As outlined in last week's feature on Show A Heart, the Star Kingdom sire-line, so long Australia's dominant force, has been marginalized over the last couple of decades, largely by Danehill and his sons, writes John Berry. One natural consequence of this is that many of the best horses sired by Danehill have come from daughters of Star Kingdom-line stallions, including the Golden Slipper winners Danzero, Merlene and Catbird, plus the Blue Diamond winners Redoute's Choice and Danelagh. Stars by sons of Danehill to conform to this pattern include the 2005 Golden Slipper winner Stratum (whose first crop of juveniles will start racing shortly).
Another young stallion who combines the two sirelines is the 2003 Victoria Derby winner Elvstroem, whose first crop of three-year-olds appear currently to be announcing that their father is set to join Australia's band of elite sires.
Elvstroem was bred to be good. At the time of Elvstroem's conception in 1999, his sire Danehill was already established as the best stallion in the land. As such, Danehill naturally attracted many of the best mares, and Elvstroem's dam Circles Of Gold definitely fell into this category. Just as Elvstroem was conceived when Danehill was at the top of the tree, so had Circles Of Gold been conceived (in 1990) when her sire Marscay was ruling the roost. A son of Star Kingdom's brilliantly fast son Biscay, Marscay had won the Golden Slipper in 1982 before retiring to stand alongside the 1969 Slipper winner Vain at Widden Stud. In the year of Circles Of Gold's conception, Marscay's foals included the subsequent 1993 Golden Slipper winner Bint Marscay, and he was truly the height of fashion at the time, largely thanks to that year's Group One-winning two-year-old Triscay (who was, like Bint Marscay, a daughter of a Sir Tristram mare).
Like her sire before her, Triscay raced from the stable of Jack Denham and bore the white and purple colours of Geoff and Beryl White. By the time of Circles Of Gold's birth, Triscay had become a five-time Group One winner, enjoying a golden autumn in 1991 by winning Group One races in Victoria (the Australian Guineas), New South Wales (the AJC Oaks) and Queensland (the Queensland Oaks). Circles Of Gold, whose dam Olympic Aim was a half-sister to Group One winner Bit Of A Skite and to Polar Maid (who would in time become the grand-dam of the 2003 Golden Slipper victrix Polar Success), duly emulated Triscay by winning the AJC Oaks in 1995. While she hadn't been as precocious (nor, admittedly, as good) as Triscay, she proved more durable, a trait for which her maternal grandsire, the notably tough stallion Zamazaan, must be given at least some credit: Triscay packed her 26 starts (which yielded 15 wins and eight minor placings) into two seasons, whereas Circles Of Gold raced for four seasons, collecting six wins and 13 minor placings from her 43 starts.
In addition to her win in the AJC Oaks, she won three more Group races including, as a five-year-old, the Coongy Handicap at Caulfield. That Group Two success, her last win, came in the middle of what was a splendid campaign in the 1996 Melbourne Spring Carnival, in which she ran second to Arctic Scent (a daughter of the Marscay stallion Blazing Sword) in the Caulfield Cup, third in the Sandown Cup, fourth in the Mackinnon Stakes and unplaced in the Melbourne Cup.
If the racecourse is indeed the testing ground for the breeding shed, Circles Of Gold had passed all her tests with flying colours, and she duly retired to stud as a potential star matron. Whereas Star Kingdom-line sires had reigned supreme at the time of her birth, by the time she retired Danehill had already stolen the crown. It was unsurprising, therefore, that she found her way to his court, and the result was Elvstroem. Whereas Circles Of Gold had been trained in Sydney (by Brian Smith at Warwick Farm) for her syndicate of owners headed by Frank Tagg, the partners put her children into training in Melbourne, selecting the Caulfield stable of the former jockey Tony Vasil.
Just as Circles Of Gold had only started racing towards the end of her two-year-old season, so was Elvstroem, an impressively strong bay colt, a late-starter: Vasil only sent him out once as a juvenile, chosing a minor race over 1300m up at Swan Hill at the tail-end of the season for his colt's debut. Elvstroem duly justified hot favouritism in this lowly contest. It then didn't take him long to work his way up through the ranks: three and a half months later he justified favouritism in the Group Three Caulfield Guineas Prelude (1400m) and six weeks after that, again as the market leader, he won the Group One Victoria Derby (2500m) at Flemington. Like his mother had been before him, he was thereafter raced thoroughly, invariably acquitting himself with credit in the highest class. In the autumn he won the Group Two Autumn Classic (1800m) at Caulfield and ran third in both the Australian Cup and the Rosehill Guineas. He kicked off as a spring four-year-old by running third over 1200m in the Bletchingly Stakes over 1200m before going on to land a sparkling hat-trick of victories in the Group Two Underwood Stakes (1800m), Group One Turnbull Stakes (2000m) and Caulfield Cup (2400m). In the latter race he not only went one place better than his mother had managed eight years previously, but he also beat the great racemare Makybe Diva, to whom he then ran fourth 17 days later in the Melbourne Cup (3200m).
Elvstroem's autumn campaign was similarly creditable. His first two starts yielded wins in the Group One C.F.Orr Stakes (1400m) and the Group Two St. George Stakes (1800m), both at Caulfield. After running fourth in the Australian Cup at Flemington, Elvstroem, plus his trainer and his jockey (Nash Rawiller, who rode him in the final 17 of his 32 starts) went travelling. First stop was Dubai, where they landed a splendid Group One victory in the Dubai Duty Free (1777m) at Nad Al Sheba on World Cup Night. A stop-over in Hong Kong was less rewarding, but a lucrative campaign in Europe followed. Stabled under Vasil's care in Geoff Wragg's Newmarket yard, Elvstroem contested four European Group One races, finishing second to Valixir in the Prix d'Ispahan (1850m) at Longchamp, third to Azamour in the Prince Of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot (ten furlongs), and fourth to Rakti in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury (one mile) and to Alkaased in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud (2400m).
Having finished his racing career at Saint-Cloud on 26 June 2005, Elvstroem flew home to take up stud duties at Blue Gum Farm in Victoria at a fee of $38,500 (inc. GST). Unsurprisingly he proved hugely popular. An attractively strong and athletic bright bay horse, he bears a pedigree which suggests that his class and toughness were not flukes, and that belief has been further strengthened by the success of Circles Of Gold's subsequent offspring. Hveger, Elvstroem's year-younger full-sister, had been placed in two of Australia's lesser Oaks races (in Adelaide) in the autumn of 2005 while her big brother was overseas, but better was to follow. Her 2003 Fusaichi Pegasus colt, named Haradasun and still unraced when Elvstroem retired to stud, didn't take long before he was showing Vasil signs of brilliance. Like Elvstroem, Haradasun was sent up to Swan Hill to make a late-season winning debut in the same 1300m contest, and like him he was soon competing in much higher company. Winner of the Listed Vain Stakes (1100m) at Caulfield on his first start at three, Haradasun came into his own in the autumn of that season, recording back-to-back Group One victories in Sydney in the George Ryder Stakes (1500m) at Rosehill and the Doncaster Handicap (1600m) at Randwick, beating the multiple Group One winner Mentality by a long neck on each occasion. Although he subsequently became more accustomed to being placed (including as a four-year-old when third to El Segundo in the Cox Plate) than to winning, Haradasun was able ultimately to land the English Group One victory which had eluded his half-brother, capturing the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot last year after his transferral to Aidan O'Brien's care. He now stands at Coolmore Australia in New South Wales.
At the time of Haradasun's Royal Ascot triumph, Elvstroem's oldest offspring were about to become two-year-olds. They duly did well for him last season, his 34 runners producing six individual winners, one of whom (Carrara, victorious for Tony Vasil and Nash Rawiller in the Doomben Slipper in May) scored at Stakes level. Just as Elvstroem and his relatives had improved markedly from two to three, it now looks as if his progeny will show the same tendency. Carrara, whose dam Crystal Sprite is a daughter of the Blue Diamond-winning Star Kingdom-line stallion Hurricane Sky, is shaping up as a major threat to the boom three-year-old Denman (whose second dam is a daughter of Marscay) in the Caulfield Guineas, his most recent victory (in a time-honoured Caulfield Guineas lead-up race, the Group Two Bill Stutt Stakes at Moonee Valley, on 26 September) confirming this. The same day in Sydney saw another three-year-old son of Elvstroem, the Gai Waterhouse-trained Viking Legend (whose second dam is by another son of Biscay, Jackson Square), showing himself to be a major chance for the longer Classic races with a strong win in the Listed Dulcify Quality (1800m) at Randwick.
When Elvstroem raced, the phrase "like mother, like son", came frequently to mind; come 31 October, when Viking Legend lines up for the Victoria Derby, a race his father won six years ago, "like father, like son" might be the words on racegoers' lips.
