BREEDING
IN YEARS gone by, most farmers in Australia’s rural areas ran a thoroughbred mare or two. In the 21st century, the luxury of breeding a foal or two each year to try to pick up a local race or even venture to the big smoke with something better is for most long gone.
However, for New South Wales cattle breeders Nerida and Roger Atkinson the racing dream that started 10 years ago rolls on and on, and tomorrow their durable gelding, Sniper’s Bullet, runs in yet another group 1 event – this time the Doomben 10,000.
The Atkinsons, who run a Santa Gertrudis stud at Yeoval, just south of Dubbo, had their first active thoroughbred experience 15 years ago when they were persuaded to enter into the ownership of a colt by Be My Guest stallion, Komon.
Named Irish Dapper and initially in the care of Narromine trainer John Richter, he won his first start at Dubbo, and then proceeded to win 16 races including three in Sydney during a stint with Guy Walter.
Not surprisingly the Atkinsons’ interest in the sport of kings increased sharply.
Within a couple of years they had been given an aged broodmare by a friend and bred two colts by Sky Chase, one of whom won four races around the country, and they were away.
Richter later agisted some broodmares at the Atkinsons’ property and when the trainer offered to let them breed a foal from one of them, Nerida Atkinson decided the better option was to buy the mare along with another of Richter’s.
”I was a bit suspicious of how such a [breeding] transaction would work and thought buying them was a much cleaner way about it,” Nerida Atkinson said.
The $4000 it cost to buy the Yallah Prince mare Yallah Terrace, a maiden winner in a five- horse maiden field at Bourke, was perhaps the best $4000 they ever spent, despite the fact that she had a plain pedigree and had not yet produced a winner, so at that time she was no bargain.
It is a pedigree that, while it contained no black type for generations, shares many common threads of Australian pedigrees of two decades ago, being by a Northern Dancer line stallion, with two crosses of Wilkes and one of Star Kingdom.
Atkinson says she decided to send Yallah Terrace to Spectacular Bid stallion Bite The Bullet because the prolific sire of winners boasted such a good strike rate of winners to winners.
The mating would produce Sniper’s Bullet, who not only became another winner for the stallion but after winning the 2007 Stradbroke Hcp gave his sire his only group 1 winner.
While the Stradbroke win as a three-year-old remains the high point of the career of Sniper’s Bullet, there have been several other peaks along the way, including the group 1 double in the Kingston Town Stakes and Railway Stakes in Perth in 2009, and his earnings to date total just over $2.5 million.
Yallah Terrace has been unable to produce another Sniper’s Bullet but she has certainly shown that he was no fluke.
Slick Sniper, a year younger brother to Sniper’s Bullet, has run in 12 races and made more than $200,000 with a couple of fourths in listed events, and a General Nediym filly named General’s Sniper has a win in Sydney among her six victories and has also run fourth in a listed race.
It has not all been plain sailing though and Yallah Terrace’s 2007 colt by Snippetson had to be put down after being injured in a storm.
Yallah Terrace succumbed to a colic attack last year but currently has a yearling filly by Golden Slipper winner Stratum, and the Atkinsons have a few more broodmares.
Maryjo Mary, who was purchased at the same time as Yallah Terrace, has not been able to match her deeds to date but has produced Master Gaze, a gelding by Intergaze, who has won seven races including a two-year-old event at Rosehill, and she has several offspring yet to race.
Also in the Atkinsons’ breeding program is Coveted Lady, a daughter of Yallah Terrace that they bought from Richter several years after the purchase of her dam.
Two years ago Roger Atkinson raised the stakes a little and during a visit to the Easter broodmare sale in Sydney spent $26,000 to secure a half-sister to Tie The Knot who has since produced a Henny Hughes filly for whom the couple have high hopes.
”When we started we were hoping to breed something that might win us a country picnic cup but Sniper’s has taken us around Australia,” he said.
It has certainly been an amazing journey. Who would not want to have a broodmare or two in the back paddock?