Wednesday, 18 July 2012: Last Sunday's $S1.15 million Singapore Derby at Kranji produced two positive results for Australia's Arrowfield Stud.
 | Chase Me win the Derby
Photo by Singapore Turf Club | |
|
The Arrowfield-bred Arowana Dot Com (Hussonet x Unveil by Chief's Crown) ran third in the 2000m behind runaway winner Chase Me, a colt with a significanbt linkl to the new Arrowfield import Gio Ponti.
Arowana Do Com was bred by Arrowfield in partnership with John Leaver and sold by Bellerive Stud for $170,000 at the 2009 Magic Millions Gold Coast Sale when Magic Millions signed for him as agent.
Arowana Dot Com winds up a tremendous year for horses sold under the Bellerive banner, also being the source of Group winners Snitzerland, Hot Snitzel and Flying Snitzel and Group performers Rekindled Alliance and Road Trippin'.
Chase Me, by Storm Creek from the Gold Brose mare Cartier Gold, is another major race winner from the Storm Cat sire line represented at Arrowfield by US champion turf performer Gio Ponti.
However he has an even stronger Arrowfield connection as his co-breeder is Arrowfield's pedigree analyst Peter Jenkins.
Chase Me was foaled in 2007, when New Zealand-born Jenkins was the general manager of StoneyBridge Karaka which shuttled Storm Creek from the US.
Chase Me is the result of steps taken in the late 1980s by Jenkins when he helped to establish the Levin Breeders' Forum whose members included well-known pedigree analyst and researcher Clive Harper and Noeline Redfern, an enthusiastic breeder who would travel from her Wairarapa home to attend the monthly meetings.
“Noeline's father Ben Archer had bred and raced a lot of good horses and it was always her dream to do the same. In 1993 I offered to find her a good quality mare and purchased Nile Lark by Niniski, which appealed to Noeline because she loved Nijinsky," Jenkins said.
Nile Lark, imported from England in 1987, had enough stamina to win the two-and-a-quarter-mile Pontefract Cup but with a
Timeform 
rating of 56, she badly needed a class upgrade.
“Clive Harper and I both suggested Gold Brose as a good mating for Nile Lark because as a sheer speed two-year-old he was a good match for a late-maturing staying type and the resulting foal would be line-bred to the full siblings Ridan and Thong," he said.
The result was Cartier Gold, the dam of Chase Me whose mating with Storm Creek was line-breeding to Somethingroyal and to two full sisters who won the American Oaks, Cherokee Rose and How, both descended from the important taproot mare Maid of Masham.
Noeline Redfern sold Cartier Gold's first Storm Creek colt for $45,000 at the 2007 NZ Bloodstock Carnival Sale.
He failed to post a win from seven starts in Singapore but the mare went back to Storm Creek in 2007 to produce Chase Me, bred in partnership by Redfern and Jenkins.
“He was a good type but not quite as appealing as the first colt so we sold him for $4000 as a foal at the NZ Bloodstock Winter Mixed Sale," Jenkins said.
Jenkins is excited about breeding a G1 winner from the fewer than 20 horses he has bred since 1985.
“It is such a thrill when everything goes right and you get a result like that. Even without a financial gain, it's still a great buzz.”
Jenkins joined the Arrowfield team in 2009 and is readily available to advise breeders on pedigree matches with the Arrowfield stallions.
