Cheveley Stud’s Fond Farewell

MYSTIC SPRING A TRUE CHAMP!

Kabelo Matsunyane salutes after Navy Strength (Dynasty-Spring Lilac) won the Gr3 Drakenstein Stud Cape Summer Stayers Handicap in December

MYSTIC SPRING A TRUE CHAMP!

South African horseracing awoke to the sad news today that at the ripe old age of 27, Mystic Spring, the matriarch of Cheveley, quietly said goodbye.

Vaughn Kosyter said that it was a sad day on Cheveley as they mourned her passing and try to remind themselves of all the joy and excitement that she has provided them.

As a prolific breeder of high class racehorses her legacy lives on through her daughters and granddaughters. She produced 7 stakes winners, including 2 Champions in Rabiya and Bela- Bela. She was crowned with the highest honour as Broodmare of the Year in 2016/17 and was awarded Exceptional Broodmare Achievement in 2016. Arguably the most sought after family in SA in the modern era has a wonderful future as her daughters have and granddaughters start producing champions.

‘Thank you to John Newsome and John Freeman for letting us be part of her journey. We are truly blessed that you crossed our path and are indebted to you for life. Now go and join your ancestors on greener pastures.Rest in Peace our beloved Mystic Spring.’

The outstanding broodmare’s name has cropped up in the pedigrees of a number of notable winners this summer season. The grey daughter of Royal Academy has featured as dam, granddam and great granddam of a number of winners this season.

Both Gr2 Western Fillies Championship winner Ciao Bella (Gimmethegreenlight) and Gr3 Drakenstein Stud Cape Summer Stayers hero Navy Strength (Dynasty) are descended in female line from Mystic Spring, with Mystic Spring having produced both Ciao Bella's champion dam Bela-Bela (like Navy Strength, sired by Dynasty) and Navy Strength's Gr3 Fillies Nursery winning dam Spring Lilac (Joshua Dancer).

The latter has proved a topclass producer in her own right - Navy Strength being one of four stakes winners. Other stakes winners produced by the daughter of Mystic Spring include Gr1 Cape Fillies Guineas/ Gr1 Majorca Stakes winner Snowdance (Captain Al), and her stakes winning own sisters Juniper Spring (East Cape Breeders Stakes), and Victorian Secret (Laisserfaire Stakes, Lady's Pendant).

Victorian Secret’s two-yearold daughter Golden Sickle (Vercingetorix) caught the eye earlier this season when scoring on debut at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth.

Golden Sickle, a R700 000 yearling buy, is not the only eye catching debut winner to descend from Mystic Spring in recent times.

Dumbledore (William Longsword), whose granddam is Mystic Spring, made the ideal start to his racing career when the two-year-old won over 1000m on debut.

Dumbledore is out of another top-class racemare and daughter of Mystic Spring in the form of Secret Of Victoria (Goldkeeper). Closely inbred to the wonderful broodmare Crimson Saint (Crimson Satan), Secret Of Victoria won four black type races, including both the Gr2 Sceptre Stakes and Gr2 Southern Cross and proved, if anything, even better at stud. She has produced a pair of Gr1 winning Captain Al sired full-sisters in the form of champion All Is Secret and fellow Gr1 Allan Robertson Championship winner The Secret Is Out as well as their Lady's Pendant winning own sister Canukeepitsecret.

Secret Of Victoria is also dam of Naval Secret (also by Captain Al) who recently romped home over 1200 metres.

AN SA THOROUGHBRED DYNASTY

Michael Roberts, who had a race day in his honour at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on Sunday was not only a fine ambassador for South African racing but his success inadvertently had a positive impact on South African bloodstock.

David Thiselton writes that Roberts was approached one day in the late 1990’s by Karen Newsome of Fieldspring Racing and asked about a filly they owned.

Karen’s husband John was the founder of Fieldspring Racing and South African racing will forever be indebted to this couple for their 1997 decision to create a racing base in South Africa.

This included John’s decision to never sell Fieldspring’s greatest horse Dynasty for export.

The Newsome’s young filly Mystic Spring had not been doing too well racing in England and Karen asked Roberts whether he believed it would be worthwhile sending her to South Africa. She was out of a full-sister to Mystiko, who had given Roberts his first British classic success in the 1991 2000 Guineas at Newmarket.

Roberts recalled: “I told her I didn’t see why not as Mystiko had been a good fast ground horse and that was what you needed in South Africa.”

Mystic Spring was shipped over and put in training with Dean Kannemeyer but didn’t show much and was soon retired to stud.

Cheveley Stud

A couple of months later John Newsome made an arrangement with the great horseman and thoroughbred breeder Wilfred Koster to use the latter’s Cheveley Stud farm as the base for Fieldspring’s breeding operation.

This included bringing about ten imported mares in over a period of a number of years.

Vaughan Köster, who took over Cheveley Stud when his father passed away in 2008, remembered the arrival of a small and slight Mystic Spring at the farm.

He said at the time: “She was very sour and would chase you out of her stable. Perhaps it had something to do with all the travel and quarantine she had endured, but after being put out to pasture her attitude changed massively. She became a happy mare, although to this day she is still very protective over her offspring and with foal at foot you would not enter her stable without caution.”

Mystic Spring’s first foal was by Jallad.

Vaughan recounted: “It was a complete disaster. He was gangly, had an ugly head and was bad-legged with particularly bad hind legs. My father was given two options by the vets, either put him down or ‘throw him to the mountains.'”

The great horseman took the latter option. “Throw to the mountains” is a saying meaning the foal should not be fed too much, thus preventing too much weight on the legs.

A year later the sales inspectors were ‘generous’ in giving the colt three out of ten as he still had atrocious legs.

“But he was very athletic,” recalled Vaughan. The colt was put in training with the Kannemeyers.

Vaughan recalled: “Peter Kannemeyer phoned about three months later and told us, ‘This horse can run’. My father laughed and said impossible!

The grey colt called Rabiya went on to win the Gr1 Cape Guineas, the Gr1 Daily News 2000 and the Gr2 Cape Derby running in Fieldspring Racing’s maroon silks with the grey chevron.

However, his bad legs caught up with him in the most tragic of circumstances as he broke down in the 2005 Vodacom Durban July after starting favourite and had to be euthanised.

Nevertheless, Wilfred’s decision to work through a problem had ensured the foundation of a South African thoroughbred dynasty.

WEATHER HITS UK RACING

Wincanton has cancelled its fixture today due to frost, meaning there will be a second consecutive day in Britain without jumps racing. The course had initially planned to inspect on raceday at 8am, but that was brought forward and the meeting was subsequently called off.

Ludlow's fixture today has also been cancelled following an inspection yesterday morning, with the course frozen in places.

Temperatures rose to around 6C on Wednesday afternoon but that was not enough for clerk of the course Simon Sherwood to give the green light for a further inspection.

"Our problem was the -4C forecast last night with freezing temperatures until about 11am today – that would have totally scuppered us," said Sherwood.

Go Deputy daughter, Flying Ice

GODOLPHIN’S SA FIRST

A significant event went by virtually unnoticed when Godolphin acquired a yearling colt at this week's Magic Millions Sale on Australia's Gold Coast.

What's so special about that, many would ask, especially as he cost just A$280,000, a trifling, considering the famed racing outfit is not averse to spending ten times as much, if not more, on a single horse.

However, this was an auspicious occasion, for as far as we know, it marked the first time Godolphin has purchased a yearling at auction out of a South African-bred and raced mare.

By Godolphin's champion sprinter Blue Point, the handsome colt is the second foal out of Go Deputy mare Flying Ice, who incidentally, was the last stakes winner trained by the late Neil Bruss.

She was acquired by Team Valor principal Barry Irwin following a South African career capped by victory in the Gr2 Gold Bracelet, which came at the expense of subsequent Gr1 winner Nightingale. She also won the Listed Devon Air Stakes as a juvenile and finished second in Scottsville's Gr3 Oaks.

Irwin sent her to the States in 2017 and put her in foal to Noble Mission, a multiple, Gr1 winning own brother to the great Frankel.

This is where fate stepped in. As it so happened, South African bloodstock consultant Alistair Brown was on the lookout for a descendant of Flying Ice's third dam Taineberry, this on behalf of Australian breeder Bill Hodder,

who had in fact bred the daughter of Centaine.

She had been imported in the mid-nineties and trained by Sunday birthday boy David Payne, raced with distinction, winning six races in all, the highlight of which was the Gr2 Oaks at Hollywoodbets Scottsville.

Bred by Lammerskraal Stud, Flying Ice is out of Taineberry's grandaughter and Gr2 Fillies Guineas runner-up, Strawberry Ice, who just happens to be an own sister to Gr1 Cape Guineas hero Solo Traveller, Gr1 Garden Province victress Redberry Lane and to Skylar Lane, the dam of Gr1 Premiers Champion Stakes winner Good Traveller, all bred by Lammerskraal.

Alistair duly purchased Flying Ice from Irwin and the mare found herself en route to Australia.

Godolphin's purchase is the mare's second foal, the Noble Mission foal, a filly named Iceberry, is yet to race. There's a twist in the tail though. Hodder no longer owns Flying Ice; he sold her last year!

The man mentioned in the Flying Ice story is Alistair Brown who established Equarius Bloodstock in 1989. Over more than three decades the popular International Bloodstock broker and consultant introduced leading sires Fort Wood, Al Mufti, Goldkeeper, Ideal World, Strike Smartly, Sail From Seattle, Global View and more recently, Royal Mo, to South Africa. Like anybody involved in the sport, Alistair has faced the challenges and the rollercoaster that is life in a competitive and unforgiving world.

“I wouldn’t have changed my life for anything, frankly. And although the past decade has been a huge struggle, the descendants of horses I have sourced have brought me much satisfaction and their influence is something that I am extremely proud of,” he adds.

Alistair’s input and influence on the breed here is unquestioned, but we share the sad news that the proud horseman faces an uphill battle against stage 4 chronic kidney disease.

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