Champion mare adds another ‘kiwi’ winner to the studbook

On Sunday afternoon at Addington Raceway, harness racing breeders/owners Hamish Scott and his wife Kim Lawson furthered the legacy of their ‘kiwi’ breed with the maiden success of Keeping It Kiwi (Art Major).

The three-year-old colt out of the champion mare and three-time Group One winner, Kiwi Ingenuity (Christian Cullen) cast an imposing figure up the Addington straight, with his high head carriage the spitting image of his mother with some obvious physical attributes to match.

Whether he reaches the lofty heights of his dam remains to be seen, but maiden victories don’t come much tougher than that of Keeping It Kiwi and he is the latest in a long line of winners for Hamish and Kim and their good friends Robbie and Carla (Robertson) Holmes.

The association stretches nearly two decades dating back to the broodmare gem, Kiwi Express (Miles McCool), producing 109 winners since the first foal from the lightly tried mare that was born in 2002.

Most of the race victories have come from the Leithfield Beach barn of yesterday’s successful trainer/driver, Robbie Holmes, and like yesterday, plenty have come at Addington Raceway. But the Kiwi Express progeny have won races in all corners of the world canvassing the likes of Invercargill, Perth and more recently Maryland in the United States.

Prior to Keeping It Kiwi clearing maidens on Sunday, the most recent winner came from his half-sister Team Kiwi (Bettor’s Delight) who was winning her 18^th race at start 124, some 14,000km away at Ocean Downs in Maryland on the 29^th of May.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and a wee bit closer to home, Hamish Scott had just finished up a round of golf at Tai Tapu on the outskirts of Christchurch and made it on track just in time to see the starting gates rolling and a trademark aggressive steer from his great mate Robbie.

“It’s a front-running family,” said Scott about the gritty win of his colt.

“I would estimate that 95% of the wins have come from front-running drives and they really do thrive on being driven tough and this one has probably got a bit more speed than the others but I guess circumstances dictated the need be a bit more aggressive yesterday.

“I was very pleased, obviously the mare (Kiwi Ingenuity) was very important to us so whenever one of the progeny gets up, it’s a big thrill. Robbie has always liked him a lot. In his first two starts he had a bit of traffic trouble and we felt if he didn’t run into the same issues that he would be hard to beat. I never put a dollar on our own horses but I was surprised to see he was fifth favourite.

“He will be quite a nice horse going forward. He is very much like his mother and of all her progeny he is a stunning looking horse which is probably a bit of Art Major in him, but there is certainly a distinction between the way Mum ran and how he runs,” he said.

Kiwi Ingenuity was a once-in-a-lifetime mare for the aforementioned parties and undoubtedly provided the quartet with some of their fondest memories in the sport.

From winning the Southland Oaks in the backyard of the former Southlanders to taking on some of the best ensembles of Open Class talent in two New Zealand Cups and a Miracle Mile, it would be an understatement to call it the thrill of a lifetime.

The daughter of Christian Cullen won the Southland and New Zealand Oaks double inside of her first ten starts but really began to mature as a four-year-old when she returned the following year after a lengthy spell.

“Probably her biggest step for me was when I took a team away to Central Otago,” said her trainer Robbie Holmes.

“She was getting on a knee at that stage, and Hamish asked me if I thought she would be alright and I convinced him she would be fine. I didn’t want to leave her at home and just preferred her to be with me because we had the Pelorus Classic coming up against the boys.

“She won really convincingly at Cromwell and we took her to Blenheim a fortnight later and she beat a really good field of four-year-old males after copping some interference early,” he said.

She headed off the likes of Georgetown, Fiery Flacon and Rider On The Storm after working forward mid race and finding her favoured front running position that day and never really looked back, winning the G2 Premiere Mares Championship and G1 NZ Breeders Stakes soon after. But it was the Harness Jewels at Ashburton late in the season where Kiwi Ingenuity became a household name in the sport.

KIWI INGENUITY 2009 4YO DIAMOND REPLAY

“We had led up and only just got beat by Monkey King leading into the Jewels in a very good Open Class field so I knew she was right on the button. We drew 13 in the Jewels and I knew we would need a bit of luck, I was just hoping there would be a few lead changes and although we were wide the whole way, there were about four of them,” he said.

Kiwi Ingenuity found the pegs for the first time in the mile sprint entering the Ashburton Straight and set about scorching the very earth he hooves were skipping across.

She lowered Scuse Me’s national mile record that day by a full 1.3 seconds, posting 1:52.1 for the 1609m. A record that was matched by Smolda three years later, and finally lowered by Christen Me a year later in 2013. Venus Serena posted a 1:52.1 mark in 2014 to equal the mare’s record and it took the indomitable Adore Me to break it after that.

Kiwi Ingenuity had her career cut short after just 27 starts having lacerated a tendon in her second attempt at New Zealand Cup glory, bringing an earlier expected start to her broodmare career.

“It’s been problematic ever since and we actually retired her from breeding last year because she was just a little bit noddy on it and we don’t want her carrying too much weight on it. It was quite a bad injury and we were pretty lucky the vets were able to save her for her career as a broodmare,” said Scott.

Kiwi Ingenuity has fashioned a solid if not spectacular record at stud, failing to produce one as good as herself from her six foals of racing age to date. With the likes of Adore Me being the outlier to the rule, she isn’t the first and won’t be the last to endure that predicament where lofty expectations of the general public greatly exceed the reality that it is damn hard for lightning to strike twice as closely removed as the first generation of foals.

The first four foals are all race-timed in 55 or better with the American export, Team Kiwi clocking a 51.2 mile rate, while her full sister Kiwi On Show paced .1 of a second outside the record of her dam around Wyndham back in 2017 with Holmes labelling her as the daughter in the breed he thinks of having the best chance of reproducing the Kiwi Ingenuity magic in her stock.

Scott has a different opinion on the matter and believes it could come from Kiwi Ingenuity’s older half-sister who also had a career cut short by injury.

“Her half-sister, Kiwis Can Fly (Presidential Ball) has probably been the mare from the family that has left the better horses thus far. She did her suspensory after winning four and placing three times in seven starts,” said Scott.

“Robbie and I had a standing bet where he thought Kiwis Can Fly would be the better horse and I was in the camp of Kiwi Ingenuity. I always tell him I ended up winning, but he points out that at the same time, the other mare had a better record early on! I guess we will never know,” he laughed.

Kiwis Can Fly’s full brother, Buy Kiwi Made was the one the pair both agree could have possibly surpassed them both for talent if it wasn’t for a paddock accident.

“He was being dropped off at Hamish’s place and when they unloaded him he landed awkwardly on the ground and partially severed his spinal cord. Hamish spent a fortune trying to resolve the issue and we tried him as a late two-year-old and early three-year-old but his gait was never fluent enough to warrant racing after that,” said Homes.

Buy Kiwi Made who was named with a stallion career in mind is the sire of four winners from limited opportunities at stud including the 1:52.3 performer, Sociable, who was fourth in Wainui Creek’s G1 Breeders Stakes back in 2020. A son of BKM, Bellisimo Acquisito won a Listed Classic in Australia. Buy Kiwi Made continues to serve a boutique book of mares with ardent support from his breeder/owners.

Looking at the numbers of daughters and granddaughters now on the broodmare resume out of Kiwi Express, the next champion could come via a number of avenues and given the breadth of champion bloodlines afforded to them all, it appears to be only a matter of time.

“We are breeding plenty from that family, I think we have about six or seven weanlings and the same number of yearlings waiting in the wings, so there is plenty to come,” said Scott.

Holmes reports that a Downbytheseaside filly out of A Good Kiwi Chick, a Falcon Seelster half sister to Kiwi Ingenuity who won four from nine starts is showing a fair amount of promise. So too is a Bettor’s Delight colt out of the champion mare, Kiwi Ingenuity herself who failed to attract a bid at the 2024 yearling sales in Christchurch.

“I actually hadn’t seen much of Hamish’s stock before they headed to the sales,  and this guy supposedly had a bit of a confirmation issue which put a few people off. This latest crop from the family have all broken in quite nice, even though they all look like they are going to knock a knee,” laughed Holmes.

“The Bettor’s Delight colt paces around really nice and it just goes to show it’s a different bank of muscles once they start pacing around and it’s unfortunate some trainers can’t see that unless they free leg when they are trotted up at the sales,” he said.

When asked if there were any commonalities in the family aside from their penchant for being driven tough, Holmes had the following to say.

“A couple of things. It’s been more a fillies family to be fair, they seem to have done a better job. Also, the smaller ones I find out of the family, they don’t take the work that the big ones required.

“I worked Keeping It Kiwi and Kiwi Hero in 3:14 the other day and never really realised but when Kiwi Hero raced against Heisenberg and the better ones about 10 days ago, he blew up over the back something chronic.

“I wondered whether he was just short or something was wrong with him but his bloods were fine and I stuck the work into him and he came out and ran a good third last Friday and the other guy won.

“Kiwi Ingenuity, she could take the work. Before we went to the Miracle Mile I took her to Rangiora with two galloping pacemakers just to be able to keep up with her. We worked two-mile in 4:20 and she ran her last quarter outside the markers in 25.5 or 25.6.

“Andrew Stuart happened to be on the track at the same time and asked me what I ran my last quarter in. He had the same as me and we were both kind of in awe of her. She was just bolting,” he laughed.

As alluded to earlier in the story where Scott mentions the latest winner from Kiwi Ingenuity seems to have inherited a wee bit more speed than some of his predecessors, Holmes agreed with that sentiment

“I have probably had more success with him in the trials and workouts and things by coming off somethings back which isn’t like the family to be fair. He will get his turn in front no doubt but I would say at the moment he is better coming from behind.

“This guy has always shown a bit which is why we have left him a colt. To be fair he has shown me enough, but not enough to suggest that he is going to go all the way. We got home in 59 and 29 last night and admittedly he has done his work sitting parked and getting round them, but I think racing is what will lift him like a lot of the Art Major’s,” said Holmes.

While winning on a chilly Sunday afternoon at the onset of winter is world’s away from some of the Group One glory the connections have enjoyed with stock from the Kiwi Express lineage, Scott was happy to report that the latest victory was no less satisfying.

“I watched the replay over and over after I got home on Sunday night,” he laughed.

“We still get a great thrill out of them, especially the ones you breed having been with them the whole way through the journey. Doing it with Robbie is great too, he does all the work and most of the horses live there year round.”

That includes the now 27-year-old Kiwi Express who is living out her twilight years with her recently retired champion daughter, Kiwi Ingenuity, while casting a watchful eye over plenty of her ever-growing legacy on the New Zealand Stud Book.

That is now extending to great grandsons and daughters with the first winner of that kind coming last year in the form of Kiwi Record, a four-year-old son of Rock N Roll Heaven out of Kiwi On Show.

Kiwi Ingenuity’s influence in that sphere will this coming season include her five-year-old daughter, Kiwi Lightning. The lightly tried Art Major mare was retired after two starts and is the only foal of the six from the champ to have not won a race.

“She has had a few niggles and breathing issues. She qualified quite nicely but straight after that she had a leg issue so she never came back quite the same so we thought we would breed from her.

“Kiwi Ingenuity hasn’t left anything like herself as yet, but we are quietly confident and waiting for the next generation to hopefully kick through,” said Scott.

For complete Addington results, click here.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink