Thursday, 14 October 2010: What was it that Duncan Ramage saw in the sale ring that drove him to buy the High Chaparral yearling we now know as the superstar So You Think?
 | So You Think
Photo by Racing and Sports | |
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Ramage's DGR Thoroughbred Services outlaid $NZ110,000 when he purchased
So You Think 
for Malaysia's Dato Tan Chin Nam at the 2008 New Zealand yearling sales at Karaka.
It now reads as a bargain buy but at the time may could have been considered an expensive gamble as the colt's pedigree page was hardly dripping in black type.
Certainly being from the first Australasian crop of world class racehorse
High Chaparral was an attraction but none of the colt's first four dams had produced a stakes winner and the best their other descendants had done were Listed victories.
Also none of the first four dams had been of much consequence on the racetrack although each prior to
So You Think had produced some handy non stakes performing winners.
Currently owned in New Zealand by his breeders M.J. Moran and Piper Farm Ltd,
So You Think's dam Triassic won from 1400m to 2000m but none of her previous seven winners including runners by Sadler's Wells sons Carnegie and Galileo won past 1600m.
However the daughter of Nijinsky's US G2 winner Tights and can boast a perfect score as all her seven runners are winners.
They include Hip Hip Hooray (Tale Of The Cat), winner of six sprints in Hong Kong, and good NZ winners Tycoon Jack (Last Tycoon) and Circus Dance (Carnegie).
From 2002 to early 2005, Triassic was owned in Australia by Dr Jack Woolridge of Inverness Stud at Bowral in NSW and he bred three of her winners.
Triassic is a half-sister to Sydney winner Rhapsodic from Astral Row, a winner of six races in New Zealand.
Astral Row, by Long Row, was a G2 winner in England from Pak Bun Bay, a winner of three races in Australia.
Pak Bun Bay was by Matinee Idol, a horse bred by Alabama Stud at Scone and sold to media magnate Sir Frank Packer as a yearling in Sydney for a then record price of 7100 guineas.
Unraced and a modest sire, Matinee Idol was got in England by Derby winner Pinza but was foaled in Australia from the mare Method, who was imported by Packer.
Packer sold Method in foal to Alabama Stud at a dispersal of the Aluinn Stud at Muswellbrook.
It is necessary to go back to the fourth dam of
So You Think, the maiden Marco Polo mare Philipolo, to get near the other superior racehorses in the family.
Philipolo was a half-sister to the dam of G1 winners Turf Ruler and Philomel.
Ramage may well have been attracted by
So You Think's inbreeding to one of the most prepotent forces in modern history, Northern Dancer.
Northern Dancer supplied
High Chaparral's illustrious sire Sadler's Wells and Triassic's paternal grandsire Nijinsky and is the only double in
So You Think's close up pedigree.
He may also have had an inkling that
High Chaparral was a sire star on the rise.
Standing in Australia for the first time this season, the
Coolmore stallion's oldest southern hemisphere progeny are now 4YO and include G1 winning sons
So You Think, Shoot Out and Monaco Consul and G1-placed Descarado.
High Chaparral raced 13 times in England, Ireland, France and America for 10 wins (six G1s) and about $9 million.
He was a G1 winner at two, three and four and boasts the rare achievement of wins in the English and Irish Derbys and the American Breeders' Cup Turf twice and a
Timeform high of 132.
