As the search for horses to boost Australia’s staying ranks stretches across Europe, perhaps the answer lies a little closer to home.
Gondokoro’s Queensland Oaks win on Saturday gave Zabeel his 43rd individual Group One winner, a tally only bettered in Australasia by his own sire Sir Tristram who had 45.
Zabeel stands at New Zealand’s famous Cambridge Stud and although he is rising 27, will serve a select band of mares in the spring.
He has produced Melbourne Cup winners, Derby winners, Oaks winners and Cox Plate winners and is now the leading brood mare sire in the region.
One who hasn’t been tempted by Europe’s infiltration is Gondokoro’s owner Trevor Delroy who bought the filly’s dam Kisumu with only one objective, to breed with Zabeel.
Her first foal was Zabeelionaire, winner of the 2012 South Australian Derby, and her second Gondokoro who beat another Zabeel filly, Miss Zenella in the Oaks.
Miss Zenella is raced by a group headed by Cambridge Stud proprietor Sir Patrick Hogan and his wife Lady Justine.
Hogan is also a shareholder in Precedence who runs in Saturday’s Group Two Brisbane Cup.
The Bart Cummings-trained Precedence has yet to win a Group One race but has represented the colonial-bred horse in the past three Melbourne Cups.
He was one of four runners for Zabeel in last year’s race and may well line up again in November.
“I think it sends a message to this part of the world that we can still produce horses that can run in a Melbourne Cup,” Hogan said before last year’s Cup.
“But at the end of the day there can be only one Melbourne Cup winner and it doesn’t make sense to buy horses to win one race.”
Delroy has kept the fillies he has bred from Kisumu and sold her two colts. One is Zabeelionaire and the other a yearling who cost $420,000 at this year’s Easter Sale and will be trained by Gerald Ryan.
