Denario filly secures her place on the grid for Grand Prix Day

Sunday afternoon (Nov. 27) harness racing at Addington Raceway posed as a last-chance saloon for some of the budding juveniles hopeful of working their way into calculations for the upcoming Grand Prix Day at the same track this weekend.

With entry qualifications based on stake money earnt, only the top 13 two-year-olds in each gait and sex will qualify for the $100,000 Group One features, leaving some trainers and connections with an anxious watch over the last couple of weeks.

Nathan Williamson and the connections of Micaitlen Denario (Captaintreacherous) were squarely in that bracket, needing a win in the penultimate race of the card on Sunday to secure a start in the Ace Of Diamonds for 2YO pacing fillies.

In what must have been an omen for the Southland-trained and owned filly, the race was run in conditions more befitting of Invercargill (sorry southern friends), with the heavens opening up again just before the start.

Sent out an odds-on favourite, Micaitlen Denario made light work of her opposition, giving her trainer driver the closest thing to an armchair drive as you will ever see, winning untouched by a margin of four and half lengths.

MICAITLEN DENARIO REPLAY

“We have thought a wee bit of this filly for a fair while now but for one reason or another she hasn’t registered that first win until yesterday, so we had a very relieved trainer and syndicate manager after the win,” said the co-breeder and owner, Mark O’Connor.

O’Connor and his wife Pauline have hit a purple patch of late with their Denario breed and given the couple tend to sell more then they race, the pair were naturally delighted to see the filly they retained doing a nice job for them and the big group of owners.

“We were hoping to get a nicely bred filly out of our good race mare Shezaball (Presidential Ball) to keep the line going so we promoted a syndicate back in 2021 with Micaitlen Denario and a Well Said yearling colt called Dictate Denario out of Shezaball’s mother, Averil’s Atom.

“The filly is actually named after our two daughters Micaela and Kaitlen and her race name is pronounced Mick-aitlen. So, we threw two in the pot there, and that’s how we came up with the Mic & Dic syndicate name.

“One of the syndicate guys actually said he didn’t like the syndicate name and felt it was a wee bit rude, but I don’t think he had quite interpreted it as was intended,” he laughed.

“Pauline and I have a 20% share of the racing syndicate. A mate of ours Owen Shaw who we bred and raced Shezaball with, he is in the syndicate and has 20% of it also. The 19th Hole syndicate which is a group of golfers who raced Southern Delight (Bettor’s Delight) which is Shezaball’s half-sister, and they were quite keen to get back in on the bloodlines again and they took 20%. The other 40% is split up between friends and associates.

“They are a great bunch of people, a really social sort of crew and pretty excited to have a horse who is mixing it with the better caliber fillies in the country,” he said.

How the O’Connor’s wound up keeping Micaitlen Denario is a story for another day, but the short and sweet of it is still serendipitous to say the least.

“It’s really only fate that we ended up with her as the one to extend the line. We were really looking to keep the first filly out of the family which we originally named Sorpressa Denario, after a mix up with the semen (sorpressa meaning surprise in Spanish).

“She ended up being renamed Play Philly (Art Major) and we would have retained her if we hadn’t of got a filly the following spring, which ended up being Micaitlen (Denario). So that’s how we ended up with her.

“I had kept track of Captaintreacherous and had a feeling he would be the next good thing in terms of producing really smart horses. I kept tabs on him in America and thought he was going to provide some pretty good bloodlines to have a commercial mare going forward. We wanted to give the mare every chance obviously, so we were more than happy to hang onto her,” he said.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even with a G2 win to the name of Play Philly, I’d imagine playing the long game as a breeder, the O’Connor’s would be pretty happy with their talented Captaintreacherous juvenile and her future broodmare prospects.

As alluded to earlier, Micaitlen Denario is out of the Presidential Ball mare, Shezaball, who Mark and Pauline raced, later purchasing her dam Averil’s Atom (Soky’s Atom) who would wind up being a cornerstone of their breeding operation.

Shezaball won eight races all told and was probably a bit stiff to not have every Southland breeder’s dream race on the CV having finished second in the G2 Southland Oaks back in 2012.

SHEZABALL SOUTHLAND OAKS REPLAY

It’s been awesome to watch her broodmare career from a distance having seen most of her foals in the flesh over the years on the Southland yearling trips since producing her first foal some eight years ago now.

If not for some bad luck, Shezaball would be a perfect five from five with foals to winners, however four from five is not a bad strike rate with two Group 3 winners and a G2 placegetter on the CV.

“The first foal out of Shezaball by Rock n Roll Heaven was called Rockaball and he was quite a neat wee thing that went on to win $150,000 and won a Group 3 and has been a pretty useful performer.

“The second foal out of the mare without being too unpolite was a big grouse Art Major fella who won a race, but there were some really nice performers in America by Art Major out of Presidential Ball mares, so we decided to persevere with Art Major for the third foal and produced a really nice colt.

“His name was Ivan Major, and he was with Nathan Williamson and shaping up really well and as a late two-year-old he rated it not far behind Ragazzo Mach in terms of their development at that point of time.

“He got a really unusual infection which was diagnosed as leukemia in the finish and died while grazing out in between his two- and three-year-old years. It was just a weird one and he was taken from us quite quickly which was hard to fathom and one of those freak things that happens from time to time, and we never got to see him in action.

“Then we had Play Philly (Art Major) who has turned out to be quite a nice mare for Scott Eliffe and it’s just a shame she didn’t get a chance to mix it with some of the top three-year-old’s in the last two or three months.

“She had to get a wind operation just when she was coming up this time back but hopefully after the wind operation, we will see her back in the Autumn as a race mare,” he said.

That leads us back to Sunday afternoons winner, Micaitlen Denario, who despite being on the bigger side, always gave the connections a feel she would be a precocious type. O’Connor looks back at a decision he and Pauline made in changing the routine with the non-sales bound horses as something that possibly helped put her on that path!

“We put her and the other syndicate horse through a preparation system just the same way we would the sales horses. We worked out for whatever reason that the horses we weren’t putting through the sales weren’t getting the same kind of attention and feeding regimes.

“It was crazy because if we were wanting to turn some of them into racehorses, we should be giving them the same sort of support and structure as the sales yearlings,” he said.

“We think it has paid dividends and Nathan really liked her from day dot. She was broken in by a guy called Gary Argyle out at Winton and he really liked her. Nathan has always had a soft spot for her. Back in the Autumn when she ran third and then second behind Treacherous Gall in the Group 2 Caduceus Classic, we had the Leaonard Memorial lined up for her, but she got a splint and had to be tipped out. It would have been great to line up in that given her half-sister won the race a year earlier.

“We put her out and brought her back and she took a wee bit longer to come back this time in, but we were really happy with her first up third in the Sires Stakes heat at Addington behind Treacherous Gall and Aardiebytheseaside. We went away thinking she is definitely going to show us something this time in.

“We went away back down south and thought we were going to pick up a soft kill at the Tuapeka meeting but were outpointed by Ken Barron’s filly Sister Cherie (Bettor’s Delight). They quite like her and think she is quite smart.

“Then we got some rough luck at Rangiora when Korbyn Newmans horse, Major Happy, punctured her sulky wheel in the score up and Nathan had to retire her from the race when her sulky tube came away from the rim. We really needed that race for fitness purposes for the G1 Sires Stakes final on Show Day and we just felt she was going to be a bit underdone.

“She tried her heart out but when you get up to that big league you need everything to be on song for it to go your way and that Millwood Nike is just a superstar horse and there were some other nice horses there too.

“So, we weren’t disheartened, but it was just really nice on Sunday to get back into a race where we felt she could be competitive and show that she has got a bit of talent,” he said.

With her Sunday afternoon win assuring connections of a start in the G1 Grand Prix feature for 2YO Fillies, O’Connor and the large ownership group will no doubt be making their presence known in the big smoke at Addington.

And while it would be every breeder and owners dream to win a race of that stature, the reality is there is a short priced favourite who might be the best juvenile filly we have ever seen on a racetrack.

Notwithstanding Millwood Nike, you throw in the likes of Treacherous Gall, Kahlua Flybye, Aardiebytheseaside and Advance Party (withdrawn from Sunday), and you start to appreciate that this a talented crop of juvenile fillies.

“Your always hopeful, but that’s a pretty deep field that she will come against.

“In saying that, Nathan has always thought she can follow speed well and if she got a draw and could tuck away on the fence and could still run out the race quite nicely, we would love to be in the top four or five as a target. Realistically it’s going to be hard to beat the Millwood Nike’s of the world and there are plenty of other nice fillies in this crop and we are just pleased to be in the lineup to be honest,” he said.

O’Connor and his wife have plenty to keep their minds occupied leading into the big Group One this weekend with this year’s sales preparation in full swing.

On the back of a cracking $100,000 for their Always B Miki colt out of Shezaball last year, the couple are quietly confident of another strong showing at sales time in 2023.

“We got really good feedback from Dean Shannon about the Miki out of Shezaball called Cold Chisel which is pleasing. We dont have a yearling out of her this year but have two of the three from the same family. We are really pleased with them all and they look like they will present in great order,” he said.

You can view the Denario Breeding draft here.

Buyers wanting to secure the next offering out of Shezaball won’t have to wait too much longer with the seventh foal arriving safely this spring.

“It’s really pleasing to see the Captaintreacherous blood coming through more prominently in New Zealand. He’s doing a fantastic job in the states and Australia and the other good news on the horizon is we had a full brother to Micaitlen Denario in the last week of October.

“We are having a dab with Lazarus this season, we just thought he would be worth a go in the flesh and took the mare to the stud to see she gets in foal,” he said.

By the time the 2024 and 2025 sales roll around, the pedigree page of Shezaball will be looking pretty sharp one would imagine.

For complete Addington results, click here.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink