During his very successful training career, Rick Hore-Lacy built up a reputation as ‘the stallion-maker’. Many of the good colts who passed through his hands at Epsom and then at Caulfield went on to enjoy excellent stud careers.

He must have thought that he’d reached the pinnacle in this respect when the 1990 G1 Golden Slipper S. winner Canny Lad (Bletchingly) became an extremely successful stallion at Woodlands. However, it turned out that Canny Lad was only the warm-up act: Redoute’s Choice (Danehill {USA}) came along nine years later and went on to prove himself one of the most special horses, both on the racecourse and at stud, of the modern era.

His death this week at Arrowfield at the age of 22 leaves a big hole in the bloodstock landscape.

A standout from the beginning

Redoute’s Choice was a stand-out from the outset. Put into training as a two-year-old in 1998 with Hore-Lacy by his Sri Lankan breeder Muzaffar Ali Yaseen, Redoute’s Choice was soon turning heads in the mornings at Caulfield. A magnificent ball of muscle, he worked as well as he looked.

Hore-Lacy eschewed the maiden-race option for his debut, putting him straight into an 1100m listed race at his home track. He won it and then tackled the G1 Blue Diamond S. second up, merely seven days later. He won that too, bettering the effort nine years previously of Canny Lad, who had only finished second in that race to Mahaasin (Biscay).

Redoute’s Choice’s connections were entitled to be full of hope when the colt was dispatched up to Sydney for the G1 Golden Slipper. Unfortunately he was not able to follow in Canny Lad’s footsteps, being sensationally scratched on the eve of the race, reportedly suffering from an elevated temperature resultant from ‘travel sickness’.

Watch: Redoute's Choice, a superstar racehorse and sire

Redoute’s Choice had been the even money favourite so Muzaffar Ali Yaseen was naturally disconsolate. However, his spirits were bucked up considerably when John Messara stepped in to seal a deal which would see the colt heading off to Arrowfield at the end of his racing days. Irrespective of whether or not it turned out that Redoute’s Choice’s best days were behind him (which was a possibility, as he really was very ill) his future was secure.

Any worries that Redoute’s Choice had missed his opportunity for true stardom were erased the following season, which was lit up by a series of clashes between Redoute’s Choice and his old rival Testa Rossa (Perugino) who had chased him home in the Blue Diamond. They were both terrific colts, as tough and genuine as they were talented.

Danny Nikolic had ridden Redoute’s Choice in the Blue Diamond, but the colt tackled weight-for-age company on his first start at three, carrying only 50.5 kilos in the G1 Manikato S. over 1200m at Moonee Valley, so Jim Cassidy took the mount. He duly rode him to an impressive win and then retained the ride for Redoute’s Choice’s subsequent victories too.

A heated rivalry

Only fourth to Spargo (Rory’s Jester) in the G2 Ascot Vale S. down the straight at Flemington (with Testa Rossa second), Redoute’s Choice tackled his elders again in the G1 Vic Health Cup over 1400m at Caulfield. Testa Rossa was in the race too. The latter won, with Redoute’s Choice third of the 12 runners.

After that, all roads led to the G1 Caulfield Guineas for both colts. It was a vintage edition of the great race, packed with top-liners; but in the end it boiled down to a duel. Redoute’s Choice made the running in a field of 14, with Damien Oliver tracking him all the way on Testa Rossa. Redoute’s Choice lugged out on the final bend, leaving a gap for Testa Rossa to shoot through. With 200m to go Testa Rossa was nearly two lengths in front, but Redoute’s Choice knew to the inch where the Caulfield winning post stood. He rallied like a true champion to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat right on the line.

Watch: Redoute's Choice winning the 1999 G1 Caulfield Guineas

It had been an epic contest. To all intents and purposes it had been a two-horse race, but there were some top-class horses in behind including Commands (third), Pins (fifth), Sudurka (sixth) and Diatribe (eighth).

Redoute’s Choice contested four more Group 1 races, running very well every time, including winning the G1 C. F. Orr S. over 1400m at Caulfield second up in the autumn. Even his only unplaced run was a cracker: fifth of 11 behind Sunline (NZ) (Desert Sun {GB}) and Tie The Knot (Nassipour {USA}) in a star-studded G1 W. S. Cox Plate over 2040m at Moonee Valley.

It was clear that John Messara had pulled off another stroke of genius in securing him for Arrowfield, whither he headed (owned jointly by Muzaffer Ali Yaseen and the stud) in advance of the 2000 breeding season.

Starting his stud career

Messara, of course, had been biased in favour of Redoute’s Choice. Operating previously in partnership with Coolmore, he had been instrumental in bringing Danehill to Australia and thus changing the bloodstock world forever. Having started out at Arrowfield, Danehill ended up standing under the Coolmore banner.

Messara, though, had an obvious ‘Plan B’: standing some of Danehill’s best sons. He already had the G1 Golden Slipper-winning Danehill horses Danzero and Flying Spur on the Arrowfield roster, and Redoute’s Choice was an obvious candidate to join them. Not only had he been a fabulous racehorse, but he was breath-takingly handsome too. And his pedigree was from the very top drawer. His dam Shantha’s Choice (Canny Lad) was a half-sister to the G1-winning two-year-olds Hurricane Sky and Umatilla, and his was one of the best stallions’ families in the world, descending from the legendary Best In Show (USA) (Traffic Judge {USA}).

Danehill had made the perfect start to his stud career by siring the Golden Slipper winner in his first crop (and then siring the next two winners of the great race too). Redoute’s Choice couldn’t match that (as it was, his fellow Arrowfield inmate and paternal half-brother Danzero sired the winner in 2004, Dance Hero) but he did the next best thing: he sired the quinella the next year (with Stratum and Fashions Afield) and then came up with the winner (Miss Finland) again in 2006.

Even without the Slipper winner, though, his first crop was still an excellent one, containing the juvenile Group winner Tahnee Girl as well as Lotteria (a Group 1 winner as a spring three-year-old) and Al Maher (successful later in the 2004/’05 season in the G1 Australian Guineas).

In addition to the Golden Slipper principals Stratum and Fashions Afield, Redoute’s Choice’s second crop also contained the winners of Australia’s other two headline juvenile races: Bradbury’s Luck took the Magic Millions Classic and Undoubtedly won the G1 Blue Diamond S. That crop also included the subsequent champion sire Snitzel as well as G1 Caulfield Guineas hero God’s Own.

Destined for greatness

It also gave a clue to the fact that, like his sire Danehill before him, Redoute’s Choice was destined to establish himself as an influence for class across the distance spectrum, rather than merely for speed: Duelled took the G2 Moonee Valley Vase over 2040m en route to second placing in the G1 VRC Derby over 2500m, beaten only a neck by Benicio (More Than Ready).

Miss Finland, star of Redoute’s Choice’s third crop, subsequently confirmed this impression, completing the remarkable double in 2006 of G1 Golden Slipper over 1200m and G1 VRC Oaks over 2500m, merely seven months apart and with an easy victory in the G1 Thousand Guineas in between.

An outstanding filly/racemare, she ended up with six Group 1 victories to her name before she headed off to join the Arrowfield broodmare band (in which she has produced the 2015 G1 Thousand Guineas heroine Stay With Me (Street Cry {Ire}). Her Golden Slipper victory had enabled her sire to land the Blue Diamond / Golden Slipper for a second year running, courtesy of Nadeem’s triumph in the Caulfield juvenile showpiece (in which Miss Finland finished second).

Redoute’s Choice continued in the same vein during the subsequent years, even while Australian breeding was becoming an ever more competitive game as international investment continued to increase. He remained hugely successful despite becoming in one sense his own worst enemy, simply because so many of his strongest competitors were his own sons, while so many of the country’s best broodmares were never likely to visit him as they are his daughters.

Even so he has remained in the elite tier and will stay there posthumously for a few years yet. Champion sire in 2005/’06, 2009/’10 and 2013/’14, he is currently lying fourth (behind his son Snitzel) in this season’s General Sires’ Table. At the same time he holds a seemingly unassailable lead (over $2.5 million) in the broodmare sires’ premiership.

A terrific racehorse. An ultra-reliable sire of high-class juveniles; of Guineas, Derby and Oaks winners; of weight-for-age stars. Sire of 34 individual Group 1 winners of 55 Group 1 races. Redoute’s Choice has been both a statistician’s dream and a breeders’ best friend, whether the breeder was aiming at the sales-ring or the winner’s enclosure.

He won’t, though, be remembered only as an ultra-high achiever. He will be remembered as a truly gorgeous horse, not just by his friends at Arrowfield, but by anyone who ever saw him race; by anyone who ever visited Arrowfield and found themselves greeted by 680 kilos of muscle with pricked ears, a smiling face and a swaggering walk; by anyone whose eye has ever been caught by an imposing yearling or racehorse strolling by and has exclaimed, “That one must be a Redoute’s Choice!”

Reams of reminiscence has already rolled off the digital presses in memory of Redoute’s Choice, the equine king of Arrowfield Stud, since his sudden death was announced on Tuesday. Predictably, those close to the great horse have had some truly moving things to say about the big bay, and what he meant to the industry.

I can’t claim to have anything near the association of these luminaries, but Redoute’s Choice’s death moved me in ways that shocked me.

As a humble TV hack during my SKY Racing days, I pointed cameras in his direction, gave him the odd pat and joined the legion of racing and breeding fans to pull on his tongue. I was never ‘close’ to the horse, but he certainly impacted my life.

I remember as a teenager, watching this big, leggy, Danehill colt win at Caulfield on debut. He had caught my eye in the paper, I was a pedigree nerd, and this guy had pedigree for days. He was also an eyeful, owing to the alchemy of Danehill, Canny Lad, Nijinsky and Best In Show. However, once he started to run, his ancestry was academic for me.

Watching his Blue Diamond win was like watching a teenage LeBron James playing the St Phillips Christian College 3on3 team, except the kids he was beating included the tyro, Testa Rossa and the very gifted, Dangerous. Redoute’s Choice was marvellous that day, Hore-Lacy had labelled him the best he’d trained after his first start - and that canny trainer had seen a few. He was probably right though.

Redoute’s Choice’s epic Caulfield Guineas win has been on high rotation in the last few days and so it should be, it was as brilliant as it was grit laden and, if you judge a horse by the company he keeps, even more meritorious. However, his Manikato win was equally great, he won a weight for age sprint race against open horses at only his 3rd start, that’s Shirley Temple level precocity!

His Orr stakes was a fitting exclamation point to a career in which he ducked few battles. It is a testament to his feats that often, when a horse bearing the Teeley Assets silks walks out of the mounting yard, pundits utter the ‘so and so in those famous Redoute’s Choice colours’ line that is normally reserved for the Winxes, the Kingston Towns and the Phar Laps of the world.

Scarily, his racing career wasn’t even the best part! He was almost an instant success at stud, and the statisticians have already pumped out the numbers; more than 160 stakes winners, dozens of Group 1 winners, championships galore, Group 1 sire sons, Snitzel, Lankan Rupee and now, The Autumn Sun. Oh yeah, and he’ll probably be champion broodmare sire this year too.

He got you Slipper winners, Blue Diamond winners, Guineas, Oaks and Derby winners. He got champion sprinters and if a few more of his sons had endured the Lankan Rupee gear change, he might have got even more.

You can’t blame the owners of Redoute’s Choice’s talented sons for eschewing the knife. After all, a Redoute’s Choice colt is hot property. Indeed the steady stream of good looking, million-dollar yearlings that issued from his, and now his son Snitzel’s loins, probably had more than a bit to do with a little development called Riverside Stables being so damn magnificent.

Heroic, Bletchingly, Fastnet Rock, Vain, Wallace – Redoute’s Choice may even belong at the top of the ‘top 5 Australian-bred stallions ever’ conversation, given his heady mix of racing brilliance, championship accumulation, commerciality and legacy.

Legacy, there is a word I’ve heard a lot lately. It is one of the quirks of horse racing that a stallion or mare can actually become a legend in his own lifetime. Redoute’s has certainly done that and there is plenty more to come.

Like I said at the top, I had very little personal connection to the horse. However, for two decades, he was always there. His presence loomed large over racing in this country, a comfort blanket for fans of this great sport, those that have never owned a horse, apart from a small, betting ticket-shaped share, for a few minutes on a Saturday. In that way, Redoute’s Choice touched us all.

Wouldn’t it be great if his current racetrack standard bearer, The Autumn Sun, inherited his stall, Claiborne-style? I say stall, it’s more like an incredibly comfortable aircraft hangar, but the metaphorical baton pass would be lovely.

However, I would never presume to advise team Redoute’s Choice on anything. From day one, John Messara, Teeley Assets and the tremendous staff at Arrowfield have done everything in the best interests of the horse. It can’t be an easy time for them and they should be congratulated.

And Redoute’s Choice? He earned every plaudit directed his way.

The increasing internationalisation of racing and breeding is well illustrated in the case of Reliable Man (GB). The grey son of Dalakhani (Ire) may have been conceived in Ireland and foaled in Britain but he completed the first half of his racing career in France before moving to Australia.

He has stood at stud in Germany, France and New Zealand, all the while remaining predominantly in the ownership of his Swedish breeders, Sven and Carina Hanson.

On the weekend before last, Reliable Man secured the result that the Hansons had longed for when deciding to stand their Classic winner at stud in two hemispheres by siring a Classic winner of his own, the NZ Oaks victrix Sentimental Miss (NZ).

Another satisfying chapter

For Sven Hanson, it was another very satisfying chapter in a story which began in 1976 with the purchase of four yearlings. One of which, a filly by Petingo (GB), he named Fair Salinia (GB), and she would go on to win the Oaks, Irish Oaks and Yorkshire Oaks when trained by Sir Michael Stoute. Among her seven winning offspring was the listed winner On Fair Stage (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells {USA}), the dam of Reliable Man.

“I raced in Scandinavia before that but I decided to go international and bought these four yearlings,” Hanson recalls. “Three turned out to be good and one was Fair Salinia, so congratulations to Dick O'Gorman, who was helping me in those days.”

He continues, “It is a lot of fun nowadays to be able to look back over so many years. There has been so much pleasure, and of course a lot of problems along the way, but in the end really it's a life story, and having had [Fair Salinia] on the farm until she died at 29 was wonderful for us. We are a little bit sentimental and we love our horses.”

The Hansons sold their Normandy-based stud farm Haras du Vieux Pont in 2016 and nowadays board their European broodmare band, most of whom are based in France, with fellow Swede Anna Sundstrom at Haras du Grand Chene.

“We have 10 to 12 mares in Europe and we are sticking to that as it's very dangerous to go up in numbers,” Hanson adds.

NZ career a no brainer

In addition to this group, they have another three mares in New Zealand, bought primarily to support Reliable Man’s Southern Hemisphere stud career. While in France the well-proportioned grey will be best remembered as the winner of the G1 Prix du Jockey Club in 2011, his renaissance came thousands of miles away and almost two years later when beating It’s A Dundeel (NZ) by two and a half lengths in the G1 Queen Elizabeth S. at Randwick.

“The decision to stand him in New Zealand was mainly because his Queen Elizabeth win in Australia was eye-catching,” says Hanson. “Lots of people talk about that. It wasn't just a Group 1 but it was the manner of his win.

“We sent him down to Australia without having chosen a trainer, and through our friend and advisor Steve Brem, who recently died, we went to visit various trainers and we decided on Chris Waller. We brought in some partners and we sold 30% of him to three Australians, one of which was Andrew Ramsden.”

Though the Queen Elizabeth would provide the springboard to a good stud berth for Reliable Man, his victory was bittersweet.

“I watched the race on television and Carina was there but I could see before her that he was injured,” Hanson says.

“Because of the timing of his injury it meant that most of the stud farms had already decided about stallions but then suddenly we read in the newspapers that Gerry Harvey, who owns Westbury Stud, had bought Reliable Man for the Southern Hemisphere. That was the first we knew about and a few days later Gerry called and asked if we were happy. I said ‘no’, but we agreed a deal and we are very happy now because Westbury have done a very good job and we have a very good relationship with them.”

Watch: Reliable Man winning the 2013 G1 Queen Elizabeth

Southern Hemisphere standing

Reliable Man joined the Westbury rota, where he stands alongside fellow European-bred Redwood (Ire) (High Chaparral {Ire}), and shuttled initially to Germany’s Gestut Rottgen before being switched last year to stand in France. He is currently at Haras d’Annebault near Deauville. His German sojourn resulted in him being the leading first-season sire of that country in 2017, with Group 3 winners Narella (Ger) and Erasmus (Ger) to his credit, and while Oaks winner Sentimental Miss heads his New Zealand-conceived runners, he has also been represented by Group 2 winner and Group 1-placed Belle Du Nord (NZ) as well as G1 Victoria Derby runner-up Sully (NZ).

“New Zealand is a very good home for him. He was a very positive horse and most of his offspring are like that – they want to work. He breeds them strong and he was always a very well-balanced horse himself, he always grew evenly,” says Hanson.

“What Reliable Man needed was a Group 1 winner because his average was high. They are basically doing well on ratings but it's the big winners that make the difference. We want him to be successful because we are proud of him and his grandmother and the whole family. We raced most of the family. But the stallion game is very different and we are not that experienced in it. Carina works hard at that side of it though.”

One member of the family who did get away was Reliable Man’s half-brother I’m Imposing (GB) (Danehill Dancer {Ire}), who was sold to Coolmore as a yearling and won twice in Britain before also joining Waller, winning the G2 Summer Cup at Randwick eight months after his sibling had run his final race at the track.

Australian support

The Hansons, who race mostly in France, remain patrons of Waller. He trains the Sydney Cup-nominated One Foot In Heaven (Ire), who was fourth in Saturday’s G3 Manion Cup and is a regally-bred son of Galileo (Ire) and the couple’s champion racemare Pride (Fr) (Peintre Celebre {USA}), a Group 1 winner in France, England and Hong Kong.

“I am a great believer in Australia as it's the only place, if you exclude Japan and Hong Kong, in which there is a sound business for racing,” Hanson says.

Meanwhile, tracking the progeny of their stallion ensures that a watchful eye is kept on racing the world over. Reliable Man has been graced by three books of mares well into three figures in New Zealand and, while the numbers were naturally more reserved in Germany, which has a shrinking pool of mares, the move to Normandy was vindicated when 125 breeders sent mares for cover last year in France.

Reliable Man’s Classic haul could yet increase this year as the Lisa Latta-trained Sentimental Miss is pencilled in for an appearance in the Australian Oaks if sufficient rain falls on Sydney, and his listed-winning juvenile daughter Akribie (Ger) has been nominated for the German 1000 Guineas. The net is cast farther still by the former British-based Master Brewer (Fr), winner of the valuable Criterium de la Vente d’Octobre Arqana during Paris Longchamp’s Arc meeting last October and subsequently sold to Hong Kong for a seven-figure sum. Now trained by Tony Cruz, he has been portentously renamed World Famous.

What started as a question over the quality of communication he was receiving as a racehorse owner has morphed into a multi-faceted thoroughbred industry management platform for Prism founder Allan Bennetto.

So many of the success stories of the digital age have been borne out of finding a simple technological solution to a problem. For Bennetto, his technological background told him that trainers could 'be better' at communicating with owners.

That motto 'Be Better' has driven Prism from that thought bubble in Bennetto's mind to become one of the key day-to-day digital management tools for trainers, breeders and syndicators.

"I owned a horse with a mate of mine and got the standard sort of updates and having a background in tech and having my own development agency, I saw the stuff that was coming through and I thought we can do better than this," Bennetto told TDN AusNZ.

Never one to shirk a task, Bennetto went to his trainer, determined to find a way to improve things

"I thought the communications were pretty old school and I said to him, can we make some adjustments? We got deeper and deeper into the operational side of the business and we created a blueprint for the digital platform which would make trainers' lives easier," he said.

What he discovered in that month was the lack of digital nous in the industry was not only adversely impacting communications, it was creating inefficiencies right across the training industry, in everything from billing to finance to horse movement.

"If you look at the way the training business works, it was frightening some of the stuff that goes on, when you think about how archaic it was," he said.

"You've got these million-dollar horses in this billion-dollar industry and a lot of it was being managed on the back of an envelope a lot of the time."

The blueprint developed by Bennetto extended far beyond his initial remit. He built a five-year plan to provide a centralised platform to host all aspects of the management of a training business.

"We sat down and created this big blueprint and just started building. It started off as a communications and back-of-house management and has obviously moved into finance, billing and invoicing and then into syndicators and the other facets of the industry that needed it," he said.

"It’s become a big behemoth, and I didn't intend it to be that way, but that's how it’s ended up."

Improving on what had come before

Prism certainly wasn't the first to confront this challenge, but it had two things in its favour when it came to building a bigger picture solution.

The first one was that Bennetto already operated a tech/development team as part of his broader business. That allowed him to allocate resources to the project as needed.

"We are lucky in that because I've got the dev house and we can use those resources at cost," he said.

"We've had up to 30 people working on it at any one time, we’ve built this platform over three years, but it’s a five-year plus build. We've been lucky that I've had resources I can call on to fast-track a lot of the development."

"I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I’d built this business purely from scratch, with that development team. It would be too costly and you’d never get anything done."

"We've managed to have those resources available and off a whim, we can build that stuff out rather than having to build a commercial business case for every change."

Consulting and developing solutions

The second aspect is a commitment to work with existing and prospective clients to improve what Prism can do.

That has not only ensured the roadmap remains focussed on what the market wants, it has created significant goodwill in an industry often suspicious of change and has improved on what has come before.

"We launched our first product and we always took feedback. It's been an evolving process, but what we managed to do we did because we came to a bit later than others and we learnt from their mistakes," he said.

"We were able to pick up and make things better but also find the gaps and work on them and improve the platform that way."

"We were able to take the way trainers have traditionally used these platforms and enhance it with the use of a modern interface."

Bennetto said Prism was always careful to respect and understand the workflow process stables had in place and ensure that the training was in place to help staff adapt to what was a more efficient system.

"It's really important when you are dealing with an audience that aren't necessarily tech savvy, just to give them what they need up front," he said.

"A lot of these systems that were already in place they may be archaic, but it’s what a lot of these people have been used to for a long time."

"What we always re-iterate is that this is a really simple process."

"We take on a whole process of teaching everyone in the stable who needs to know and even those who don’t, how the system works. You always get a little bit of resistance, but once they start using, it becomes second nature."

Troy Corstens was among the first trainers to use the Prism system, while the likes of Ciaron Maher, Matt Cumani and Anthony Freedman were significant supporters in that early stage.

Moving to a different level

What has changed for Prism since those early days that it has become much more than a stable management tool. The integration of related partners such as Xero, Amazon, Bluebottle Digital, Postmark, Thoroughbred Payments, Tanda and Credit Clear has enabled it to develop into a hub for all aspects of the thoroughbred business.

"Because we have built this as an agnostic cloud-based platform, we are getting all this interest from peripheral vendors in the market place. People looking to upsell their services through our platform," he said.

"The benefit is that while these are services we won’t be able to offer ourselves, we can offer that as a seamless integration into our platform."

"By default, we have now created a centralised platform with all these people hanging their services off it."

That approach has also allowed Prism to take the central tenets of the original platform and through that integration of third party solutions, provide a tool to a broader range of industry professionals.

"When you peel back the layers, we found that 75 per cent of our system was relevant to what people were doing in those aspects of the industry outside of training," Bennetto said. "Breeders and agistment farms still have to treat their horses and move their horses and the like. "

"We started off as trainers being the primary audience but as we grew, we got more and more enquiries. People asking us about managing their finances and their horses from a day to day perspective."

The key to their success in doing that, said Bennetto, has been to design a product that deals with a lot of complexity, while maintaining simplicity at the interface level.

He uses the example of the 'Add Anything' button, a feature that hangs on every page, which allows a one-touch solution for those using the platform.

What next?

From that initial narrow focus around communications and operations, Prism is now a genuine network, with connections across the board, utilising huge amounts of data.

Bennetto and his team continue to consult closely with clients, building a seemingly endless roadmap of potential improvements to 'Be Better'.

The next significant step to come is an improved CRM integration, which will allow a much better experience for syndicators and trainers trying to market their horses to potential clients.

"In this day and age, you can't stay still. We came into industry at a time where there was a little bit of a vacuum," Bennetto said. "You can't afford to rest on your laurels, because there is always something or someone looking to be better."