The stallion’s name was Danehill (USA) and he had established himself as one of the most gifted sprinters in Europe, during a racing career that saw him claim the G1 Haydock Sprint Cup and the G3 Cork & Orrery S., now known as the G1 Platinum Jubilee S., at the Royal meeting at Ascot.
The smooth-moving entire was installed at Coolmore Stud in Ireland and Arrowfield Stud, Down Under. His first antipodean crop had reached the sales in 1993 and their reception had been mixed.
“The yearlings were described as cart horses by the elite,” quipped John Messara, the man primarily responsible for Danehill’s presence in the Hunter Valley at his Arrowfield Stud.
Danehill (USA) | Image courtesy of Sportpix
“You know, Arrowfield's bought this horse, they brought him out here from there, it’s cost them a fortune and they look like cart horses,” continued Messara.
John Peatfield, who was working as a vet for leviathan owner Lloyd Williams at the time, fell into the camp that thought those first Danehills were worth a shot, though not without fault.
“My early impressions were very positive,” he remembered. “I liked them very much, but I just thought the colts were maybe going to get a bit heavy… they weren’t so much big, but they were very solid and a bit heavy, but they got away with it.”
“I liked them (Danehill's progeny) very much, but I just thought the colts were maybe going to get a bit heavy… they weren’t so much big, but they were very solid and a bit heavy, but they got away with it.” - John Peatfield
Another fan of the early Danehills was the outfit known colloquially as the FBI or Freedman Brothers Incorporated. Led by oldest brother, the Hall of Fame trainer, Lee, the operation was the most successful at the highest level in the country and were already appreciating the stock of another shuttle horse, Last Tycoon.
From zero to hero
Richard Freedman remembers the search that led to the acquisition of Danehill’s first-crop star, Danzero.
“We actually sought him out,” he revealed.
“I remember, they had a sale at Sanctuary Cove one year… called ‘Sale of the Sanctuary.’… where they had portable boxes for the horses and it was all, very makeshift and we were hunting around, as we did… and we just kept coming across horses by this stallion, Danehill, that John Messara was standing at Arrowfield.
Danzero | Image courtesy of Bronwen Healy
“I think we only bought 10 horses at the sale, and that was a lot for us, and I think four of them were by Danehill. So we really invested heavily in him and luckily for us, one of them was Danzero.”
Danzero cost $55,000 at that Sale and quickly became his sire’s first stakes winner. It was his performance in the world’s richest race for 2-year-olds, the G1 Golden Slipper S. that stamped him, and his sire, as something special.
“I stood at Rosehill… with the owners,” recalled Messara.
“When he won the Slipper, I thought, ‘We’re on something pretty special here’… What I’m going to do is buy the first two or three outstanding representatives and of course Slipper winners have been great stallions in the past.”
John Messara
Messara goes on to explain how he went about acquiring those representatives, including the next year’s Golden Slipper winner, Flying Spur, at an Easter Sale memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Tragedy at Newmarket
Danehill’s emergence as an elite sire of precocious speed, along with the rise of Last Tycoon and Kenmare (Fr), ensured a resurgence of interest in William Inglis and Sons’ showpiece event, the Australian Easter Yearling Sale.
But a spectre loomed on the horizon. Jonathan D’Arcy remembers the morning of Wednesday the 6th of April 1994 vividly.
Jonathon D'Arcy | Image courtesy of Inglis
“I spent 14 years living in Young Street, where the Newmarket complex is, I rented a house from the company,” he explained.
“In those days, they used to have the Easter Sale on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with the Wednesday being Oaks Day down at Randwick.
“Wednesday morning, normally a quieter morning, because most people are going racing, but at a quarter to six, six o’clock I had a knock at the door and Brian Gorman, who was working for Segenhoe at the time, had said: ‘You’ve got to come down here very quickly… so I ran down and the sight that I saw in the old stable three was heart wrenching.”
A mystery ailment had struck down a profusion of young horses and stud staff were trying anything and everything to ease their pain.
Inglis' old Newmarket sales complex in Randwick
“There were, at that stage, five yearlings that people had taken out of their boxes and they were actually lying in the alleyway of stable three,” D’Arcy recalled
The podcast goes in depth on the outbreak of an extremely rare case of Botulism that ultimately claimed the lives of more than 30 young horses, whether the Sale was able to continue and the lasting impacts on the industry.
