Update: How did I go? (See original blog below)
I kicked off the night with a Lis Mara quinella which I actually missed in terms of putting my money where my mouth is, but for the purposes of this blog we’ll treat it as a 1ew bet on both Music (Lis Mara x Radio River) who paid $11.10 and $1.90, and Aveross Brachole (Lis Mara x Gth Aveross) who paid $4.80 for a place. Race 3, Romanite (Art Official x Roman Tear) came 2nd and paid $1.60. Race 4 Nek Time (Gotta Go Cullect x Braithwaite) hung on for 3rd and paid $2.20. I was bullish about Carrickmannon (Lis Mara x Harper Road) and Cullect A Guiness (Gotta Go Cullect x Charlotte Lea) in race 7 but 5th and 7th was there lot in a fast paced race.In race 9 my heart was with the winner (Ashton K, Grinfromeartoear x Spicey) but my 1ew bet went on Easy Rider (Art Official x Divine) and Chasing Shadows (Gotta Go Cullect x Impact’s Legacy) but they couldn’t get into the race and finished 9th and 10th.
At Alexandra Park I also started on a good note with Culinary Delight (Lis Mara x Culinary Affair) finished 3rd and paying $3.10, then in Race 2 Van Mara (Lis Mara x Van Sera) rattled home for 2nd and paid $2.60. In Race 6 Jaccka Mara (Lis Mara x Marianna Jaccka) and Tazzy’s Devil (Lis Mara x Tas’s Pocket) didn’t fire, and Wimbaliri (Gotta Go Cullect x Festina Lente) was scratched.
So all in all, I “invested” $24 and won $27.30.
Just for fun let’s compare how I would’ve gone if I had bet 1ew on all the Bettor’s Delights running at those two meetings. There were 23 starters, 9 of them paying a dividend. I would have invested $46 and collected $31.90.
So all in all, thank you to the lesser sires for taking care of me!
Original blog post:
Tonight I’m watching races in hindsight, and betting against the odds.
This breeding season in New Zealand three sires are no longer on offer, and in all cases their departure has been predictable, although in two cases it has been very low key.
Lis Mara, Gotta Go Cullect, Art Official.
All have different stories to tell. Lis Mara was initially promoted as speed, but the impression we have of the whole Cam Fella line in New Zealand is not that – and I’ve blogged on this before. So he had to make breakthrough early results that countered our intuition (like Bettor’s Delight has done was a descendant of Cam’s Card Shark) or we were always going to put him in a different category. LisMara progeny were almost always needing time, and not enough really delivered at the top end even if you did wait. For all our love with Most Happy Fella in Smooth Fella and New York Motoring etc, Cam Fella line has always struggled to get a foothold in these shaky isles.
Art Official, lovely looking and well bred, and our connection with Falcon Seelster in his maternal line should have rung happy bells – but he has struggled to get early performers (that so-high bar we set) and also he leaves a much more varied type of foal than his sire, they are not Art Major lookalikes and I think that is what everyone was hoping for – at a cheaper price.
Gotta Go Cullect, touted early on as the “heir apparent of Christian Cullen” and boy, did he look the part – athletic, proud, bred to be fast and tough. And he did get very decent books and has left some nice performers, but the clock ticked on and not enough really stood out, and suddenly he became more of a Live Or Die sire prospect i.e. genuine, but take time to strengthen, some have high speed but the actually percentages of top quality horses are not enough for a top sire. Take nothing away from what he will add to a mare’s pedigree. He will be one of those that shows up like an Adios Butler in pedigrees of good horses down the line. I also wonder if his early retirement (from injury) as a racehorse went against him. In the end we wanted him to duplicate his own type and early speed, so it is possible the type of mares he got were not adding much of that themselves. And maybe his own genes were more about toughness than genetically carried speed factors.
Cut to the chase, tonight I’m doing some sentimental betting but for a reason.
I like to show respect to all those sires who stand here – such a hard ask to survive and thrive in this competitive environment. These are three horses who were excellent on the racetrack and bred to be that way. They carry good genes but how that is expressed as sires (and in our broodmare pool) is another thing. Frankly the fact they have gone is not a mark against them, but just an acknowledgement of how hard it is for any sire to break into the longterm stallion market.
Tip o’ the hat to these three horses.
Both Art Official and Lis Mara will continue to stand back in North America, and I understand Gotta Go Cullect has been sold to Australia.
Tonight I am going “one each way” on all the progeny of these three sires racing at the good meetings at Addington (Christchurch Met) and Alexandra Park (Auckland).
Putting it out there now, and so far only two races done while I’ve been blogging, for a 2nd with Romanite, the Art Official 4yo gelding, and a 3rd from Culinary Delight, the 5yo Lis Mara mare.
What else is coming up? Not sure about scratchings but…
At Alex Park we have Race 2 Van Mara (Lis Mara), Race 6 Jaccka Mara and Tazzy’s Devil (both Lis Mara, although I must confess my bigger bet of 5ew will be on American Flyebye the Tintin In America filly), Race 8 Wimbaliri (Gotta Go Cullect). At Addington we have Race 4 Nek Time (Gotta Go Cullect), Race 7 Carrick Mannon (Lis Mara) and Cullect A Guiness (Gotta Co Cullect), Race 9 Easy Rider (Art Official) and Chasing Shadows (Gotta Go Cullect.
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