Simpson on the grid with first Group One runner

All eyes this weekend will be on the inaugural Grand Prix Day at New Zealand’s home of harness racing, Addington Raceway.

Eight Group Ones and a Group Three contest are sure to get the wheels spinning for anyone with a pulse that is interested in the sport, and the nominations certainly validate the hype in what will be a day unlike anything we have seen in this part of the world.

With any feature race meeting, the cream invariably rises to the top, and some of our leading stables will be well-represented with runners across the board.

But as seen with the Jewels, which this meeting has more or less replaced, the entry qualifications on money won for the four two-year-old G1 features creates an opportunity for some of our lesser-known horsemen and their connections to have a crack on harness racing’s biggest stage.

One of them is Dunedin horseman, Darryn Simpson, who with the second highest rated trotting filly in the $100,000 Ace Of Hearts will have his first Group One starter in 21 years of holding a training license.

The classy juvenile filly who helped Simpson achieve said milestone is the daughter of Father Patrick, Show No Fear.

As the winner of two races including the Listed Sires Stakes Classique, the well named trotting filly has shown little fear of her rivals to date and has earnt the right to be considered one of the leading chances come Sunday afternoon.

Simpson has taken advantage of the extended season to see his charge peaking at the business end of the year. However, this fairytale has been more than a calendar year in the making. Having held a trainer’s license since 2001, this has been two decades in the making.

Simpson has the added satisfaction of having acquired the filly into his barn having trusted his own eye and instincts to select Show No Fear on type while still on her mother. Under his careful tutelage, Simpson has crafted a talented young trotter capable of mixing it with the best in the country!

“We had purchased a colt called Have No Fear (Father Patrick) off Michelle Baird at the yearling sales and he was coming up nice and doing a good job, so we decided to go out the following year and have a look at some mares with their foals at Michelle’s place the morning of the sales,” said Simpson.

“We had three to choose from, and Show No Fear was the one I ended up selecting. She was beautiful and pretty impressive. She was mature for her age and was big and well put together and just a really nice horse,” he said.

The ‘fear’ breed is well known over the last couple of decades, thanks in part to 2006 NZ 2YO Filly of the Year, Fear Factor (Sundon), who has since produced G1 winners in Stress Factor (Majestic Son) and Prince Fearless (Majestic Son).

Fear Factor was bred by Michelle Baird, as were all the progeny out of the unraced Wide Acclaim mare, Fickle.

Fear Factor’s full older sister, Without Fear, has not been without her own success having won the inaugural NZ Trotting Oaks in 2003. She also produced a G1 winner of her own accord with the very horse Simpson acquired from Baird at the yearling sales back in 2019 for $32,000.

“Have No Fear was a very good horse, and he won his maiden on debut before we sold to him to Emilio and Mary Rosati for good money. He obviously went on and won a big one over in Victoria which really just vindicated our decision to purchase the filly from the family.

“They are different, to be fair, very different. Show No Fear was probably better put together and just a nice all-around horse and hopefully she can follow in his footsteps,” he said.

When Simpson says ‘we’, he is referring to his stable client and good friend Gary Clarke who has become a major owner in recent years. Clarke has spent the last few years investing heavily in his bloodstock and has equipped himself with a number of well-bred horses, in particular trotting fillies and mares such as Show No Fear.

“I had known Gary for a few years going back to when I worked for Stu (Stewart) Campbell. When I came home from Christchurch, I had been training back in Dunedin there for a while and he popped in one day to see me at my place.

“He told me to ‘have my gear ready, we are going to the sales’ and said, ‘you’re a long time dead’ and that he’d had a few friends with illnesses and the like and he wanted to have a bit of fun.

“That year we went and bought about half a dozen yearlings and haven’t looked back. Gary has been great to me and it’s hard to say if I didn’t have him in my corner whether I would still be going. We all know how hard it is. We’ve done a pretty good job just working in together and we’ve sold a lot as going horses like you saw with Have No Fear. People probably thought when we first started that we weren’t sellers, but we have actually sold quite a lot and aren’t afraid to turn them over,” he said.

While Simpson hasn’t had a Group One starter before, that isn’t to say he hasn’t trained some serious horse flesh and was responsible for developing the likes of Open Class trotting mare Pres The Belle (The Pres) before she joined the Dunn stable.

The fact that Clarke came to Simpson with a plan to invest in quality bloodstock at the yearling sales tells you he has more ability and experience then many give him credit for.

“My grandfather was Viv Angow and he was on a few of the NZ Trotting Boards and conferences and things like that. He would pick me up in the weekends when I was about 13 and at school and take me out to the races. It was a bit of a hobby for him to get out for a few hours in the morning and do something different.

“I got an interest through my schooling years doing that with my grandfather, and when I left school, I went and worked for Stu Campbell for around three or four years and had a junior driver’s license at the time. Then an opportunity came when Jack Mulcahy rang me and asked me if I would go and work for Murray Edmonds up in Canterbury.

“I decided a change would be good, so I went up the road and worked for Murray for about three or four years as well and loved it. Between Murray and Stuart, both of them were probably 80% trotters and that’s where my love for the gait probably started.

“Murray was pretty amazing really with what he could do with a horse, and I took a lot of knowledge from them both. I have been around long enough now having had some fast horses and some slow horses that when you have a couple of nice ones, you realise where they have to be at to be competitive or they are not going to make the grade. I think you have to be realistic these days and if they are not going to show much early on, more often than not, they aren’t going to get a lot better,” he said.

Simpson has spent the majority of his training career plying his trade out of his hometown of Dunedin where he utilised Forbury Park as his training premises. That abruptly changed when Harness Racing New Zealand decided to close the track and ultimately deliver harness racing in the Otago region a death knell.

“It’s impacted me a lot. I was born and bred in Dunedin and went away for various reasons but came back and started my training career there. All my family are down there, my children are down there, and they have supported me 100%. But it is very very hard walking away and while it may only be a couple of hours away (Oamaru), when you have a team of horses who are racing three or four days a week, it’s also very hard to find time to travel and see them.

“Leaving my family and kids was huge. I was also just disappointed in the whole thing and the way it come about and the fact that nothing has happened since, and nobody sort of knows what is going on. It’s gutting.

“I’ve had to move to Oamaru and its great facilities here, but the only thing that gets a bit tiring is the travel and being in between the major centers. You are sort of three to five hours away from anything that isn’t a local meeting. The travelling gets to you a wee bit, it’s a big day at the end of a race meeting. And having pulled Forbury it’s a bit disappointing there haven’t been more meetings given to Oamaru given it’s still in the Otago region,” he said.

Basketball legend, Kobe Bryant, adamantly believed that success was not defined or measured by reaching the final destination but learning from the journey along the way. As you can see, the road to Group One glory on Sunday afternoon has not been without its challenges for Simpson, but that has only made it more rewarding and the trainer more determined to enjoy the occasion.

“It is pretty exciting. People have said to me that I’ve qualified the second highest filly and it’s probably something I have thought about since the Jewels started and how nice it would be to have one in. I’ve probably been a wee bit unlucky not have had a couple by now but that’s racing. It’s great to have the filly in this Sunday and this week I’ve been sort of concentrating more on having everything tikety boo for the big one,” he said.

The fact that Show No Fear is the second highest earning filly tells you she won’t be without her chance and although High Energy (Father Patrick) is the clear-cut deserving favourite, Simpson has never shied from the challenge that is racing a juvenile trotter.

“Although she looks like a real two-year-old, I don’t think she is. I think in another six to eight months’ time she will be a far better horse. She trotted from day one and she was definitely a filly, she would like to think she was going to put the boot in a few times and was a bit of a goer, but she always had the ability. She was always a wee bit quirky, but she always had a nice way of going.

“The extended season has actually been great for her as it has a lot of horses. I probably had her up a wee bit early and she was telling us she had had enough in the Autumn. She ran third in the G2 Trotting Stakes, but I just don’t feel she was as sharp as she was when she won on debut.

“She went down to Gary’s own property, and he fed her up and had a rug on her and the spell benefitted her for sure.

“Her first start back this time in was just ok (6th), and we got some bloods done and they weren’t 100%. So, we treated her up and while it was nothing too major, it was probably the difference of four or five lengths on race day. After she was treated, we trotted her up and she was working much better and was looking strong and healthy again and that gave me some confidence heading into Ashburton,” he said.

Ashburton was where Show No Fear upset a small but select group of fillies in the inaugural Listed Sires Stakes Classique and while it was void of race rival, High Energy, it featured two of Tony Herlihy’s blue blood fillies in Regal Girl (What The Hill) and Luby Lil (What The Hill) as well as the well related Sunny’s Sister (Majestic Son).

SHOW NO FEAR REPLAY

“I did tell Gerard that if he could, let her go out of the gate and go for it, and that’s exactly what he did. It was a great run to win like that on her own merits,” he said.

“She is probably better handy and up doing at this stage. With a bit more time she will probably learn to settle a bit more. She hasn’t had a lot of starts and last Friday in the Sires Stakes final, I know they were going along a wee bit, but it still wasn’t a solid enough tempo for her. She was on the bit and everywhere Gerard went she sort of ran into traffic and when he did go, she was humped out and it’s better to put a line through that run.

“It would be nice to have a good draw on Sunday and see if we can rip off the gate and land handy throughout. When she led at Ashburton, I asked Gerard whether he pushed the button and he told me she did that under her own steam, so it would be great to take advantage of that,” he said.

At time of writing, Show No Fear has drawn handily enough in barrier six which without scratching’s, will see her start from the five barrier where she should be able to utilise her early tactical speed.

Whether she can cross the Waikato hopeful in Shez Bella (Pegasus Spur) drawn in two will be interesting, as the Rogerson/Ferguson trained runner has shown a heap of speed in her short career to date and has a penchant for running her opposition along as well.

Win, lose or draw, Simpson is just grateful to have a horse of Show No Fear’s caliber in the barn and with a few more young ones on the books is enjoying seeing an owner like Gary Clarke rewarded for investing in some well-bred trotting fillies.

“Having the G1 for trotting fillies is great and it has to be good for the industry, it’s about time really and there is a lot more that could be done, but it’s a start and as long as it keeps progressing that is the main thing.

“Trotting fillies are getting better and bigger races against their own sex has to be a good thing for everyone all around, from breeders to owners and even the clubs that put them on. Hopefully it’s not the last time we are contesting one of these features and it will be great to tick the Group One starter off the bucket list,” said Simpson.

For complete Grand Prix Day fields, click here.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink