Dual hemisphere success has McKeever doing more than Just Fine

Cover image courtesy of Tattersalls

It’s 9am on Monday morning in the UK, and instead of basking in the glory of his red-letter weekend, Johnny McKeever is busy buying the Group 2-placed mare Sedaka (NZ) (Savabeel) on Gavelhouse.com in conjunction with fellow bloodstock agent Bruce Perry.

Secured for NZ$205,000 on behalf of Watership Down Stud Australia, Sedaka will visit Darley’s exciting young shuttle sire Too Darn Hot (GB) for her maiden cover this year, a stallion who has made a blistering start with his first crop of 2-year-olds in the Northern Hemisphere courtesy of the likes of Group 1 winner Fallen Angel (GB) and Group 2 scorer Darnation (Ire).

The latter was a dominant winner of the G2 May Hill S. at Doncaster last week and that is precisely where McKeever rounded off his particularly fruitful weekend, with 200,000gns (AU$404,200) yearling purchase Iberian (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}) winning the G2 Champagne S. a matter of hours after another of his purchases, Just Fine, made it two from two in Australia with a stylish success in the G3 Kingston Town S. at Royal Randwick.

Having Group race success with a juvenile in England and a 6-year-old tried horse in Australia on the same day is a real testament to McKeever’s ability to identify a quality horse, although in typically self-deprecating fashion, he believes lady luck has more than played her part.

“We’ve been lucky enough to have quite a number of good horses over the years, but I can’t remember a time when in 36 hours we got three Group winners up on the board,” said McKeever, who also purchased Friday’s G3 Newcastle Gold Cup winner Military Mission (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) as a tried horse back in 2021.

“They weren’t the most important races, but you know how your luck is in this game, if you get a winner you’re thrilled, so to get three all at Group level was quite exciting.

“We all know that most of these things are down to a bit of judgement and a bit of luck. Olly Tait flew up to Newmarket to buy some stayers for Wathnan Racing and he outbid me on several of them, that’s why I ended up on Just Fine. Had he not been there, I might have bought a different one and then overlooked Just Fine.”

Thankfully for McKeever, he didn’t make that mistake with Just Fine, who up until that point was most famous for being King Charles III’s first winner as monarch.

The son of Sea The Stars (Ire) has subsequently left his Northern Hemisphere form well behind since joining up with the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott stable, taking little time to adapt to life on Australian soil which, according to McKeever, cannot be said of all imports.

“It’s a bit weird to say that a 5-year-old is an exciting horse, but he looks like Australia is really suiting him and he has progressed a great deal from a good quality handicapper in England to a horse that may be knocking on the door of The Metropolitan,” he said.

“I don’t know whether he has surprised them (Waterhouse and Bott) or not, but I know they have loved the way he’s gone since he arrived.

“In our experience, most of the time when they come down from here (UK) as older horses they do need about a year to acclimatise to Australia.

“The first season can be a bit hit and miss and it tends to be the second season there when you start to see the best of them, but this horse has just gone down there and taken everything in his stride.”

The dream team

Just Fine is now a clear favourite for The Metropolitan following Saturday’s impressive performance and will head into the Group 1 contest with an unbeaten record in Australia, something that is all too familiar for the McKeever and Waterhouse partnership.

Back in 2011, the pair teamed up to buy a horse by the name of Glencadam Gold (Ire) (Refuse To Bend {Ire}) for 135,000gns (AU$272,800), securing him from the draft of the late Sir Henry Cecil’s Warren Place Stables at the Tattersalls Horses in Training Sale in Newmarket.

Glencadam Gold took to Australia like a duck to water, winning his first three starts Down Under before heading into The Metropolitan as a $2.80 favourite, where he duly obliged by 3.8l under a young Tommy Berry.

Further elite-level success followed for McKeever and Waterhouse courtesy of fellow import The Offer (Ire) (Montjeu {Ire}), who triumphed in the G1 Sydney Cup in 2014. Their relationship is equal parts fruitful and longstanding, and McKeever has Waterhouse to thank for introducing him to the Australian bloodstock industry.

“I met Gai through a mutual friend at a dinner party in England and she did her usual, ‘Oh you’ve got to come down to Australia’,” McKeever recalled. “I said I didn’t have any clients, but she let me buy a few yearlings for her at Magic Millions in the early days and got me started.

“Gai is the whole reason I got into Australia and now that my kids have grown up, Susie and I go down there every year around the 1st of January and leave after Easter. It’s pretty nice and I've obviously got a lot more familiar with Australian racing in the intervening 12-15 years.

“I’ve bought her some stayers from up north almost every year since then - I think Glencadam Gold was actually one of the first and certainly the first Group 1 winner that I’d sent down to her.

“She has been an amazingly good client and is always so enthusiastic. Adrian (Bott) has become a good friend too and I have the height of respect for him as a trainer.”

As well as Glencadam Gold and The Offer, McKeever was also responsible for sourcing multiple stakes winner Military Mission for the Waterhouse-Bott team, parting with £170,000 (AU$327,000) to secure him from the draft of his trainer Hugo Palmer at the Goffs London Sale in 2021.

A winner of one race from seven starts prior to his import into Australia, Military Mission has proved a revelation Down Under, winning a further five times for his new connections including a pair of Group 3 contests.

“He’s an old star of a horse who we bought as a handicapper at the London Sale during the COVID year, where we all did it remotely and it was very difficult to do business,” McKeever said.

“My wife and I got stuck in Australia during COVID and Military Mission was the first horse we bought when we arrived back. I got steered onto him a little bit by Hugo Palmer, who used to be one of Gai’s assistants. He said that this horse would go well in Australia and we followed his advice, but I don’t think we could have envisaged he’d be this good.

“He’s just been a star for not a very expensive horse. He has won three Cups now and that’s his game. He’s a very genuine, tough horse and he’s giving his very enthusiastic group of owners a huge amount of fun. For what he cost he has been a brilliant bargain.”

The Goffs London Sale, a boutique auction held on the eve of Royal Ascot each year, has been a fruitful hunting ground for McKeever and Waterhourse, who teamed up to top last year’s edition when parting with £1.2 million (AU$2.31 million) to secure promising young stayer Hoo Ya Mal (GB) (Territories {Ire}).

The pair returned for more this year and signed the docket for two lots, both of whom McKeever has high hopes for, for a combined outlay of £560,000 (AU$1.08 million).

“One of them is a horse called Cuban Dawn, who is a lovely stayer in the making, and the other horse is more of a ‘now horse’ called New Endeavour, who has a lovely temperament and just loves to race,” McKeever revealed.

Gallery: The pair of horses purchased by McKeever and Waterhouse-Bott at this year's Goffs London Sale, images courtesy of Goffs

“He’s with Roger Varian and has now entered quarantine. I believe they’re going to give him a shot at the Golden Eagle.

“He’s a horse that has just improved and improved. I think he has improved something like 21lbs on official ratings since we bought him.

“He’s a really exciting horse and a little bit of a different mould to what we normally buy. I don’t think he’s an out-and-out stayer, I think he’s probably going to be a mile or 10-furlong type of horse in Australia.”

Changing it up

New Endeavour hails from the unraced Invincible Spirit (Ire) mare Moody Blue (Ire), who is a half-sister to the dam of dual Australian Group 2 winner and G1 Tatt’s Tiara placegetter Lumosty (Fastnet Rock).

McKeever and Co. will be hoping that New Endeavour adapts to Australian conditions as effortlessly as his future stablemate Just Fine, who also had evidence in his pedigree to suggest that he would be right at home in the Southern Hemisphere.

Just Fine is out of a half-sister to not only Saturday night’s runaway G1 Woodbine Mile winner Master Of The Seas (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}), but also Group 3-winning mare Falls Of Lora (Ire) (Street Cry {Ire}), who is the dam of Godolphin’s three-time Australian Group 1 hero Cascadian (GB) (New Approach {Ire}).

Although there was plenty to like about both Just Fine and New Endeavour from a pedigree standpoint, that wasn’t the deciding factor in their purchase according to McKeever, who places far less emphasis on a tried horse’s pedigree than that of a yearling.

“With horses in training it’s a different skill set from buying young stock and yearlings,” he said. “You look less at their pedigree and more about what their background is.

“It’s a huge catalogue for the Horses in Training Sale in Newmarket but there is quite a small number of horses that would hit our shortlist. We want horses that have shown enough class to be Listed-stroke-Group class in England, or at least very good quality handicappers that will get the trip.

“They also have to be sound and come from a stable where you feel there will be some juice left in the tank.

“It’s very, very competitive as the main stables in Australia are after these horses all the time.”

That competitiveness has prompted McKeever to slightly alter his approach to buying tried horses, with the leading bloodstock agent now much happier to consider those aged four and above than he would have been only a few years ago.

“One thing slightly against Just Fine was that he was a 4-year-old, and I normally prefer to buy 3-year-olds,” he added.

“Funnily enough, since Stuart Boman bought Zaaki aged five, maybe we are wrong to dismiss the 4-year-olds.

“A change in environment, warm weather and a different sort of training sometimes does the trick, and in real-life terms horses are only just becoming fully mature at four, so maybe we are missing a trick by only concentrating on buying 3-year-olds.

“That’s the beauty of this game, you are learning all the time.”

Hitting the jackpot

A fine example of that constant learning process is through McKeever’s blossoming relationship in the Northern Hemisphere with Lambourn trainer Charlie Hills, with whom he has purchased a number of yearlings in Europe over the past two years.

The pair have seemingly hit the jackpot with a talented 2-year-old colt by the name of Iberian, who announced himself as one of the leading juveniles in Europe with a commanding 2l success in the G2 Champagne S. at Doncaster on Saturday.

A 200,000gns (AU$404,200) purchase from Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale in Newmarket, Iberian cost slightly more than what McKeever and Hills are normally willing to spend on their yearlings, but much to the former’s relief, he looks to be worth every penny.

“I’m very excited for Charlie as that’s our first Group winner together in two years of buying,” McKeever said. “It takes a while to get to know the horse that your trainer likes and gets on well with, so we have definitely made a better stab of it this year.

“I think we’ve had about eight or nine 2-year-old winners come through the system this year and they’re quite nice quality horses too.

“We normally operate between 50,000 and 150,000 on most horses, but we had been encouraged to go higher for Iberian because John O’Connor at Ballylinch said that he would keep a share in the horse if we bought him, which gave us encouragement to know that the breeder thought so highly of him.

“Now he’s en route to becoming a stallion prospect.”

A son of former shuttle sire Lope De Vega (Ire), Iberian will now bid to enhance his stallion credentials in the G1 Dewhurst S. at Newmarket next month before being put away for the winter and prepared for a crack at next year’s 2000 Guineas.

He is likely to meet the cream of this year’s juvenile crop in the Dewhurst, with representation expected from both sides of the Irish Sea, but having already claimed the scalp of the highly regarded Rosallion (Ire) (Blue Point {Ire}) on the weekend, McKeever is confident that Iberian is up to the task.

“To do what he did was very exciting,” Mckeever said of Iberian’s Champagne S. victory.

“I was at Doncaster to watch him and they more or less said that the (Richard) Hannon horse (Rosallion) was one of the best that he had had for ages, so we hoped we might win or at least come a close second if he didn’t win.

“I was talking to Barry Hills yesterday and he said Iberian is as good a 2-year-old as they’ve had there for 10 years. He’s done a couple of bits of work at home the like of which they haven’t seen from a 2-year-old in a while.

“He’s got gears and he has that instant acceleration. He’s not huge, he’d only be a 15’3 model or something like that at the moment, but I think he has Guineas written all over him.”

There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and then, but a Guineas would be more than just fine for McKeever.