Vale Dr. Anthony Parker

The standardbred community was in mourning today at news of the passing of iconic harness racing breeder, owner, and veterinarian surgeon, Dr. Anthony Parker, aged 80.

Tony, as he was affectionately known, has been a staple of the standardbred and veterinary community in the North Island for close to six decades. While his early years were spent working with farm animals as much as horses, he quickly became known in the Franklin region as a great equine vet thanks to his easygoing and gentleman-like demeanour with both horses and humans.

Tony had a life-long passion and gift for working with animals. As a teenager, he knew he wanted to be a vet, and would bike out to Takanini-based Veterinary Associates from Manurewa to help. On graduation from Mount Roskill Grammar, he departed via the old Whenuapai airport for the University of Queensland for his veterinary degree.

Upon his capping in late 1965, he returned to Gisborne to practice veterinary medicine where he met at married Anne Parker. In 1966, the circle was complete as he joined Veterinary Associates practice run by Charlie Roberts and Don Brackenridge.

Parker is understood to be one of the first vets in the country to use AI with horses, recalling how he would lie along the top rail to serve the mainly unhandled mares in a crush. No scanning back then – it was all skill and guesswork. Then the mares would later return to be foaled and re-served.

Dr Ivan Bridge whom he worked closely with for over 20 years regarded Parker as a pioneer of his craft in many ways.

“He was dedicated to his clients and to their horses,” said Bridge.

“He was driven by doing the best for both and not the financial reward that would come. That was secondary, and through that he had the trust of clients and it’s just amazing. If you have the trust of your clients as I have since learnt, it gives you the ability to act on your instincts.

“Tony was a very talented vet, one of the most talented I have ever met. Normally a short cut or risk that he took in the diagnosis or treatment of an animal would work because he had the implicit trust of the people in charge.

“He had a rare skill as a surgeon and I don’t think he knew how good he was, but he had beautiful soft tissue skills. He was a natural and if he was graduating in these times, he would have done his surgical veterancy. We didn’t have the facilities or theatres we have today and at times, Tony was performing quite major surgeries in an open paddock with hay bales and Anne holding an umbrella,” he laughed.

“As I said in my eulogy yesterday, for a good part of the ten years we worked together there was just the two of us and we were closer than a married couple and we never had a blue in the whole time we worked together. I trusted him and he trusted me. That trust flowed on through into the lasting friendships he made and the many people he helped for a number of years,” he said.

Originally horses were primarily a hobby. His wife Anne and the children did most of the day-to-day work on their 27 acres in Drury. Anne recalled that farm work included driving an Avenger car with a trailer (no 4wd then) to feed hay to the horses and cattle, milk house cows, feed calves and manage the sheep.

It was appropriate that the champion horse and now stallion, Auckland Reactor (by Mach Three), which climaxed 50+ years of breeding by Parker, was traced back to a very special mare that marked the beginning of their breeding passion.

Parker was a working vet, treating more small animals and dairy herds than horses when a friend, Jack Hughes, recommended he buy Auckland Reactor’s grand-dam, Tudoress in the early ‘70s. With three daughters to bring up and school on a limited budget, the $1,500 price tag came close to his $2,000-a-year salary.

Tudoress “had her limitations,” Parker recalled back in 2011, and did not start racing until she was four. In the end she was still good enough to win seven races, mostly with Roy and Barry Purdon. She then became a broodmare, which became a fateful decision.

One of her last foals was Atomic Lass (by Soky’s Atom). “She won two of her 13 starts but wasn’t a very strong mare and found it hard to compete in the days of (bicarbonate) milkshakes, so I thought breeding was her best future,” said Parker.

None of the ten foals Atomic Lass produced before Auckland Reactor made many headlines. Taihape Ticker (18 wins) was another notable foal, carving out a respectable record in Melbourne and Perth. By this time, Parker had acquired a few more broodmares and was deeply entrenched in the standardbred sector.

This ramped up further when Parker took a full-time position as National Bloodstock’s vet for five years in the late ‘80s, where he was in charge of a large operation handling stallions serving up to 500 mares a year. It was a time of burgeoning growth for the local industry as National Bloodstock brought in new stallions from America like Soky’s Atom, Butler BG, New York Motoring, and Chiola Hanover.

His close friend and one of the people behind National Bloodstock, Steve Phillips, remembers Parker as being fundamental to the success that was realised at the height of it’s powers.

“We had used Tony before National Bloodstock days doing our own vet work before we got involved with that operation,” said Phillips.

“Tony was just a delightful person to work with and was very quiet and skilful at working with the horses. He was very knowledgeable, and you could ask him anything about horses, and he had an answer for it.

“He was also very generous with his time. We had a farm in Hunua, and my wife Anne and I had separate vocations outside of the horses, so we only had time on the weekends to be tending to them seriously. Almost every weekend, he would have to come out for some silly horse injury and would always turn up, chat about it, fix it, then have a laugh and say, see you next weekend,” he laughed.

“In those early days, we stood a couple of stallions like Palestine, and Tony had Tay Bridge, so we were sort of at the same point in our lives as far as standing stallions and getting mares in foal, and we just had a great bond. Once we got involved with National Bloodstock, it was natural that we would use Tony as our number one vet,” he said.

Not far removed from the rise and fall of the National Bloodstock empire, Tony realised his first great success in harness racing with the star open class pacer, Sharp And Telford (by Butler BG) whom he and Anne bred from a foundational mare that holds the name of the current family farm in Tardina (by Berry Hanover).

During an incredible span between 1996 and 1997, Sharp And Telford won 16 races, including the Australian and Victoria Derby and the Auckland, Franklin, and Kaikoura Cups. The ownership group included Tony & Anne and his cousin Noel Gillanders to whom Tony had sold a 10% share as an unraced two-year-old.

SHARP AND TELFORD REPLAY

Sharp And Telford’s success encouraged Tony to invest more heavily in his bloodstock and, in the time since, produced many champions of the track.

Success didn’t end with Sharp and Telford, but was continued with Auckland Reactor. Very few can lay claim to having bred a homebred with the incredible career trajectory of the pacer nobody wanted in Auckland Reactor who, after failing to sell despite multiple attempts, was given his chance as a racehorse.

The telephone had been ringing long before his auspicious debut, with Tony turning down $75,000 after the horse qualified four months earlier.

“Mark thought that was a fair price and it was probably a good idea to sell him. But I wanted the chance to at least see how good he was by giving him a start,” said Tony at the time.

Besides marrying his wife Anne, it would prove to be one of the best business decisions he ever made, with the first crop son of Mach Three winning the Sires Stakes final from barrier nine in New Zealand record time at just his fourth start, vaulting the pacer into superstar status. And suddenly, the phone just kept on ringing.

AUCKLAND REACTOR | SIRES STAKES REPLAY

“You never knew when the next phone call was going to come, and there was quite a lot of money involved. It did not make it quite as pleasant,” Tony said at the time.

Tony was quoted saying he didn’t need the millions being offered for the horse. However, being a vet and knowing what can go wrong with racehorses, he simply had to accept the offer on behalf of a mainly North American syndicate.

In recent years it was an enormous thrill for Tony to have bred yet another G1 Sires Stakes winner with Chase Auckland. Chase Auckland was a cross of two of Tony’s foundation lines, going back to Tudoress and Floral Barmin.

The Parker family has, between times, produced many other star performers of the track in both the pacing and trotting gaits. Miss Whiplash was the trotting mare to get Tony entrenched in the trotting gait, having bred her from the imported American mare, Working Girl.

Here are but a few of the best performers:

• Miss Whiplash (Gee Whiz) $151,765 and 13 wins including the G2 Thames Trotting Cup
• Russley Rascal (Mach Three): $839,219 with a G1 win in the Great Northern Derby and G2 Franklin Cup
• Devil Dodger (Mach Three): $728,666 and 38 wins including the G1 3YO Vic Breeders Crown
• Chase Auckland (Auckland Reactor): $802,384 with G1 wins in the Great Northern Derby, 3YO Sires Stakes final and the NZ Free For All.
• The Parade (Real Desire): $425,999 with a G1 win in the Westral Mares Classic and G2 WA Empress Stakes
• The Devils Own (Art Major): $340,394 with a win in the rich Listed 2YO NZ Yearling Sales Final
• Emma Hamilton (Earl): $77,387 with a win in the G3 NZ Trotting Oaks.
• Wanna Play (Majestic Son): $91,191 with a win in the G2 NZ Sires Stakes 2YO Trot.
• Yagunnakissmeornot (Love You): $195,387 and 17 wins.
• Double Delight (Captaintreacherous): $134,070 and 7 wins to date including the G1 2YO Ruby Trot & G3 Northern Trotting Oaks.
• Mystic Max (Village Mystic): $108,437 including the G2 NZ Sires Stakes 2YO Final & G3 Hambeltonian

There are numerous others worthy of a mention, with official records showing that 175 of the Parker-bred horses have raced in New Zealand, with that figure likely to be higher globally given that the Tardina Stud yearlings have been a sought-after commodity at the Karaka Sales.

130 of them have won races in this country, with the total number of NZ race wins currently sitting at 398.

Much of the Parker family’s recognition in breeding is derived from the formula they have been perfecting over the last 50 years. They have taken an intentionally unique approach, which has been recognized by those who have trained, driven or owned Parker-bred horses.

“Our horses are pretty tough,” said Tony at the time. “But they race a bit better than their breeding would suggest. “We’ve produced top horses from a number of breeds, but it’s more than the breeding,” he said.

Tony credited their feeding regimen with starting the foals out on the correct path.

“That’s the key to the job in getting them reared properly. We virtually feed them from when the dry weather starts. You only get good grass for two or three months and then you have to feed them every day to keep them growing good and strong. I’m sure it counts, makes them a little bit tougher, and comes through on the racing side.

He also highlighted their intentional use of hill country and running them in groups.

“I like to give them hill time, running in groups. When you get three or four colts chasing and racing each other around, you get the odd injury, but you accept that. It’s all part of developing a racehorse. They might not look as pretty, but I think it helps them on the racetrack,” he was quoted as saying.

Champion trainer Mark Purdon, with whom Tony formed a close friendship and association, echoed those sentiments.

“Tony was the Vet for Dad (Roy Purdon) for the later part of his career, and then Ivan Bridge joined the clinic before becoming my Vet when I started out,” said Purdon.

“I have known him for a long time, and we had a great run in those early days with the likes of Sharp And Telford, and it really started from there. I haven’t had many horses for him and Anne, but we shared in a bit of success with the few we did.

“It was always Tony’s philosophy that if you got them on the ground [hills] where they are working, it would be better for their development and their muscles, and he proved it in breeding a lot of very very good horses over the years.

“I always rated them very highly if I went to any sale and looked at their draft because you just knew they had every chance right from when they were a foal,” he said.

Tony’s daughter, Faine Mende, returned from the US in 2013 to actively work with Tardina Stud and is looking forward to preparing the next yearling draft and is working to continue the breeding excellence that Anne and Tony have built over the last fifty years.

In an industry where for many a legacy is lost at the passing of an icon like Tony, it’s wonderful that the family legacy of excellence will live on through the Tardina breed.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink