Remembering General Nediym

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

From his sun-soaked, ground-floor office at Magic Millions, the same office he has occupied for close to 30 years, auctioneer David Chester dusts off his memories of seeing General Nediym for the first time in 1996.

“Of the thousands and thousands of horses I’ve sold over the years, he’s one that sticks in my mind,” Chester said. “I don’t know why, but I just took a liking to General Nediym. He was my sort of horse.”

The copper-coated General Nediym was foaled in September 1994 and, some 16 months later, he arrived at Magic Millions to sell at the 1996 Gold Coast Yearling Sale.

“He was a real precocious, Magic Millions-type of horse,” Chester said. “He wasn’t that big but he had a great, big hindquarter on him, and he was the sort of horse you’d look at and think he had to be able to run. I didn’t know how far he’d go, but he’d go fast because he just looked like speed. He honestly was built like a quarter horse.”

Chester’s assumptions of General Nediym proved correct.

Through 1997 to 1999, the chestnut stallion clattered through a dazzling career on the track. He won the million-dollar Magic Millions 2YO Classic, then the G2 Todman Slipper Trial, G2 San Domenico S. and G2 Up And Coming S.

He won the G2 Stan Fox S., G1 Lightning S. and G1 Newmarket H., and he returned to the Gold Coast in the summer of 1999 to win the Magic Millions Cup.

General Nediym was third in the G1 Caulfield Guineas and G1 Doomben 10,000 and, by the close of his career, he was one of the best sprinting horses in the land. He had over $2 million in the kitty and a career pitted against the likes of Chief De Beers (Hula Chief {NZ}), Tie The Knot (Nassipour {USA}) and G1 Golden Slipper winner Guineas (Crown Jester).

Gallery: Some of General Nediym's opposition in his era

“He was marvellous,” Chester said. “He was such an important horse for Magic Millions, and if you look at his sire, Nediym, he was pretty ordinary, so for him to produce something like General Nediym, it was extraordinary. The whole story of this horse at this time of year is pretty good.”

The General

General Nediym was foaled at the Glengarry Stud property of his owners, the late Ron Ashdown and his wife Helen. It was a neat holding just outside Harrisville in Queensland, and the Ashdowns hadn’t had it very long when their chestnut colt arrived.

“My husband was a bit of a breeding buff,” said Helen Ashdown. “He’d just sold his business and he didn’t know what to do with himself, and he decided, long before General Nediym came along, that he’d have five mares on a little farm somewhere. Ron had always raced horses as a young man, but we got so carried away with it all eventually that we ended up with 100 mares and five stallions. It became quite a big business for us.”

General Nediym was the earliest hit for the Ashdown bloodstock business, and he came about in the spring of 1994.

“A few years before that, Colin Hayes was having a sale of mares at his property,” Helen said. “Ron thought there were a few there that would suit our stallion Nediym, so we went along and bought a couple, and one of them was Military Belle.”

The broodmare Military Belle was by the imported stallion Without Fear (Fr), who himself created a massive impression from his Lindsay Park base. She was an unraced, relatively young mare and, through her second dam Gelu (NZ) (Agricola {GB}), she was from the family of the Group 1 winner and later sire, Interstellar (NZ).

When the Ashdowns bought Military Belle, they first put her to Nediym in 1992. The following year she went back to the stallion, and the result of that second union was General Nediym.

“He was gorgeous right from the start,” Helen said. “I can’t look at any horse and say it walks like this or has a good hindquarter, or any of those things, but friends that looked at General Nediym when he was a foal said he looked great.

"He was one of the first horses we ever sent to a sale because we needed to get our horses out there in the marketplace and, only for that, I think Ron would have kept him.”

The one that got away

In the folklore of General Nediym’s later life, few episodes measure up to the horse’s sale at Magic Millions in January 1996.

Consigned by the Ashdowns, the yearling colt headed to the Bundall sales complex but, in the first few days, he injured himself in his box before ever setting foot in the ring.

“Ron was a bit embarrassed to put him through the sale ring with a bandage on, and when the horse was sold, it was the reason why my husband said he’d take the horse home to get him right,” Helen said. “We then gave the buyer time to bring his own vets out to look at General Nediym, and they weren’t comfortable with passing the horse fit.”

Queensland land developer Tosh Murphy was the man who successfully bid for General Nediym at Magic Millions in 1996. At the time, he had a side gig in racehorse syndication.

Chester, infatuated with the chestnut colt, had worked hard to muster interest, but the horse was knocked down to Murphy for only $20,000.

“My vet had had a look at him and he told me to buy him,” Murphy said, casting his mind back 25 years. “This bloke really loved the horse, and it was written in the papers at the time that I was advised not to buy the horse. Actually, I was advised to definitely buy him, which I did.”

Because of General Nediym’s leg injury, Murphy was offered 60 days by Ron Ashdown as a cooling-off period. The horse went back to Glengarry Stud and, after a time, Murphy sent his vets for a second inspection.

“He still had a bandage on his leg after all that time, so I didn’t proceed with the sale,” Murphy said. “It was as simple as that.”

Over the years, it’s become a good story for Tosh Murphy around the traps. He hasn’t ever lost any sleep over his decision to relinquish General Nediym, and he was never bitter about the horse’s later success. He was there when the colt won the Magic Millions 2YO Classic, and he cheered the horse on as much as any Queenslander.

“It ended up being a good story to tell,” Murphy said. “Most of my friends at the time knew that I’d bought him, and they knew the story of how it all happened, so it’s probably ended up being my biggest claim to fame.”

Leave him alone

Ron and Helen Ashdown carved up General Nediym into a small syndicate when Tosh Murphy walked away from the sale. Shortly after, on a piping hot Sunday in Brisbane, they found a young Peter Moody cutting the grass outside the satellite stable of Sydney trainer Bill Mitchell.

“Had I not been mowing the lawn, had I been inside taking a leak, Ron might have driven on,” Moody recalled in his book a few years ago. “While hard work makes good luck, sometimes good luck happens by itself, and you need it in this game.”

Moody was then the Brisbane foreman for the Mitchell yard in Queensland. It was a job he held down for 10 years before branching out on his own, and he credits ‘The General’ for much of his early success. Moody looked after the horse almost exclusively during the glittering years of General Nediym’s track career, which took nothing from the eagle eye of the horse’s official trainer.

“Peter was bullish about him,” Bill Mitchell said. “It was Derby Day at Flemington when he had his first start (at Eagle Farm), and we all backed him because we knew he could go good. I remember it well because he won by 4l. It was a jog trot.”

General Nediym was an undefeated 2-year-old for Mitchell until he ran fourth in the 1997 Golden Slipper. Thereafter, the colt won his next four, meaning his first 10 career starts were marred only by the Slipper. In everything else, he was first over the line.

General Nediym’s final racecourse tally would read 21 starts for 13 wins and four placings, which probably doesn’t do him justice on facts alone. He was a powerful, free-running bull of a colt, and there were few horses that could stay with him when the stars aligned on raceday.

Around the yard though, General Nediym was a bit aloof.

“He liked to be left alone,” Mitchell said. “He didn’t have any bad in him, but he didn’t want you messing with him too much. He didn’t like being dressed, and if you left him alone he was a proper professional.”

The General scheme of things

General Nediym had 18 starts for Mitchell and Moody before the ownership group moved the horse to Clarry Conners. They’d had great success with him, winning 12 races all up, so it was a shock when the move occurred.

Under Conners, General Nediym won the Magic Millions Cup, and he was then second in two Sydney Group starts before retiring in the autumn of 1999.

Thereafter, he embarked on an upwardly mobile stud career.

He stood with the Ashdowns at Glengarry Stud for a season, then Eliza Park in Victoria. After that, General Nediym relocated to Ballymore Stud in Murrurundi until finding a home at Widden Stud in early 2004. By then, the horse had stamped himself considerably.

For his first three seasons, his books were in the double digits and, from his first crop at Glengarry, he sired Regimental Gal, who emulated him in winning both the 2003 Magic Millions 2YO Classic and the 2004 G1 Lightning S. Ra Sun also emerged from this crop, a winner of the G2 Maribyrnong Plate.

General Nediym also sired the G1 Oakleigh Plate winner Mrs Onassis, plus multiple stakes winners Ichihara and Hoss Amor. In 2007, he sired Military Rose, who became the stallion’s second winner of the Magic Millions 2YO Classic. General Nediym remains the only horse to win the rich sprint on the Gold Coast and then go on to sire a subsequent winner or, in this case, subsequent winners.

In 2009, he sired the New Zealand Group 1 winner War Horse (NZ), who remains the only son of General Nediym still standing in Australia. War Horse is at Bombora Downs in Queensland covering his seventh book of mares.

All up, General Nediym sired 48 stakes winners during his stud career. He got 564 winners from 765 runners, and the bulk of his stakes success was among the 2-year-olds.

However, it is his influence as a broodmare sire that has resonated most loudly. General Nediym is one of those persistent stallions in the damlines of significant horses today.

His daughters have produced the likes of Hey Doc (Duporth), Jameka (Myboycharlie {Ire}), Mr Quickie (Shamus Award), Sizzling, Lasqueti Spirit (Beneteau) and Menari. There’s also Mamaragan (Wandjina), I Am Excited (Snitzel), Run Fox Run (Foxwedge) in South Africa, and last Saturday's G2 Villiers S. winner Brutality (Shamus Award).

Gallery: Some of General Nediym's daughters' Group 1-winning progeny

General Nediym is the broodmare sire of 42 stakes winners and, in Australia, his daughters are highly sought-after.

“There are some people out there actively looking to buy them now,” David Chester said.

Life changer

When still a relatively young horse, General Nediym died from colic complications at Widden Stud in 2009. He was just 14 years old and it was Australia Day, some five years after the death of Ron Ashdown.

General Nediym had been the Champion First Season Sire of 2002/03, and in 2007/08 he was the leading sire of individual juvenile winners and juvenile stakes winners. Widden studmaster Antony Thompson said at the time that the horse was life-changing, and it was true.

From the Ashdowns to Tosh Murphy and Peter Moody, the powerful chestnut horse influenced all around him. He remains a critical part of the early Magic Millions tapestry, and his influence on the 2YO Classic is unrivalled.

For the Ashdown family, who are still in Queensland and whose happenstance was to keep the horse despite selling him in the sale ring, General Nediym remains an affectionate episode in their history.

“He means a lot to us,” Helen Ashdown said. “We were terribly lucky to have him, because not many people have bred horses like that, raced them and then stayed in them through their stud careers. He was a wonderful part of our family and my husband, in particular, was very fond of him.”