Kermadec An Emerging Star
By John Berry
Australia’s search for a weight-for-age star took a great leap forward when impressive 4-year-old Kermadec (NZ) (Teofilo {Ire}) landed the G1 George Main S. over the Randwick mile in Sydney Saturday.
The George Main S. was inaugurated in 1945 on the retirement of long-standing Australian Jockey Club Chairman George Main. It was soon established as one of the weight-for-age highlights of the spring in Sydney, with the great Shannon (who subsequently won the 1948 Hollywood Gold Cup) scoring in 1946 and ’47. Since then it has been won by a host of champions including Kingston Town, winner in both 1981 and ’82. Recent years, though, have seen star quality spread more thinly among the ranks of the country’s older gallopers.
Australian racegoers were lucky in that the downside of the boom in the stallion business–ie. the fact that good horses’ racing careers nowadays are generally short–took longer to hit home in the antipodes than it did in the U.S. and Europe. However, it is now the norm for the best Australasian colts to have finished racing by the age of four. A glance at Darley Australia’s roster sums this up perfectly because it contains last season’s best 3-year-old sprinter Brazen Beau (Aus) (I Am Invincible {Aus}) as well as top young milers Hallowed Crown (Aus) (Street Sense) and Shooting To Win (Aus) (Sebring {Aus}). A generation ago all three would most likely, assuming that they remained sound, have still been in training at four.
The upshot of the early retirements of the best locally-bred horses has been that Australia’s top weight-for-age races are now often at the mercy of imports such as the past two G1 Australian Cup winners Spillway (GB) (Rail Link {GB}) and Fiorente (Ire) (Monsun {Ger}), and of overseas raiders such as last season’s Irish-trained G1 Cox Plate winner Adelaide (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}). It now looks, though, as if the home defense contains a proper Australasian-bred star, with Kermadec vying for Cox Plate favoritism.
Conceived in Australia and born in New Zealand, Kermadec went through the 2013 NZ Bloodstock Premier Yearling Sale, bought for NZ$260,000 by agent Guy Mulcaster on behalf of owner Neville Morgan, who placed him with Sydney’s champion trainer Chris Waller. Kermadec was not among Australia’s leading juveniles of the 2013/’14 season, but made gradual progress last term as a 3-year-old. He showed his first stakes form towards the end of the spring when taking the Group 3 Carbine Club S. on Victoria Derby Day at Flemington before graduating to Group 1 company in the autumn. He was not ready to win the big 3-year-olds feature races at that stage, but his close fourth to Wandjina (Aus) (Snitzel {Aus}) in the G1 Australian Guineas at Flemington in March showed that he was going the right way.
That Kermadec couldn’t quite match the likes of Wandjina (who now stands at Newgate Farm), Hallowed Crown and Shooting To Win as a 3-year-old ensured that he was not snapped up for stud duties, which is now proving to have been a blessing. He ended his second season by landing the G1 Doncaster Mile H. at Randwick under the featherweight of 51kg (112 pounds), and now at the age of four he is blossoming. Kermadec lined up in the George Main as the winner of three of his 10 starts, and after his defeat of 2013 G1 Australian Oaks winner Royal Descent (Aus) (Redoute’s Choice {Aus}) and 2015 G1 Doomben Cup winner Pornichet (Fr) (Vespone {Ire}), he now holds pole position among Australia’s weight-for-age performers, and will head down to Melbourne to contest the G1 Caulfield S. Oct. 10 and the G1 Cox Plate two weeks later. He should have a great chance in both races, as Chris Waller observed on Saturday when quizzed about his charge’s Cox Plate prospects, “If he’s trained right, he’ll win it.”
Kermadec is the latest Australian-conceived star for Darley’s Galileo stallion Teofilo (Ire), previously represented by the Darley-bred 2014 G1 Queensland Derby winner Sonntag (Aus). The Sadler’s Wells line continues to make a big contribution to Australasian racing, even if Teofilo no longer shuttles and High Chaparral (Ire), who did best of all the Sadler’s Wells horses who have stood in the antipodes, died last year.
Kermadec is the best horse to have emerged in recent years from his family. His first three dams are all stakes winners; his dam, Hy Fuji (an Australian-bred daughter of the Sunday Silence stallion Fuji Kiseki {Jpn}), won the Tattersalls Plate at Randwick in 2003; his second dam, Hysterical (an NZ-bred daughter of the Irish import Wolverton {Ire}), landed the Emancipation S. at Randwick in 1993; and his third dam, Formal Invitation (an Irish-conceived but Australian-bred daughter of Be My Guest), took the Blue Diamond Preview at Caulfield in 1982. Kermadec was one of three stakes winners for Teofilo on Saturday, alongside Amralah (Ire) and Scottish (Ire), successful respectively in the SAJC Tokyo City Cup at Morphettville in South Australia and the Doonside Cup at Ayr in Scotland.