b4breeding

Here’s two more of our great New Zealand sires of recent times, now dead, but living on in some surprisingly young progeny.

Previously I noted a filly from In The Pocket‘s last crop – Sara Holley – who is currently racing, and there is another good horse Light Up Boss, a 3yo colt, also from that crop. See blog here from January 2013 on Sara Holley, who is now a 4yo mare with 13 starts for one win, two seconds and a third, while Light Up Boss has had 5 starts for one win and two seconds.

Then in December I got a jolt seeing a Soky’s Atom 3yo and 4yo breed by Mike Stratford that are currently racing, and blogged about them – see blog here.

Today I watched a 3yo filly Gracey Lacey by Holmes Hanover (out of Cameleon mare Janis Joplin) in her first race at Banks Peninsula. She’s shown up okay at trials, but didn’t really kick on on the grass. She’ll improve as she strengthens, as most of the Holmes Hanovers did.

There were 8 foals in Holmes Hanover’s 2010 crop, and one other has so far got to the races, Take After Me (out of Live Or Die mare Give Or Take who is from the Tabella Beth family). He’s a 3yo gelding and started at Invercargill races at Ascot Park yesterday for a good fourth. His previous start at Ascot Park on 15 January was a nice debut for 2nd.

Holmes Hanover has 22 registered 4yos, so are 10 of them qualified and 3 of those are winners.

More interestingly, he has a few still to come – 6 2yos (4 of them registered), and 3 yearlings (one of which is already registered).

Holmes Hanover was a fertile stallion and I remember comments about how robust his frozen semen was. It’s quite a remarkable feat from a sire that was humanely euthanised in 2006 at the age of 25 (see harnesslink article at the time). He remains one of New Zealand’s greatest sires and broodmare sires.

Falcon Seelster is another sire that continues to produce from frozen semen well after his death in 2011 at age of 30 (see harnesslink article at the time), and he was pretty much retired from breeding the previous year.

However his stock is so respected that the 2014 Sale Of The Stars yearling sales in New Zealand in February boast two colts by Falcon Seelster in the Premier sale at Christchurch and a filly by him in the Australasian sale at Karaka. So he appears in the catalogue as a sire, damsire and grandam sire.

He’s got three qualifiers recently as 2yos that will be worth keeping an eye on – Festive Flyer, Tintinara and The Jazz Man.

For information about the frozen semen still available from Holmes Hanover and Falcon Seelster, see the Bromac Lodge website. As they say in sport, form is temporary, but class is permanent.

In my next blog I’ll switch from looking at the very “old” current sires to the very new ones.