Rowe on Monday – Howard gets the bias right, an Irish influence in G1 upset, a Wooded winner and Mills’ new frontier
In this week’s Rowe On Monday, Brett Howard on taking on perception of sex bias in a stallion and picking out a future Group 1 winner, a moment to remember for Hubie de Burgh and Johnny McKeever, good early signs for a Swettenham stallion and a Kiwi stakes win for a couple of ambitious Aussie owners.
Brett Howard’s yearling sale catalogues may be collecting dust on the bookshelf, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t paying attention to what’s happening on the racetrack.
The long-time agent, in between improving his golf handicap, was able to watch the Matthew Smith-trained Idle Flyer win the Queen Of The Turf, adding another Group 1 win to the record of Howard and connections.
The four-year-old Dundeel mare also helped skew the perception that her sire is better with colts and geldings rather than fillies and mares.
At the time Howard and Smith gave the tick of approval to Lex Tall to buy Idle Flyer at the 2023 Inglis Classic Yearling Sale for $70,000, Dundeel had sired 20 stakes winners, 16 of them being colts or geldings.
The Arrowfield Stud-based stallion has since doubled this tally to 40 stakes winners, and of those 20 new black-type scorers, more than half (12) have been fillies or mares.
Idle Flyer is the second Group 1-winning mare out of 10 elite level winners sired by Dundeel.
Randwick Bloodstock’s Howard, who stepped back from the sales scene at the end of last year, is a believer in stallion sex bias as “there’s no doubt about it”.
But it also doesn’t stop him avoiding fillies (or colts) by particular stallions at the yearling sales, with value forming part of the equation as was the case when selecting Idle Flyer for owner Tall.
“At that particular sale, I wasn’t sort of massively keen on buying a filly by Dundeel because, at that time, the sex bias was quite extreme,” Howard told this column.
“It got down to the fact that Lex was able to buy her for $70,000 and I think from memory, she was passed in, and (Torryburn) wanted $100,000 for her. I said to Lex that I didn’t think she was worth $100,000 but it might be worth throwing in a bid after she passed in and seeing if they’ll take it.
“She was good enough physically with that page but, obviously, with the Dundeel thing, at $70,000 I thought he was getting a bit of value for money.”
One of Howard’s theories behind the Dundeel sex bias is based on the stallion being from the Sadler’s Wells sireline.
“I think it’s a temperament, probably, as they’re not usually straightforward. They’re just a bit hotter,” he said.
“And I think certainly with Idle Flyer, each time she’s come into the stables, each time she’s gone back out, she’s just got a bit more mild-mannered and mentally mature and able to sort of handle things better and better with each preparation.
“If you talk to people about Dundeel fillies and So You Think fillies, a lot of that Sadler’s Wells sideline with fillies can be a little bit hotter than the average sirelines that the trainers are used to handling down here, like the Danehill sireline, for argument’s sake.”
It’s also not the first time Howard and Smith have defied the perceived stallion sex bias to win a Group 1 with a mare.
So You Think’s Nimalee was a $270,000 Inglis Premier purchase in 2018 by Howard, with the Smith-trained mare going on to win at the top level and sell for $3.6 million as a broodmare prospect five years later.
At the time, there was limited exposure to So You Think, who like Dundeel is also a son of High Chaparral, with his six stakes winners three apiece and one Group 1-winning filly (La Bella Diosa) and one colt (Inference).
Eight years later and So You Think’s split remains even with six fillies and mares and another six colts or geldings winning Group 1s.
Overall, the trend of the late Coolmore Stud champion has moved towards colts and geldings ever so slightly, with 39 of his 69 stakes winners being male.
Armed with knowledge, breeders become smarter in what mares they send to particular stallions and that could be one of the reasons for the turnaround in the perceived sex bias of Dundeel (and So You Think), Howard says.
“If you know that your mare can be a bit hot, then you try not to breed a hot mare to that sireline,” he said.
Interestingly, early results from Dundeel’s two sire sons see Castelvecchio with more stakes winning fillies (4) than colts/geldings (2), while Super Seth is 5-3 in favour of the boys.
Irish agents can raise a glass to Sir Delius
Day two of The Championships also provided two Irish agents, Hubie de Burgh and Johnny McKeever, with an adrenaline rush via Sir Delius, the record-breaking Frankel stallion who upset the Autumn Glow apple cart in the Queen Elizabeth.
It’s been an eventful 18 months since McKeever and de Burgh, both whom are well-versed on the Australian sales circuit, teamed up with Go Bloodstock’s Sir Owen Glenn and trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott to buy Sir Delius at the 2024 Tattersalls’ Autumn Horses in Training Sale.
He cost a bomb, too, at 1.3 million guineas, a record price for the Tatts sale, having won three of his six starts and started in the Arc De Triomphe.
Since his arrival in Australia, he’s won four of his seven starts and three times at Group 1 level, but he’s also failed mandatory veterinary examinations, forcing his withdrawal from the Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup. He is now most famous for ending the 11-run winning streak of Autumn Glow.
“What can I say? He’s a son of Frankel who’s only raced six times but he’s already run to a high rating, winning over a mile and two and a mile and a half. He’s got the perfect profile for Australia,” de Burgh told the Racing Post at the time of buying Sir Delius at Tatts.
“The only bad run of his life was the Arc, which was on ground he hated. It was a lot of money, but unfortunately that’s what they’re costing. We could look like geniuses in a year’s time, or we might not.”
It’s fair to say that de Burgh and McKeever, on Sir Delius’ accord, can lay claim to being right on this one.
Wooded about to crank up for second half of the season
At the time, de Burgh revealed leading Australian trainers Chris Waller and Ciaron Maher had also shown interest in Sir Delius, a Coolmore-owned colt who was trained in France by Jean-Claude Rouget.
There was also a French connection at Terang on Sunday with Wooded, the Prix de I’Abbaye-winning son of Wootton Bassett, sired his first southern hemisphere-bred winner at Terang on Sunday.
Crank, who is trained by Anthony and Sam Freedman, is the first two-year-old by Wooded to go to the races and he made the perfect start, coming down the centre of the spacious Terang track to score by a length and a half.
Bred by Adam Sangster, who shuttles Wooded to his Victorian farm Swettenham Stud, Crank was sold for $60,000 as a weanling to Adrian Stanley’s Woburn Farm.
He was on-sold for $200,000 at the 2025 New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale to the now defunct TAB Racing Club, Entain’s New Zealand racing venture.
Crank is now raced by microshare syndicator MyRacehorse, which was the beneficiary of the demise of the TAB Racing Club, picking up many of the talented young New Zealand-based horses privately as Entain was forced to slash costs.
New Zealand a new frontier for Mills and Newton
In New Zealand, agent Sheamus Mills celebrated a stakes-winning two-year-old with Hello Youmzain’s daughter Enchantment taking out the Listed Welcome Stakes at Riccarton on Saturday.
Mills and his client Heath Newton have largely focused on high-end fillies – think the Royal Ascot-bound Charm Stone – with the price tags to match, but Enchantment proves the Melbourne agent also has an eye for a horse no matter the budget.
Trained by Te Akau’s Mark Walker and Sam Bergerson, Enchantment was a $60,000 purchase who is yet to miss a place in four starts this season with the fun and relatively cheap buy-in shared amongst Newton and numerous other owners.
Enchantment is a daughter of dual South Island Group 3 winner Belle Fascino, with the Per Incanto mare’s second foal and first to race.
Her third foal, also by Cambridge Stud’s Hello Youmzain, is likely to head to South Africa after being bought by agent Craig Ramsay for $120,000 at this year’s Karaka sale.
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