Alternatively, his dam Argante (NZ) is the bearer of three winners from six to race and is well distinguished on the pedigree page with the presence of a dual Gr.1 winning half sibling Military Plume (NZ) (Sir Tristram) and with a brother Con Air (Star Way), who raced with black-type distinction in Singapore.

High flying

When Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum paid 950,000 gns, via the de Burgh/Farringdon agency, for St Leger runner-up Unsung Heroine at last year’s Tattersalls December Sale in Newmarket, it seemed easy to predict that her sire High Chaparral might play a prominent role at the 2009 Spring Carnival in Melbourne, writes John Berry.

Sheikh Hamdan’s record with imports in the big staying races in the Victorian spring is outstanding, as the Melbourne Cups of At Talaq and Jeune, and the Caulfield Cups of Fraar and Tawqeet, testify. With Unsung Heroine following in their footsteps by joining the Hayes stable, it was easy to predict that she would be competitive in the Melbourne Cup, even if the shorter distance at Caulfield might not necessarily play fully to the strengths of such a proven stayer. That, sadly, has proved to have been an over-optimistic prediction, because a very poor performance on her Melbourne bow (she finished last of 15, albeit behind the subsequent Metropolitan Handicap winner Speed Gifted, in an open handicap at Flemington on the first Saturday in September) put paid to any hopes of Group One glory for her over the spring.

However, despite receiving no help from his European-born offspring, High Chaparral has still proved a star of the spring. With Montjeu having ceased to shuttle from Coolmore in Ireland to Windsor Park Stud in New Zealand after the spring of 2004, his paternal half-brother High Chaparral was sent in his place the following season. High Chaparral’s first NZ-born crop therefore, born in 2006, are currently spring three-year-olds, and they have already done enough to establish their sire as a stallion worthy of serious consideration for any breeder keen to produce a contender for the leading middle-distance or staying races in Australasia. If the win of High Chaparral’s Mike Moroney-trained son Monaco Consul in the Spring Champion Stakes at Randwick had been very good, the win by the Bart Cummings-trained So You Think in Australasia’s premier weight-for-age, the W. S. Cox Plate at Moonee Valley, was outstanding. Bart Cummings, of course, is far too wily to fall into the “best I’ve ever trained” trap, and his teasing of interviewers after the race was vintage even by his own high standards. However, So You Think, in running his rivals ragged in the Cox Plate as a three-year-old having only his fifth start, has raised the tantalizing prospect that he could perhaps be as good a horse as any the ‘Cups King’ has ever trained. And praise doesn’t come any higher than that.

It is no surprise that High Chaparral has been able to produce a potentially outstanding horse, because he was pretty special himself. In an age in which it is the norm to prevent good horses from demonstrating just how many times they can post championship performances – witness the premature retirements of the two most recent outstanding Arc winners – High Chaparral was a throwback to a former era. By the time of his retirement, he had proved not only that he was very, very talented, but also that he was genuine enough, brave enough, tough enough and resilient enough to bounce back from one punishing season of competition at the highest level in the best way possible: by rising to the challenge of another testing year.

Unlike many of the best horses trained by Aidan O’Brien for the Magnier/Tabor team, High Chaparral was bred by a stud not affiliated to Coolmore, his breeder being Ridgewood Pearl’s owner Sean Coughlan, from whom Demi O’Byrne bought High Chaparral as a yearling for 270,000 gns at Tattersalls in September 2000. Coughlan had bought High Chaparral’s dam Kasora for that same sum from her owner/breeder the Aga Khan as an unraced three-year-old at Tattersalls’ December Sale in 1996, using a theory which has paid dividends for numerous small breeders over the years: buying one of the lesser members of a very successful family. Not only was Kasora by the respected sire (now highly esteemed broodmare sire) Darshaan, but she was also a daughter of the Group Two-winning Kris mare Kozana (whose good runs included second place behind Rousillon in the 1985 Prix du Moulin and third behind Rainbow Quest and Sagace in the same year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe). Kozana proved similarly useful at stud, breeding eight winners, including two fillies who landed the Leopardstown 1,000 Guineas trial (Khanata and Kotama). Furthermore, Kozana’s dam Koblenza had also been a very good filly, winning the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches in 1969 before breeding, in addition to Kozana, the 1983 Prix du Cadran winner Karkour, and Korinetta, a winner who ran fourth in the Prix Saint-Alary before producing the 1986 Cumberland Lodge Stakes winner Kazaroun.

Coming from this family, Kasora was entitled to breed a good horse. Her first mating was with Ridgewood Ben, and this produced a decent handicapper (Oriental Ben). Her second covering (by Sadler’s Wells) was a significantly more expensive one and it duly produced a significantly better horse, because High Chaparral achieved the notable feat of winning Group One races at two, three and four. As a two-year-old he was second first time out before winning a maiden (at 1/3) over seven furlongs at Tipperary. He was then pitched straight into Group One company in England and he coped with the rise in class admirably, winning by three quarters of a length from his stablemate Castle Gandolfo, with the subsequent 2,000 Guineas place-getter Redback five lengths away in third.

Having been a very good two-year-old, High Chaparral progressed to being even better at three. He went through the spring and summer undefeated, capturing, consecutively, the Ballysax Stakes at Leopardstown, the Derrinstown Derby Trial at the same track, the Derby at Epsom (in which he outstayed his extremely talented stablemate Hawk Wing to post a 2-length victory, with the third-placed Moon Ballad - subsequently winner of the Dubai World Cup - a full twelve lengths away in third) and the Irish Derby (which he won comfortably as the 1/3 favourite). Resuming in the autumn from a 10-week let-up, he sustained his only defeat of the year when finishing third of 13 in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but he put that behind him three weeks later by posting a facile win in the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Arlington in Chicago.

High Chaparral’s four-year-old season was as impressive as his Classic campaign had been, even if it wasn’t as full as his connections would surely have wished. A big powerful horse, he clearly was beginning to find the pressures of training and competition taxing, but he showed his resilience by overcoming adversity. His reappearance was delayed until midsummer because of, reportedly, soreness in a shoulder, but when he did resume he won the Royal Whip at the Curragh before heading to Leopardstown for a truly vintage Irish Champion Stakes. Showing the courage which is the hallmark of a champion, he fought hard to land a heroic victory over three genuinely top-class horses: Falbrav, Islington and Alamshar. He then tackled a similarly exalted – but bigger – field in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, where he had to settle for third spot again, this time behind the very good winner Dalakhani. Happily, he was then able to end his career in a blaze of glory, handling a very firm track at Santa Anita well enough to land his second Breeders’ Cup Turf victory, sharing the spoils with Johar in a thrilling finish which saw the pair cross the line a head in front of Falbrav. High Chaparral thus retired to stud having proved his class, his toughness and his courage, with earnings of more than 3.2 million pounds and with a record of ten wins and three placings (second on debut and then third in two Arcs) from 13 starts. With these credentials, allied to his powerful physique and his extremely strong pedigree, it would have been very hard to swallow had he failed to make the grade as a stallion.

High Chaparral is now duly proving himself to be a very good sire. With his first NZ-conceived crop now containing two Group One-winning three-year-olds (Monaco Consul and So You Think) as well as the Group Two-winning juvenile Shoot Out and the recent Wellington Guineas runner-up Descarado, it is safe to assume that breeders who booked their mares to him this season at his $NZ 17,500 (+GST) fee at Windsor Park Stud are feeling very happy with the deal. Furthermore, he is more than making the grade in Europe too. He had his first Irish-conceived three-year-olds last year and this bunch included, in addition to Unsung Heroine, the likes of Premio Parioli winner Senlis, Dance Design Stakes winner Beach Bunny, Prix Vulcain winner Winkle and Grand Prix de Paris place-getter Magadan. This year his three-year-olds have been even more successful. Within a short period in the spring he came up with three individual Classic trial-winning colts (Redwood, Above Average and Golden Sword) before High Heeled advertised her Oaks claims with a good win at Newbury. She duly ran third in the Oaks before holding her form through the season, most recently winning the St Simon Stakes at Newbury by six lengths. In Germany, Serienhoehe (who had won a Group Three race as a two-year-old) landed the Derby Trial at Bremen a week before his sire had two Group One place-getters at the Curragh on Irish Derby weekend, Golden Sword finishing second in the Irish Derby and Beach Bunny failing by only a short head to land the Pretty Polly Stakes. This autumn has seen High Chaparral’s daughter The Miniver Rose win the Park Hill Stakes at Doncaster, but it is not only middle- or long-distance races for horses aged three or more in which his stock have been excelling: he has been represented this season by the Group-winning juveniles Joanna and Lady Lupus, as well as the Group One-placed Lady Darshaan.

It is never certain that an outstanding racehorse will graduate to becoming a good sire, so it is always pleasing when it does happen. So You Think has now provided conclusive proof of High Chaparral’s merit as a stallion – not that proof was needed, because he was doing well enough even before his exciting son’s tremendous Cox Plate victory.