Japan Rewarded for Developing Stayers
By Brian Russell - Breednet - 8 November 2006
It is unlikely that Delta Blues and Pop Rock, the Japanese bred, owned and trained pair who filled the first two places in yesterday’s $5million Melbourne Cup over 3200m at Flemington, would have been contesting the event, if they were Australians. Although there are thousands of horses bred here with stout bloodlines, very few of them have their stamina developed by training methods and racing conditions.
There is only a small number of races beyond 2400m and a big percentage of metropolitan meetings through the year lack even events at this distance. The same applies in the world’s biggest racing nation America, one who has no black type races at 3200m and only about three beyond 2400m.
Also, often the small number of major American stakes at 2400m fall to contestants who have had their stamina developed in European racing before hand. A horse who can run well at 2400m on the big, undulating tracks of England, should have no problems in running 3200m in Australia. On the other hand many of England’s long distance performers lack the speed to win the Melbourne Cup, although they may plod into a place.
Both the Japanese horses who gained the glory in this year’s Melbourne Cup, separated by only a half head and over four lengths ahead of third placed Aussie Maybe Better, were proven performers at a high level in Japan beyond 2400m.Third in the Caulfield Cup at his only other Australian start, Delta Blues had won five races back home including the Japanese St Leger-Gr.1 (3000m) and Nakayama Stayers Cup (3600m) and been third in the Japan Cup.
In18 starts Pop Rock, on the other hand, had won six races including three at 2500m, the best of them being a Group 2 event at Tokyo. He is the second best performer by the Fairy King Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner and Japan Cup third Helissio, a sire who paid three visits to the Widden Stud and left Helenus, a winner of the Victoria Derby, Rosehill Guineas and Caulfield Guineas now standing at Heytesbury Stud,Keysbrook, Western Australia and who is to have first crop yearlings at 2007 sales.
Pop Rock is from a mare by American bred Japanese sire giant Sunday Silence, the grandsire in male line of Delta Blues. He is by Dance in the Dark, a winner of the Japanese St Leger and Derby second produced by a Nijinsky mare closely related to Group1 winners Arazi (stands at the Independent Stallions Stud at Nagambie in Victoria), Noverre (shuttles to Darley in the Hunter Valley) and the deceased Joyeux Danseur (due to have his first Australian yearlings at coming sales but the source of winners up to Group1 level in America, he was imported for the Wattle Brae Stud at Nobby in Queensland).
Delta Blues is from American bred Dixie Flash, a daughter of Dixieland Band, a Northern Dancer sire who is also the sire of the dam of Street Sense, the awesome winner of the American Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at the weekend.
The family that produced Delta Blues just missed having a double on the Melbourne Cup program as a relation, the Emirates Park bred Danewin mare Vitesse Dane, finished a neck second in the $101,000 Ritzenhoff Handicap over 1700. Earlier in her career winner of the Queensland Oaks and third in their Derby, she is from Riverbed, a great grandaughter of Bonnie and Gay, a three-quarter sister to Lady Offshore, the third dam of Delta Blues. It is also the family of world champion Dancing Brave and of Humam, a stakes winner in England by Nijinsky standing at the Pine Lodge Stud, Scone.