In this week's Rowe On Monday, an industry veteran decides on a change of pace, it's all about the timing for the dam of Breeders' Plate winner Incognito and a dilemma for Asfoora's owner Akram El-Fahkri.
Bernie Howlett takes a back seat after a life in racing
Former jockey-turned-trainer Bernie Howlett has achieved a lot in more than 70 years dedicated to the racing industry, but the octogenarian has decided it’s time to slow down.
Among Canberra-based Howlett’s accomplishments is riding two Sydney Cup winners - defeating champion Tulloch in his second - training a Group 1 winner and breeding one, too, in Brazen Beau, I Am Invincible’s first elite-level scorer.
It’s a rare treble, one that Howlett’s immensely proud of and recalls fondly.
Howlett, 86, has not trained a horse in almost 10 years, his last runner coming at the ACT track in January 2016, 11 months after his last winner greeted the judge at Cowra in February 2015.
Despite handing in his trainers’ licence, Howlett has maintained his interest by breeding and owning a few horses over the past decade, spurred on by the deeds of dual Group 1-winning sprinter Brazen Beau.
But that came to an end at the Inglis Chairman’s Sale in May when he sold Joyner, a daughter of Denman who won a race at Canterbury last November for Howlett and trainer Joe Pride.
She was bought by Santo Guagliardo’s Ridgeport Holdings for $100,000, being the last foal out of the Howlett-trained Black Opal-placed mare Sansadee.
And now Howlett is putting his 53-hectare property near Hall, on the NSW side of the ACT border, on the market after residing there for almost 26 years.
“I decided that I'd probably need to go into town, a bit closer to the hospital and the doctors,” Howlett told this column as he went for an afternoon walk having watched the day’s racing from Dubbo and Moruya last Friday.
The first leg of Howlett’s racing trilogy started when he won the 1959 Sydney Cup aboard On Line and, two years later, the then-young jockey partnered Sharply to win the two-mile feature and downing the legendary Tulloch.
As weight got the better of Howlett, he turned his attention to training. While churning out many winners, achieving ultimate success took him many decades to experience again.
But in 1996, with a patched-up wet-tracker who had bad knees known as Suntain, Howlett added the Group 1 trainer tag to his CV when the sprinter relished the heavy conditions to win that year’s Doomben 10,000 in Brisbane.
A decade later, Belmonte won three stakes races in succession for Howlett before finishing unplaced in the 2006 Queensland Derby as a $3.90 chance, a race he thought the stayer was up to winning.
Belmonte was ridden by Zac Purton that day, with the rising star of the saddle sending the gelding to the front. That initiative has won Purton countless races, particularly in Hong Kong, but it backfired in the Derby and the horse’s career was curtailed by injury as a four-year-old.
“He went to Melbourne the next spring and he actually twisted his hoof,” he said.
“I don't know how he did it but he sort of half turned it around and, of course the horse wasn't the same again after that.”
Perhaps his greatest achievement was breeding Darley stallion Brazen Beau, a Coolmore Stud Stakes and Newmarket Handicap winner who was the greatest advertisement for his sire I Am Invincible.
Howlett lucked onto the Yarraman Park-based sire, taken by his pedigree before he laid eyes on the striking stallion.
He was one of just 13 breeders who took advantage of the Yarraman Park incentive to send mares to the stallion for his first three seasons and, in return for their patronage, those breeders would receive a lifetime breeding right in the stallion.
Just as 11 of the 13 have done during I Am Invincible’s rise to champion sire over the past decade, Howlett sold off his breeding right some years ago for “I think it was $560,000” when it became obvious that his broodmare band did not warrant going to such a super stallion.
While Sansadee produced Australia’s champion three-year-old colt of 2014-15, Howlett still wonders what another mare of his, Darwina, may have achieved from a mating with I Am Invincible.
“I sent Brazen Beau’s mother up as well as another mare who was pretty good to me, too, she won two races at Randwick,” Howlett said of Darwina, a Marwina mare who would have provided the same I Am Invincible cross as his third crop Group 2 winner Invincible Gem.
“She was a maiden mare and she actually foaled OK and I went to town and came back and went down to check on her and she was dead in the paddock and the foal was there beside her and (couldn’t be saved).
“I lost the foal out of her and the mare and I'm sure she would have thrown a top horse, too.”
While Howlett will soon be unburdened by the upkeep of a horse property, ideally suited for trainers or boutique breeders on the edge of Canberra, the one certainty is his interest in all facets of the thoroughbred game will never be lost.
No hiding Incognito
Talk about perfect timing.
Black Soil Bloodstock’s Brian Siemsen and Harry McAlpine justifiably made a last-minute switch with Bleu Zebra, the dam of Saturday’s Breeders’ Plate winner Incognito.
The I Am Invincible mare, who had already paid her way by producing $1 million Stay Inside colt Incognito, was heading elsewhere but after the Michael Freedman-trained colt made the perfect start to his career in Saturday’s opening two-year-old race of the season at Randwick, they changed plans.
And it’s no surprise Newgate Farm’s Golden Slipper winner Stay Inside was called upon to cover Bleu Zebra on Sunday.
A $600,000 Magic Millions yearling, Bleu Zebra had a filly by Pinatubo fetch $280,000 at this year’s Magic Millions National Weanling Sale on the Gold Coast. She recently gave birth to a colt by another son of Extreme Choice in Eureka Stud’s Don Corleone.
To sell or not to sell?
Akram El-Fahkri has previously vowed to retain Asfoora to breed with when her astonishing international career comes to an end, but by winning her third European Group 1 at Longchamp on Sunday, her global CV will make it difficult to resist the temptation to sell her.
The business case for selling Asfoora, who won the five-furlong Prix de l'Abbaye at the weekend, must be compelling even accounting for the understandable attachment El-Fahkri has to the homebred Flying Artie mare.
UK auction house Tattersalls, for one, has put forward a proposal to sell her at the December Mares Sale and Arqana, if it hasn’t already, would be in the throes of pitching for El-Fahkri and Asfoora’s trainer Henry Dwyer.
Tattersalls’ December sale is the same auction where Yulong has snared Via Sistina (2.7m guineas) and Alcohol Free (5.4m guineas) in the past.
Those mares, both Group 1 winners, were sold with racing upside and while Asfoora’s value won’t have that factored in, her racecourse record demands her price to be considerable regardless.
The Breeders’ Cup may come first, or even another European campaign next year. It’s a conundrum for Dwyer and El-Fahkri, but it’s certainly an enviable one.
