Savabeel's Steady Rise

The Informant reports:

As he has cemented his dominance of our current stallion ranks, Savabeel has repeatedly demonstrated through his progeny the ability to transmit versatility in terms of distance and racing surfaces, ability to an international level and, especially and so frequently, class.

Yet the outstanding sire still has the ability to come up with a fresh addition to his bag of tricks and, for me at least, he has done so with the arrival on the racing scene of the brilliant two-year-old Sword Of Osman.

Savabeel's 493 individual winners at last count include 42 two-year-old winners. But none of these, in my recollection, were natural jump-out-and-run early-comers. Rather they were young horses with enough natural ability to win at two but looking (and usually proving) to be all the better with another year.

This is borne out by Arion Pedigrees' stats: Savabeel's winning figures surge from 42 at two to 309 (from 607 runners) at three and 350 (from 535) at four. Sword Of Osman, however, in two of his three starts, has looked a two-year-old speed star in the first rank.

He looked potentially in that category when he won his first start, at Awapuni back in December, and kicked away from the smart filly Platinum Mam'selle by three lengths. That persuaded connections to have a crack at the Karaka Million, with its mouth-watering purse. But, as the results have so often reinforced, experience and street smarts are usually vital attributes for the Karaka Million.

Avantage (Fastnet Rock), this year's Million winner and Te Akau stablemate of Sword Of Osman, came into the race three from three and came out of it four from four. Others in the Te Akau livery, Al Hasa (Exceed and Excel) and Pinot Grey (Burgundy), both also having their fourth starts, finished second and fifth.

Sword Of Osman, in just his second start, finished eighth of 14, a boy amongst the big kids. That may prove the last time that he gets beaten through simply failing to measure up.

Having obviously learned a tonne from his Karaka Million experience - such as, don't worry about the others, just concentrate on the job - Sword Of Osman still tugged a bit in the Gr. 3 Reid & Harrison Slipper at Matamata on Saturday when Opie Bosson urged him through to lead but, looking at his nearest rivals approaching the home turn, it was obvious who were the ones in trouble.

Sword Of Osman careered away in the straight to win by nearly six lengths from the outgunned Thomas Aquinas. And if Thomas was outclassed (what a shame to hear, a day earlier, of the death of his promising sire Jakkalberry!), the other eight, including the favourite Bocce (Foxwedge), who'd run third in the Karaka Million but this time lost his chance when stumbling at the start, were barely in the same race.

So now Savabeel can tick the high-speed, high-class two-year-old box and Sword Of Osman, co-trainer Jamie Richards told me on Tuesday, is set to run next in the $200,000 Gr. 1 Sistema Stakes at Ellerslie on March 10. That will be a cracking field and a cracking race but there will be a few trainers looking apprehensively at Sword Of Osman when the best youngsters line up in the Sistema.

“We'll have a look at where we're going with him after the Sistema,” said Richards. “He might go out for a spell. I could envisage him putting on another 50 kilos and coming back as a terrific three-year-old, with the New Zealand 2000 Guineas his target.”

Te Akau supremo David Ellis is usually looking towards a potential stud future when he buys colts at Karaka, but Sword Of Osman was gelded before he even got to the races.

“He was pretty tough early,” said Richards, “but really he wasn't bought with a stud career in mind. He was bought to be a racehorse, and he's doing a great job.”

Many racegoers will share my anticipation of what we can expect from Sword Of Osman with good-looking fillies and broodmares not even a blip on his radar. Several more seasons, one hopes, of high-quality performances. And those who might say, in a year or two, “What a shame he was gelded!” should remember that Phar Lap and Kingston Town, to name an illustrious two, gave scarcely a glimpse of their innate power and talent until they were gelded.

Savabeel has now sired 73 stakes winners, 47 of them at Group level and 15 Group One winners (plus 13 Group Two and 19 Group Three), the latest in his Group One club being last spring's New Zealand 1000 and 2000 Guineas winners Hasahalo and Embellish. It would be no surprise to me to see Sword Of Osman the next Group One recruit, possibly as soon as Saturday week.

Black-type racing has increasingly become the definition of class, whether of the racehorse, its sire or its dam. This wasn't always the case. My generation, and the next, I suspect, recall the 1970s as halcyon days in New Zealand racing; perhaps the greatest decade of our long and colourful history.

Such great horses…..Kirrama, Jan's Beau and Game at the outset, Group One globetrotter Balmerino out at the same time as wonderful mares La Mer and Show Gate; Uncle Remus, whose sudden onset of a career-ending wind affliction can prevent us from remembering what an exciting, high-class three-year-old he was; Grey Way, Copper Belt, Tudor Light and Kiwi Can; wonderful horses, wonderful racing.

It was a decade of social and administrative change, too. Young New Zealand women won the fight to be able to ride as professional jockeys - and saved our racing game in the process.

Racing went metric in 1973, three years ahead of the rest of the world; the classics were restructured in 1972-73, reduced to five genuine classics permitted to carry the New Zealand prefix. And black-type or pattern racing was introduced as the decade rolled by.

I confess I was a sceptic about the merits of “pattern” racing at first, perhaps because it was introduced in such a piecemeal, haphazard fashion.

Black type first appeared in American sale catalogues in the 1950s. Its first appearance outside the US was in dear old New Zealand, in 1970, and Europe followed suit in the next couple of years. But initially the New Zealand black-type races were decided by a senior pedigree compiler at the then sole auctioneer, Wrightson Bloodstock; a joint committee from the auction house, the NZTBA and the NZ Racing Conference (now NZTR) was formed from the late 1970s and in 1995 - not so long ago! - a complete review was undertaken, and the current structure of the New Zealand Pattern Committee (the Graded Stakes Committee until 2012) was implemented.

What we now have is not perfect and I have reservations about the impartiality of the World Best Racehorse Ranking which is used as the ultimate arbiter. Our NZ Pattern Committee last year expressed concerns with the WBRR ratings assigned to New Zealand two and three-year-old races, “inconsistent with ratings achieved by the same horses overseas.”

I'm suspicious about Northern Hemisphere dismissiveness (relatively speaking) about Southern Hemisphere racing overall. How else do you explain that American star Arrogate, winner of seven in succession and then beaten in his last three before retirement, continued to be ranked above Winx as she unstoppably put together her unbeaten sequence of 22?

However, what we have works pretty well most of the time and Savabeel, already spoken of in the same breath as his father, Zabeel, and grandfather Sir Tristram, needs only normal luck and good health to make those comparisons progressively stronger.