Point Lonsdale, third from right, in action a few years ago, Picture: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
A skimpy Splashout Cape Derby entry list this week reminded us of Joey Soma’s comments of a few days earlier, bemoaning the drift away from endurance racing.
“Any mug can train a 1000m horse,” declared the veteran trainer. “It’s very hard to train a two-mile horse.”
Talking after Damova had won a 3000m race at Turffontein, Soma called for more staying races on the local programme – even if it meant living with small fields, such as the six-horse affair his gutsy filly had just landed.
He also suggested finding a way to stage a rich long-distance feature – such as the erstwhile multimillion-rand, 3200m Gold Bowl, which filled cavernous Turffontein from corner to corner back in the day. This would boost the standard and numbers of racehorses with stamina.
It’s a nice thought, though the rush to precocious speed in thoroughbred breeding – notably in the influential Australian market – is going to take some turning around. The world wants easy-to-train, quick-cash-turnover options.
Joey does have allies, though, and not just romantics who love to stand at the rail and listen to a field of marathoners thunder by on their first pass of the grandstands. (“If you don’t love that sound, you shouldn’t be in the game,” says Joey.)
Top breeding operations such as Coolmore and Juddmonte in Europe are dedicated to producing contenders for Pattern races – the most important of which are contested over more than middle distances.
The Aga Khan, who died last week, was arguably the world’s supreme racehorse breeder of the past 50 years, but he seldom sent a member of his carefully curated broodmare band to a pure sprinting stallion.
His reward was a succession of Epsom Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe champions.
So, high-quality stamina bloodlines are out there. Do they cost too much? Perhaps the Pattern breeders – already uber-wealthy – could temper their profit pursuits and make great stayers available to a wider market. In the interests of the game, of course.
A pipe dream, perhaps, but a recent stallion acquisition from Coolmore by prominent local stud Maine Chance Farms gives a glimmer of hope for a resurrection of the staying horse in these parts – and maybe even a return to Grade 1 status for the venerable Gold Cup at Greyville.
Point Lonsdale is a son of Coolmore Ireland’s elite stallion Australia and is punted as bringing much-needed stamina blood into this country.
Whether the winner of Group races for master trainer Aiden O’Brien can adequately replace Maine Chance’s champion stallion Silvano – or indeed Drakenstein Stud’s much-lamented Lancaster Bomber – remains to be seen.
There are signs of other breeding initiatives along these lines at other studs, such as Ideal World at Mauritzfontein, so, we can but hope.
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