Run The Numbers – Slipper Show part of a Dancing double

Nearly 40 years after she caught the eye of Australian connections at a tried horse sale in Saratoga, Dancing Show’s impact continues to be felt, with maternal descendants Marhoona and Schwarz winning Group 1 races on Saturday. This week’s Run The Numbers charts her influence.

A sales ring in New York and Rosehill on Golden Slipper day may seem a world apart, but on Saturday, after three decades of trying, that journey was completed as a maternal descendant of the phenomenally influential Dancing Show won the world’s richest two-year-old race for the first time.

The story of how Dancing Show got to Australia goes that influential breeder Norman Carlyon’s son Peter wanted a Nijinksy mare to breed to American-based Miswaki. She was selected on the advice of pedigree expert Ken McLean for $75,000 out of the Fasig-Tipton sales ring in 1987.

She was part of a package of mares put together as a breeding venture by bloodstock figure Rob Roulston with a group of six investors.

Dancing Show headed firstly to New Zealand to foal down the resultant colt, before an onward journey across the Tasman.

In 1991, that Miswaki colt, Umatilla, trained by Tommy Hughes and winner of WA’s best two-year-old race, the Karrakatta Plate, contested the Golden Slipper, but would finish near the tail of the field in 12th.

Three years later, Dancing Show’s son by Star Watch, Hurricane Sky, came into the Golden Slipper as one of the leading chances having won the Blue Diamond Stakes. But eventual winner Danzero swept past him in the final stages, almost knocking him off his feet at the same time. Hurricane Sky would only finish fifth.

While Dancing Show was making a major impression as a broodmare, Roulston and co sold her in foal to Chief’s Crown in 1996 as she had become a Grade 2 wobbler and was uninsurable.

None of Dancing Show’s remaining progeny would contest the Slipper, but in 1999 her grandson Redoute’s Choice was a short-priced favourite for the race, having also won the Blue Diamond. He was famously scratched on the morning of the Slipper.

A decade later, another of Dancing Show’s grandsons, Redoute’s Choice’s half-brother Manhattan Rain, finished third in the 2009 Slipper.

Both grandsons would make their marks as sires of Slipper winners, Redoute’s Choice through Stratum (2005) and Miss Finland (2006), and Manhattan Rain through She Will Reign (2017).

Sons of Redoute’s Choice, Stratum, Not A Single Doubt and Snitzel, would also become Slipper-winning sires, so would his sire grandson Extreme Choice.

But it took until this year for a direct maternal descendant of Dancing Show to salute in Australia’s greatest two-year-old race.

Marhoona has the influential broodmare on both sides of her pedigree, fourth dam on her paternal line and on the direct maternal line.

Stats on maternal descendants of Dancing Show

Category	Number
Foals	530
Runners	403
Winners	287
W/R	71.20%
G1w	13
SW	45
SW/R	11.2%

Source: Arion.co.nz

The Michael Freedman-trained filly became the 12th individual Group 1 winner to descend directly on maternal lines from Dancing Show and 45th individual stakes winner from 403 runners.

It is a family that Emirates Park, the breeders and owners of Marhoona, got into with the purchase of Show Dancing, Dancing Show’s sixth foal, in 1995. Show Dancing, by Don’t Say Halo, was foaled in New Zealand in 1993 as Dancing Show was sent back there to visit Centaine, a mating that would prove fruitless.

Show Dancing won two of her eight starts for Bob Thomsen for Emirates Park before joining its broodmare band, producing the Group 1 winner Al Maher and Group 3 winner Salameh.

Out of Secret Savings mare Salameh came the Listed winner Big Time as well as three other winners. She also had an Encosta De Lago filly named Salma, who was unraced, but has now produced four stakes winners, Trojan Harbour, Hilal, Salateen and Marhoona.

Twenty minutes after Marhoona’s success, that Group 1 total for Dancing Show’s maternal descendants ticked over to 13 thanks to the victory of Schwarz in the William Reid Stakes.

The son of Zoustar emanates from the more famous maternal line from Dancing Show, through her Canny Lad daughter Shantha’s Choice.

As well as three Group 1 winners and two other stakes winners, the blue hen also produced the unraced Giant’s Causeway filly, Unspoken Choice.

Unspoken Choice second foal was a placed Fusaichi Pegasus mare named Hot Summer Night, whose first foal was a Group 2-winning Not A Single Doubt mare named Summer Sham. Still owned by Uluru Stud, she is the dam of Schwarz.

The now Group 1-winning Rosemont Stud-owned entire has Shantha’s Choice three times in his pedigree, all on the fourth line, therefore Dancing Show three times in his fifth generation.

It could have easily been a treble of Group 1 wins on Saturday for those with Dancing Show on their extended damline. Narrow New Zealand Oaks runner-up Dubai Gold, has Twyla, another half-sister to Show Dancing and Shantha’s Choice, as her granddam.

Twyla is already a granddam of Group 1 winner Gathering and the third dam of elite-winning pair Tom Kitten, In Italian and Desert Lightning.

What is quite extraordinary is that Dancing Show’s success has continued with each generation of her maternal line.

Across the first two generations, that is her own progeny and those of her daughters, there were 11 stakes winners from 44 runners, or 25 per cent SW/R. The subsequent three generations of daughters/granddaughters etc have produced 34 stakes winners from 358 runners, a stakes strike rate of 9.5 per cent.

Schwarz is currently the only stakes/winner with Dancing Show on his fifth generation of the damline.

Damline descendants stats of Dancing Show split by her daughters