If Widden Stud has had a golden era, and likely it’s had a few, then the years it stood Bletchingly must surely rank among the best. In his time, the brilliant Bletchingly stood alongside such horses as Lunchtime (GB), Marscay and Vain.
You’d take any one of these stallions every day of the week because, on their own, they were farm-makers. But collectively, they represented some of the best sirelines of any era, and Bletchingly, in particular, proved exceptional.
Bletchingly at Widden Stud
For three consecutive seasons he was Champion Sire of Australia, beginning in 1979 and bowing out to Sir Tristram (Ire) in 1982. He was Champion 2-Year-Old sire in 1989/90, and among the best of his progeny were Emancipation, Best Western, Canny Lad and Spirit Of Kingston. But even these were sideshows to the brilliant millionaire Kingston Town.
At stud, Bletchingly sired 63 stakes winners, which he managed from books of no more than 61. In any one year, his highest foal-count was 45, which he achieved in the spring of 1984.
Like his sire, Biscay, and his grandsire Star Kingdom (Ire), he had a knack of upgrading his mares. But Bletchingly’s success at stud often confounded thoroughbred purists.
Bletchingly | Image courtesy of Sires of Australia and NZ 1986
He was a powerful horse, standing 15.3hh with a good shoulder, but his back-end defied the breed. His hindquarters were those of a quarter horse, so broad and flat that ‘he could hardly fit through the stable door’. He was also terribly unsound with that ‘massive chest and hindquarters on billiard table legs’, according to an old Caulfield character.
As both a sire and a racehorse, Bletchingly had problem after problem. He had sesamoid issues on the track, had a persistent jaw infection and he was a bleeder. While at Widden, he had a fractured tooth removed.
It was this poor luck that meant the horse started only five times for trainer Angus Armanasco. Nevertheless, from a truncated career Bletchingly won four races and was second, his most notable victory coming in the 1975 The Galaxy, now a Group 1.
Angus Armanasco, trainer of Bletchingly
Bletchingly stood at Widden Stud from the spring of 1976. His debut service fee was $1500, and shares in the stallion were advertised at $3000 a pop. Inevitably, it was a bargain.
The horse’s final season covering was in 1992/93, and his ability to produce sire sons was remarkable, albeit not unusual for the Star Kingdom line.
Best Western, Canny Lad and Kenny’s Best Pal were all decent sire-sons of Bletchingly, while his 1988 Golden Slipper winner, Star Watch, later sired the very consistent stallion Hurricane Sky.
So insistent was Bletchingly’s career at stud that he was once described as a ‘genetic furnace’, a horse whose progeny was world class. Along with Sir Tristram, he is credited with sweeping revisions to the sirelines of the 1980s, and a stallion that would outperform almost every other influence in a pedigree.
The Widden cemetery | Image courtesy of Rhys Loaney
Only the great sires can do that, so it was a sad day at Widden Stud on July 13, 1993, when Bletchingly, at 23 years old, died from an internal haemorrhage. He is buried at Widden alongside Marscay, less than a valley away from where he was bred by Stanley Wootton at Baramul in 1970.
