The Hong Kong Vase was hard fought for by Exultant at Sha Tin on Sunday, but they haven’t always been good times. Ben Linfoot catches up with Belinda Strudwick, the woman who bred the HK hero.
On Sunday at Sha Tin, with its backdrop of nearby ‘horse saddle mountain’ Ma On Shan and skyscrapers from the locality, right next to the Shing Mun river, a locally-trained horse called Exultant won the LONGINES Hong Kong Vase in front of over 96,000 people.
This was a big deal for owners Eddie Wong Ming Chak and Wong Leung Sau Hing, as well as trainer Tony Cruz. Apart from the obvious, he was also only the third Hong Kong horse to win the prestigious Vase in its 24-year history.
That’s where the story ends, for now.
But it began over 6000 miles away, four years and nine months earlier, on March 24, 2014, when a colt by Teofilo out of a dam called Contrary was born at Ballygallon Stud in the pretty village of Inistioge, County Kilkenny, in the south east of Ireland.
Ballygallon is a small stud farm breeding off eight to 10 mares, but it has produced top-level horses in the past like Indian Lodge, winner of the Prix du Moulin and Prix de la Foret in 2000, Beckett, winner of the National Stakes in the same year, and Aragorn, a horse who won five graded races in America.
Aragorn ran in the Ballygallon silks; light blue with yellow and navy blue stripes on the sleeves and cap, and so the Teofilo colt was due to as well. And he did, eventually. He’s called Exultant now, but then he was named Irishcorrespondent and getting him to the track as a two-year-old proved impossible.
This was a source of real frustration for Belinda Strudwick. Ballygallon was bought by her husband, Roy, in the 1980s, but while he concentrated on his property business the day-to-day operations at the farm were left to Belinda. In her words, ‘it was my thing’.
And it still is. Owner and director, Belinda is involved in the whole process and she’s helped along the way by her daughter, Alexandra, and general manager James Byrne, as well as a team of staff that ‘eat, breathe, sleep and do everything’ with the horses due to the small nature of the organisation.
As it turned out, this team of people spent a lot more time with Irishcorrespondent than they bargained for.
“He was bred on the farm and everything was straightforward,” Belinda says. “He pre-trained in Ireland but at the beginning of his two-year-old career he came to France with me.
“I was racing all of the progeny in France at the time but somewhere along the way he contracted a virus. He spent pretty much the whole of his two-year-old career sick and I became so frustrated in France that I brought him home.
“He travelled directly from France to Mick Halford’s but he said he couldn’t train him. He looked pretty shoddy to be honest, appalling actually, and Mick said to me to take him home, rehabilitate him and then send him back to him.
“So he came back to the farm and was on the farm with us for quite a long time. By that stage I’d put in pre-training facilities so we gave him a period of rest and then brought him back into work.
“The team did spend a lot of time with him. But he had such an amazing character and temperament and when the lads sat on him…they knew. They just knew he was out of the ordinary. Maybe not quite how good, but we all had the feeling he was above average ability.
“That was him. He was always very good in his mind, a great mover, he just covered the ground beautifully and was such an athletic horse.”
It wasn’t the plan for Irishcorrespondent to be unraced at two, it just worked out that way. It’s not unusual for his family, though, as his two half-sisters, Duchesse and Chilli Spice, were both unraced as juveniles as well.
Both won races when they eventually got to the track, while his half-brother, Nonno Giulio, won on his only start at two in the September of his juvenile year.
A similar plan was in place for Irishcorrespondent.
“We knew he needed time but ideally he would’ve been a horse that you would’ve wanted to have had one or two runs, probably two, towards the back end of the year as a juvenile,” continues Strudwick.
“It’s just a great education as much as anything, even for the backward horses. Even if they can’t win it counts for a lot. But there wasn’t a chance, with his sickness, that we’d have got him to the track as a two-year-old.”
It was the February of 2017 when he arrived at Mick Halford’s ready to embark on his career as a racehorse. Three-years-old and unraced, he made his debut on April 8 at Leopardstown in a mile maiden for his age group and he won easily, by three-and-a-half lengths in taking fashion after being backed into 6/1 from 14s.
Next time he was even more impressive at the Curragh, so much so that he was sent off at 7/1 for the Irish 2000 Guineas two weeks later, where he finished third behind Churchill and Thunder Snow.
With three starts under his belt, including two wins and a Classic place, the interest in Irishcorrespondent began to grow. Strudwick resisted selling him before Royal Ascot, but after his fifth place in the Hampton Court Stakes behind Benbatl her hand was forced.
“I sold him reluctantly because I needed income for the farm, my husband’s not well, he’s got Alzheimer’s,” she said.
“In other years there is not a chance he would’ve been sold, I would’ve run along with him because I had confidence that he would go on and do much bigger and better things.
“The offers coming in were good, I needed the income and so he had to go.
“I thought without question he’d be in the first three at Ascot and I actually thought he’d probably win, so in that respect it was disappointing.
“It was a very hot day, there’s a real buzz at Ascot, but I don’t know what it was. He just pulled too hard, got boxed in, didn’t have a finish in him. Things just didn’t go right.
“I remember Neil Drysdale, who trained Aragorn for us in California, rang me up and said ‘just put a line through it Belinda, don’t be upset, it was just a non starter for that horse, he didn’t actually have a chance’.
“But we did have a lot of interest in him, about six interested parties and I’ve known John McCormack [bloodstock agent], who did the deal, for a long time. He saw him at Royal Ascot, said he really liked the horse and was with us all the way through.
“He just completely overlooked the run and could see that this horse had so much more to give. John, in the end, came up with a deal we liked the best, it was the most straightforward, but there was a lot of interest in him.”
Five months later, in the November of 2017, Irishcorrespondent had lost his name and his manhood, but the newly-gelded Exultant didn’t lose a shred of his ability and, under the expert handling of Tony Cruz, has been on an upward curve in Hong Kong ever since.
It’s a career Belinda Strudwick has kept a close eye on.
“We all follow our horses through whether we still own them or not and he spent such a long time here,” she said.
“We were up early to watch the race. My daughter and I watched it at home in Ireland.
“I was a bit disappointed because I didn’t think they gave him much coverage prior to the race and that it was concentrated mainly on the other European horses going, like Andre Fabre’s, Michael Stoute’s and Aidan O’Brien’s and so on.
“Then they put him in the stalls and they said 'Exultant, he has been a very consistent horse since he’s arrived in Hong Kong,' and I’m so glad they did point that out.
“He’s done everything that we thought he would do because he’s such a progressive horse.
“We were all expecting a very big run from him on Sunday, especially with the fact that they’d put Zac Purton back on board.
“And I was delighted to see him go straight to the front. I know they’ve been riding him from the back and he’s been coming on to horses, but quite often he’s been left with so much to do in his races and he’s always been the fastest finishing horse.
“What was just really lovely to see was when they turned for home and the Japanese filly [Lys Gracieux], who has an incredible turn of foot, came up on him and actually did pass him.
“At that point I thought oh no no no come on, but he really wasn’t going to give in and throw in the towel, so it was fantastic to see him battle back and win.
“We were all so thrilled on the farm. Obviously for me as a breeder but also the staff as well because of all the issues we had with him.
“I’m delighted for the owners in Hong Kong because I think the prestige of winning the Vase is huge and for us as a breeder it means so much.
“We always felt that this year going into next year, at four and five, were always going to be the big years for him.
“They know the distance that suits him now and I think they’re talking of the Dubai Sheema Classic and possibly Ascot as well. Time will tell, but he’s such a relaxed horse with a sound temperament I’d say they could travel quite easily with him. I hope they have a lot of fun days out with him.”
Those days could’ve belonged to Ballygallon, but there is not a hint of regret from Strudwick as she discusses Exultant’s past, present and future.
In any case, she’s got most of his family at home and Contrary is in foal, meaning that a half-brother or sister to the Hong Kong Vase winner, by Churchill, will be born soon and that’s not the only related progeny on the farm.
“I’ve got two weanlings from the daughter, Chilli Spice, a Manduro filly, and I’ve also got a Tamayuz filly out of Duchesse, too, so I’ve got quite a lot of the family and I’m hoping we can breed another one as good as him.”
But could Contrary go to Teofilo again to produce a full-sibling to Exultant?
“I would like to sell her to Teofilo again, but she’s almost certainly going to go to Sea The Stars next,” Strudwick said. “I looked at her with Sea The Stars and on paper it looks amazing.
“She always throws a really good-looking horse and I think he could be perfect for her. If I do Sea The Stars at cover next season it will then probably be Teofilo the year after, hopefully, you always hope these horses will be around.
“Almost every single year we have produced black type which isn’t easy when you’re breeding off eight to 10 mares but it’s getting these horses at the top level which is the difficult bit.
“It’s a numbers game this business and we don’t have numbers. But we can concentrate on quality because we’re small, we can really focus on the way we rear them and I believe that counts for quite a lot.”
Irishcorrespondent was a good name but Exultant looks a better fit now.
It means ‘triumphantly happy’ and I’m sure that best explains the feelings of the 96,000 people at Sha Tin on Sunday, not to mention those of Exultant’s new connections in Hong Kong and the team of people that nursed this sick horse back to full health at Ballygallon.
