You don’t think the challenge of tackling the world’s best sprinter, or having a despised and deported dad, or when your “unknown” young superstitious trainer has prepared you to the minute for richest turf race on the globe, and then it runs five minutes late, was going to stop Giga Kick do you?
Let alone the throbbing crowd thinking Randwick wasn’t a hot August night but a heaving October afternoon launching into Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline which begins with an Everest like anthem - “Where it began, I can’t begin to knowing, but then I know it’s growing strong” before steaming into the karaoke singalong chorus - that’s wasn’t going to put you off either.
Because Giga Kick has had more than his own Everest to climb, to achieve his own The Everest. Much more.
Let's dive into the story behind Everest champion Giga Kick. Picture: David Gray – AFP
Basically, Giga Kick, and not putting it mildly, should be dead, not out there changing the Australian sprinting guard maintaining and his unbeaten race record in the most stirring of performances and stamping himself the most exciting horse in the country.
That’s not stretching the story. It was only a year ago, Bhima Stud’s Mike Fleming rang owner Dean Hawthorn, bloodstock manager for Gigi Kick’s owner-breeder Jonathan Munz (who watched from New York on Saturday), with some distressing news.
The young son of Scissor Kick, also bred and raced by Munz, before being shipped to France and now breeding sport horses in Morocco, was suffering a severe bout of colic.
“Most normal horses would not have survived,” Fleming said, “It just proves he is one in a million.”
Unable to get immediate veterinary help, Fleming’s team, worked to assist Giga Kick and he was heavily sedated to ease the pain.
“It was probably something they did 50 years ago dealing with colic, but he was out for a couple of hours. I’d been speaking to Dean, and our motto was we didn’t want to see any horse suffering, just do the best by them, and at the time we didn’t think he’d make it,” Fleming said.
“It was a freak of nature really, somehow, he came through it and look where he is today. Who’d have thought, but it just shows what a tough and special horse he is.
Rod “Rocket” Douglas, Munz’s racing manager put the scare more abruptly. “We had written him off, we thought he was gone, you don’t see them get through that when he was in the state he was in,” Douglas said.
“It is an amazing story, but then that is like so much about Giga Kick himself I suppose.”
The Everest winner Giga Kick with trainer Clayton Douglas. Picture: Jonathan Ng
And that it is.
He was bred by BRW rich-lister (#68 on the 2022 list with a net value estimated at $1.8b), Jonathan Munz, who was first on the phone to Douglas from the Big Apple after Saturday’s win.
“He was absolutely wrapped, it’s not about the money, but it was all about the horse and the connection with the family that he bred and the family like Clayton associated with this horse,” he said.
Scissor Kick was a useful racetrack performer for Munz and his long-term partnership with Arrowfield Stud John Messara, but both successful businessmen know commercial reality and Scissor Kick wasn’t one.
Which is why the best sale a yearling Giga Kick qualified for was Scone.
He arrived at Fleming’s Bhima in the Hunter Valley, where most of Munz’s broodmares are domiciled, as a weanling to eventually be prepared for sale. (Fleming goes back further into the links having worked for Dean Hawthorn’s father Norm back in New Zealand).
“He was nothing special at the time, just one of the pack that fitted in with the others but he really bloomed and blossomed into a lovely horse. We weren’t going to that sale and had him listed in the Middlebrook Valley Lodge draft.”
But he never made it.
“He wasn’t going to make any money so we thought he might make a trade horse,” Douglas said.
“We’d basically written him off the books at the time, he was probably the worst horse we had.”
Giga Kick strides to the front in The Everest. Picture: Mark Evans – Getty Images
Douglas thought regular stable trainers Anthony Freedman and Graeme Begg, who both use Munz’s world class private facility Pinecliff, wouldn’t want him.
“I suggested to give him to (nephew) Clayton, he’d won on Super Seth for Jonathan and ridden plenty of his horses and was just starting out so that’s how he got him.”
Not surprisingly, a decision was made to geld him and get him to the races and see what he could do. And not surprisingly a joking discussion came after he started to show exactly what he could do.
“I think Jonathan said ‘why did you geld him, and can we try and get his balls back in?’” Douglas said. “But that whole family that Jonathan had raced were heavy horses that eventually developed injuries, so he was gelded early. An easy decision at the time, and he was by Scissor Kick.”
The idea was still to trade him if he was good enough. Douglas had already done that with Clayton’s first runner – the winner Barocha – who he sold to Hong Kong for seven figures (now races as Beauty Fit there), but the perfect start to the former picnic turned jumps turned flat jockey’s career as a trainer. And not bad for owner Douglas and mates, some whom bought a bigger boat.
Giga Kick blistered away for a brilliant and expected debut win at Sale in February (following a path that Barocha took), and there was an offer of $700,000 from a Hong Kong agent, (Douglas says not for David Hayes despite some media this week about it and not reaching Hong Kong rating qualification status off that debut).
“If he was owned by anyone else, he probably would be in Hong Kong by now,” Douglas said.
That original offer was more than trebled after Giga kick after he won the Group 2 Vain Stakes, on his way to the Danehill, then The Everest partnership with bloodstock agent James Harron.
“When the first offer came in, Jonathan had no interest in selling, it wasn’t about the money, he thought he had the best two-year-old in the country, and the rest is now history,” Douglas said.
So not only does Munz have his horse, but has the mother Rekindled Applause, in foal to perhaps an the appropriately named stallion Pariah. She has been a terrific producer for Munz but this foal will be her last. And already has a named waiting.
“It will be King of Tunisia if it’s a colt (suggesting Queen if a girl),” said Douglas.
Why? Well, that is where Scissor King now resides, deported from Australia, via France where he was equally as unloved in the breeding barn, and now to Morocco at Haras El Jadida where they breed sport and equestrian horses, not the likes of Giga Kick.
It has been some ride for The Douglas clan under the Pinecliff Racing team with Giga Kick.
Clayton Douglas, not surprisingly had a phone loaded with congratulatory texts on Saturday night and beyond (part of the night ending the next morning at the Star Casino in Sydney).
But Douglas would be perhaps thankful that the constant babble about Group 1 status for The Everest is left at just that for he lists his superstition as a new suit required for a runner in a Group race. He will end up with a wardrobe bigger than Eddie McGuires’, if the Giga Kick ride propels his career forward at speed.
And that trophy, valued at over $300,000 with some 8000 encrusted diamonds, well it travelled back on the float with Douglas and Giga Kick Monday night.
Uncle Rod will have it at the Hotel Tanti in Mornington on the bar Friday night if you are around for no doubt some rollicking tales of the turf.
None more so than Giga Kick though. And they are not alone in saying they are glad that they even have him.
He is the most exciting horse in the country right now.
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