That was one tough performance. Carrying top weight on a Heavy 10 track and failing to settle in what is generally a slowly-run race did not prevent the gelded son of Handsome Ransom and the Istidaad mare Itsa Belt scoring a meritorious victory in yesterday’s Fasttrack Insurance 3210 at New Plymouth.
When Kevin Gray asked me to make some mating recommendations for his mares back in 2008, I well remember looking at Itsallbelt’s pedigree and thinking that this was going to be something of a challenge. As a racemare, she had failed to earn even a very small cheque in seven starts and her dam was by one of my least favourite stallions, Stylish Century. She did trace to the wonderful Flight family, but that was pretty much it.
One factor that I always have in mind is that I never encourage clients to spend their hard-earned on mares which could charitably be described as marginal. So that restricted my choice of stallion for Itsa Belt and also led me to start my search close to home. At the time Handsome Ransom had his first crop of 2YOs in action and they had attracted much favourable comment. He did have a weakness or two in his pedigree but at $4000 seemed to be a relatively low risk option; in addition, as a grandson of Roberto there was some chance that some of those desirable genes would end up in Itsa Belt’s offspring as Istidaad was out of a Roberto mare.
To be entirely honest, I had no idea that Itsallbelt would turn out to be a slow-maturing stayer that he is. Essentially, the Handsome Ransom mating was supposed to inject some speed into what was a very slow mare and to produce a reasonably compact physical type. I suppose that Itsallbelt has much more base speed than he dam did and maybe the Roberto duplication has helped in producing one tough animal who doesn’t like stopping, but this wasn’t one of those matings which makes you say – yes, I got that so right!
As I’ve said before, you’ve got to have luck on your side in this business.
