Some days are diamonds.
Ok, a couple of mega dollar basketball megastars encouraged some dribblers (and I use that term nicely), to a fabulous free entry Group I day at Caulfield and they got plenty of airtime (is that a pun?)
And the punters, if they really were a tad responsibly interested, at least left with caps of the sponsors (Sportsbet) product but hopefully more a tease of a Diamond Day that wasn’t all net.
That’s three Group I races: the elite of the sport, championship stuff.
So how was it that the cheapest, or the unwanted, the ugliest, certainly the most unfashionable, turn up and win them. (And what a great game, as in Sydney an 85-year-old Les Bridge wins the feature and is probably more worried about the Rabbitohs season than his next winner.)
There’s Mr Brightside, is as reliable as a sausage sizzle at Bunnings on a Saturday morning and as relentless as time, he lobs first at the Caulfield centre stage (which is revolving and evolving before our eyes). Perhaps The Killers can revisit their anthem and get the equine version “coming out of the cage” again.
You know that story mostly by now, by Bullbars (still virtually a who?), the unwanted yearling given away for $7750 online, no interest at a Ready To Run, traded for about $250,000 off an unlucky maiden and now $12m in the tank and yet perhaps a reason to ask for a Scottie Pippen like appearance money into the autumn especially in an All Star Mile where he will lack some fellow “stars.”
The Blue Diamond is meant to turn colts into super studs with Pippen like salaries, fillies into super-models. Some colts had cost $1.05m (a $1.6m stablemate was a little touchy and not allowed to turn up). And the $550,00 favorite Coleman couldn’t kick straight and ran - as the fiancé of the winning hoop Jamie Kah said - (that’s Ben Melham) – “like a deer in headlights” – hardly helpful when you are looking at a $20m goal.
But The Diamond was a girls show, naturally - Hayasugi, translated as close enough to mean “go faster” did just that, not something Fairhill Farm’s “sell them all as weanling’s” Michael O’Donnell envisaged but perhaps dreamt off with the foal he bred with his $10k on-line mare (China Road) he bought off Might And Power’s Nick Moraitis on a hunch he was onto something through the early form of its first foal Dynastic.
O’Donnell’s model has worked well for him, Fiesta, a $1.5m earner (sold for $150,000), the best he has produced, perhaps until Hayasugi.
He sent China Road to $11,000 stallion Royal Meeting but she (Hayasugi) was still the cheapest sold horse running the Diamond, bought for just $47,500. O’Donnell was last seen smiling in the Thomas North winner’s room receiving a hand crocheted silk painting of his filly from one of the part-owners.
But then they ran the Oakleigh Plate for the 140th time, Oakleigh a nearby suburb to Caulfield, the race a handicap making it as workmanlike and egalitarian as possible, a Schillaci, a Snitzel, a Fastnet Rock, a Weekend Hussler, a Wakeful at the start of last century, the remarkable Malua at the end of the previous. So tough to win, that only Dual Choice has managed it twice.
And along comes the best story of the day. It’s around “Boof”, no-one calls him Francis, his car numberplates are even Boof. A genial man is wearing a blue cap of his own, with the name Queman on it, which we will get too.
His son Matt and wife Cassie are on course, other son Chris and wife Pip are awake at 5.55am in the Crown Inn Hotel in the Cotswolds near London, tuned in because of a long-standing appointment to an equestrian event with daughters Annabelle and Charlotte.
This is all “their” horse. Bred by Boof, almost dying before standing up, but reared on Chris’ property at Australia’s so-called Cherry capital Young in southern New South Wales, where it was more Annabelle’s pet than a budding Group I champion, weaned of its mother Langreen only after turning two, escaping a Covid lockdown with minutes to spare to get into South Australia and that’s only bits of it.
Boof is one of those indestructible characters of the Australian turf. Being in the headlights now isn’t going to change him one bit, he’s hardly, dare I say, to start jumping through hoops, but now he and his family have the horse of a lifetime and some story to share with it.
“Nobody knew my name until I got my licence,” said Boof as we chat watching the replay.
And not even when he won three Oodnadatta Cups when he as training off the New Crown station on the Finke River, in the middle of Australia which is next to the middle of nowhere.
They race just once a year at Oodnadatta for the Cup, takes about that long to get there. The club records show the 1986 Jubilee Year (150th), the Cup was won by Mr Greg, “owned by Boof Smith who won the Cup for the third year in a row.” Starting stalls were used for the first time that year and a camel race was introduced to the gymkhana. May11 this year if you are interested by the way.
Which is a long way from Caulfield and an Oakleigh Plate, well yes, it’s a long way from anywhere and everywhere, but it’s been some journey for the Smith’s and quite an extraordinary one for Queman.
The Reader’s Digest version goes a little like this: Langreen, the mare was raced by Boof, won a maiden at Strathalbyn (when trained by Barry Dunn), but he got him back but was forced to retire her after an injury when second at Roxby Downs, home to copper and uranium mines, not normally a Group I bloodline.
Looking to breed from her, Boof had a choice, Mint Lane or Host. Some say not much of a choice.
But none of these nicks and crosses’ stuff. “Mint Lane was younger and bigger, so we went with him,” said Boof. He cost $2200 a serve. He’s so unpopular now he can’t get a mare and is retired.
“The first foal died because there was no-one there to help her, so we wanted to make sure the second one was kept alive,” said Boof.
“I remember getting a film of her when he was born, and she was in a dark little yard, and I said to get a vet and milk the mare or he wouldn’t make it. They finally got 500ml’s out and fed him and he stood up.”
And a step aside gives us where Queman came from. You may remember Quentin Kenihan, born with a rare bone disorder- Osteogenesis Imperfecta by name, brittle bones by nature, that would easily break.
He’d become a national figure after interviews with Mike Willesee as an eight-year-old and a determination to make a life to live and embrace. He did and appear in films like Mad Max Fury Road alongside Russell Crowe his “little mate, the bravest man I ever met.”
“He was a cousin on my mother’s side of the family,” said Chris from the Cotswalds. “The day Quentin eventual died (October 6, 2018), was the day this horse was born, and we wanted to name it after Quentin.
Quentin made it to 43, they couldn’t get “Q Man” so it became Queman, and he was always going to race in the family colours (blue, red stars, yellow cap) that date back to his grandparents.
“He was a cheeky foal, but he’d play with our daughters, Annabelle spent so much time with him, he was like a pet.”
So much time because school was at home in those COVID days, but accentuated when the borders have a window to eventually get little Queman from Young back to Boof in South Australia.
“It was New Year’s Eve, and they were shutting the border, we had an hours’ notice, we had to get him onto a little two horse float and we got him there with just 10 minutes to spare but remember we hadn’t taught him how to get on or off a float, we didn’t know how it was going to work but somehow it did” Chris said.
It took a while, but Boof eventually got him to the races at Murray Bridge for a debut third at big odds. Enter Shane (and eventually Cassie Oxlade).
“Boof was getting his eyes operated on and asked me if I’d take him. I said I always had room for a fast horse but whenever you want him back, he’s yours, it’s a hell of a story,” he said.
Despite basking in Group I glory, Oxlade was a drained figure at Caulfield, he also has Sghirippa in the race, the best horse has had trained, but unable to beat Queman.
“We (wife Julie) left at six this morning (from Adelaide) after feeding up, it’s a long day, lucky I don’t drink, but I’m sure it’s going to be a long night, but this is what you do it for,” he said.
Boof still has one in work, a D’Argento youngster who trialled ok last week, he’s got Langreen in foal to Peltzer and has a Denman filly foal. That’s just for the record.
But how Australian is it that?
Boof’s and Smiths are winning Group I races. Que the applause and thanks man! Who can slam dunk that?
Comments