Clang of Hobart Cup Victory Sounds Out for Ingham History
16-02-2012
TWO fleetfooted half-brothers and competent sires, Clang and Strategic, are part of the sixty years of horse history of Jack and Bob Ingham, the west Sydney farmers who plucked a fortune out of chook growing and processing.
It all started back in the mid1950s when they inherited a mare, Valiant Rose, by the good Heroic sprinter-miler Valiant Chief and using the imported speed influence Port Vista bred Miss Port. She produced five winners for them by the inaugural Golden Slipper winner Todman, including two fillies, Port Joy and Sweet Embrace. When Sweet Embrace at 40-1 won the Golden Slipper by three lengths in1967, she made up for the last placing of her sister in the race the year before.
A winner of the Gimcrack Stakes on debut, Port Joy as a breeder outdid Sweet Embrace by producing a stakes winner, Royal Britannia, but the latter mare played a much bigger role in the breeding and racing empire founded by the Inghams using the Woodlands stud, Hunter Valley as headquarters. None of Sweet Embrace’s four winners from six foals were of consequence, but one of them, Sudden Impulse, a minor Sydney winner, earned the title of Australian Broodmare of the Year. Inbred 3x3 to Star Kingdom and on a cross of two Golden Slipper winners, Luskin Star and Todman, her four runners from five foals all won and included the stakes winning colts Strategic (by Zeditave) and Clang (by the Mr. Prospector sire Bellotto) and the filly Destruct (Sir Tristram).
Winner of seven races to1400mm, six stakes headed by the William Reid at Moonee Valley and the Silver Slipper and Pago Pago at Rosehill, Strategic was put to stud by the Inghams at their Cootamundra complex in mid western NSW, but is now owned by Darley and at their Northwood Park stud at Seymour in Victoria. Twenty-years old August 1, Strategic has supplied 442 winners (24 SWs) of over 1430 races and $33.6million. Mostly in the sprinter – 1600m division, they have included the Group1 winners Meurice (raced by Darley), Mistegic and Strategic News (South Africa). Neither Strategic or Clang, Silver Slipper and Stanley Wootton winner and AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes, VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes, MRC Oakleigh Plate and SAJC Goodwood Handicap second or third placegetter, have had high grade support at stud, but both have done well with the opportunity presented.
All his career at David Lucas’s Willowbend stud, Beaudesert, Qld, Clang has been responsible to date for 335 winners of over 1060 races and $22.6million.Three Group1 winners are Calaway Gal (won Golden Slipper), Black Piranha (won QTC Stradbroke, second AJC Doncaster, George Main Stakes, STC George Ryder Stakes, Doomben 10,000) and Clangalang (won AJC Australian Derby, Epsom Handicap).
Clangalang caused reflection on the Ingham’s contribution over the past sixty years when he was represented on Sunday by Geegees Blackflash, the winner of the 1875 established Hobart Cup, now 2400m but originally two miles (3200m). Also winner of ten other races, including the TRC Tasmanian Derby,Tasmanian Stakes and TTC Newmarket, Geegees Blackflash races for his breeders, Paul and Elizabeth Geard, owners of a dairy farm and about a hundred horses at Broadmarsh,Tas. He was inside his dam La Quita, an unraced mare by Grand Lodge, a sire shuttled to Woodlands by the Inghams, when they bought her for $3,500 at an Inglis sale in June 2006.
Geegees Blackflash is one of four stakes performers (three winners) in the second crop of Clangalang, a sire who started his stud career at Eliza Park, Kerrie, Vic, but who moved to the Rivers End stud at Wellington near the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia last year. His other winners include Hi Belle (7 wins, Listed events Sandown, Caulfield, Eagle (7 wins to Group1 Malaysia),The Eighth Maker (6 wins, four Morphettville), Prince Obama (three Hobart), Lakedro (Melbourne winner and Listed placed), Lexcen (6 at Morphettville), Full Peal (Flemington, Sandown), Reverberates (two at Sandown, Group 2 fourth twice), Soviet Banker (Perth),Trebbiano (Randwick), Ho Ho Life (three Hong Kong) and Mr Isaac (5 Hobart – Launceston). A $3,000 Adelaide sale yearling, Ho Ho Life recorded his fifth Hong Kong win when successful in the Centenary Challenge Cup this week.
Courtesy of Brian Russell Bloodstock Media Service
