Quick winner a long time coming for Shamus Award

The sudden blossoming of the young stallion Shamus Award, on the honour roll as the sire of the latest Group I Queensland Derby winner Mr Quickie, serves to highlight two memorable distinctions of his brief and unusual racing career.

Jockey John Allen rides Mr Quickie to victory in the Queensland Derby on Saturday

Shamus Award won two races in 14 attempts, but the first was as a maiden in the 2013 $3 million Group I Cox Plate (2040m), striking a 20-1 victory as a three-year-old over older horses.

His second came five months later in the $500,000 Group I Australian Guineas (1600m) at set weights against his own age, leading future $7.2m stakeswinner Criterion by a comfortable one-length margin at the finish.

Another stark feature of Shamus Award’s track career is his Cox Plate win is the most recent Group I success in Australia by a three-year-old against older horses at a distance of at least 2000m.

Shamus Award after winning the Cox Plate

Until two decades ago, wins by three-year-olds in features such as the VRC Australian Cup (2000m), ATC Tancred Stakes (2400m), ATC Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2000m) and BTC Doomben Cup (2000m) were not uncommon. But the trend dribbled down into the new millennium to reach the point of a 5½-year gap from the 2013 Cox Plate in which the classic generation has become invisible.

And this extremely disturbing phenomenon has led to the shameful standard of the Australian stayer today, freefalling to the bottom with continuing results such as the Group II Brisbane Cup (2400m) on Saturday when three Irish-bred runners filled the placings, adding to the unstoppable harvest of long-distance prizemoney won by northern hemisphere-bred imports in the past decade.

Shamus Award’s track career came to an end after he beat one of 15 home in the 2014 Group I Rosehill Guineas (2000m), won by Criterion.

He was a fourth crop foal of Snitzel, the proficient Group I sprinting son of Redoute’s Choice who was steadily building on the stud status he proudly owns today as he works towards his third successive sires’ crown.

And he was produced by a three-time sprint-winning daughter of the US-bred Success Express, a superb outcross force in Australian pedigrees — highlighted as the damsire of no less than three Cox Plate winners, with Shamus Award joining Pinker Pinker (2011) and Savabeel (2004).

Shamus Award was welcomed to the Widden Stud, in the NSW Widden Valley, for the spring of 2014, at a fee of $27,500. He proved a very popular first-season stallion, attracting 165 mares, and maintained high booking levels of 127, 130 and 157 mares for the next three seasons.

But the 2018 spring season saw a savage reversal with 84 covers, the decline in demand coming despite a 100 per cent fee reduction to $11,000 which was brought on by a modest turnout by his first crop runners of 2017-18.

The harsh reality that is the highly competitive commercial market of thoroughbred breeding led to a late-April announcement that Shamus Award would be moving to Victoria’s Rosemont Stud for the 2019 spring, his fee to remain at $11,000.

Some three weeks prior to this announcement, Classic Weiwei broke the ice as the first stakeswinner for Shamus Award, taking out the Listed Port Adelaide Guineas (1800m). Three weeks after the announcement, Shamus Award had his second stakeswinner with filly Etana claiming the Group II Doomben Roses (2000m).

At Eagle Farm’s action-crammed stakes race program on Saturday, Shamus Award hit pay dirt big time with Mr Quickie the best stayer among 18 three-year-olds in the $600,000 Queensland Derby (2400m).

Suddenly, racing looks to have in Shamus Award a sorely needed addition to the limited source of competitors that do not faint once they are tried beyond 1600m.

For his ninth win in only 13 starts and coming off a somewhat luckless third in the Group I South Australian Derby (2500m) on May 11, Mr Quickie was a clear winner by three-quarters of a length over Vow And Declare at the finish and held the win after stewards quickly dismissed a protest lodged on behalf of the runner-up. The irony of this protest was that Vow And Declare, by Declaration of War — sire of Group I Queensland Oaks winner Winning Ways — is trained at Flemington by Dan O’Brien and he was the man who prepared Shamus Award for his 14 starts, yielding two wins, eight minor placings and $2,473,500 in prizemoney.

Read more on this article by Tony Arrold at The Australian