JUSTIFY’S OWNERS GET ANOTHER SHOT AT GLORY.
Canadians’ Without Parole a firm favourite
Breeding racehorses is an expensive and risky hobby, and even the most successful rarely get much in the way of public accolades. You do it for love, if you do it at all.
John Gunther of Langley, B.C., and his daughter Tanya, however, are having such a stellar run lately that they cannot avoid praise. Their horses are proving such good racers that they invite comparisons with E.P. Taylor, the late great Canadian industrialist whose breeding operation at Windfields Farm near Toronto created Northern Dancer, the greatest thoroughbred stud ever.
Just a few weeks ago, the Gunthers’ chestnut colt Justify, which they bred at their farm in Kentucky, became the second horse since 1978, and the 13th ever, to win the Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes — a nearly impossible feat over barely more than a month that requires as much stamina as speed. He has since retired.
On Wednesday in the South Downs of England, the Gunthers will have a shot at another glory of the racing world, when Without Parole races in the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Goodwood Racecourse. The bookies’ favourite, Without Parole is as yet unbeaten after four starts, most recently winning the St. James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot in June. That got the Gunthers congratulations from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who presented the prize.
Now, if Without Parole leads the pack at Goodwood, he will become, in the words of The Daily Telegraph’s racing correspondent and former jockey Marcus Armytage, “the best three-year-old on both sides of the Atlantic.”
“Winning the St James’s Palace at Royal Ascot was the most special day in my life. I’d been going there for 15 years. I’d always dreamed of having one good enough to run, let alone win, and our first runner ends up winning,” John Gunther told Armytage this week. “The Americans said it was unpatriotic, having bred Justify, to say Ascot was better before it was reminded to them that I’m Canadian.”
Glorious Goodwood, as the racing event is known, is a midsummer tradition to mark the end of the English upper class social season. It is known as a more casual partner event to Royal Ascot.
John Gunther, a stock broker who lives on a farm in Langley, grew up on a farm southeast of Calgary, where he worked with horses. As a young man, he worked as a longshoreman in Vancouver and bet on races at Hastings Racecourse, and by the early 1970s, he started raising horses of his own. In 1986, he bought into Glennwood Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, which he now owns, running it with Tanya as a small operation focused on breeding, boarding and training.
Tanya, formerly an investment banker in London, runs the farm and plans most of the matings, having studied bloodlines since she was a child. It is John who picks most of the names though, often taking them from song lyrics. Without Parole, for example, is named for the Merle Haggard song Mama Tried, with its line: “I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole. No one could steer me right but Mama tried.”
Thoroughbred horse racing arose from the 17thcentury practice of mating English mares with Arabian stallions. Over time, breeders have recognized that certain “nicks,” pairings of compatible bloodlines, can create incredible racers.
Typically, it is the mare who dominates the important traits of a foal — stamina, speed and temperament — largely because of the physical intimacy of gestation.
But sometimes — most famously in the case of Northern Dancer, the greatest Canadian thoroughbred and one of the sport’s most successful studs — this can be reversed, a phenomenon known as prepotence, in which the sire passes on the key traits.
Searching for and capitalizing on these genetic combinations has a whiff of magic to it, but some of it stands to reason. Without Parole’s father Frankel, for example, was also a star, undefeated over 14 races, and the top-rated racehorse in the world in 2011.
At Goodwood, Without Parole will be ridden by the Italian jockey Andrea Atzeni.
“The first I knew about Without Parole was when I got the call last night,” Atzeni told Sporting Life magazine last week. “He’s been very impressive, he’s unbeaten and he looks the one to beat next week. I sat on him this morning and he’s a goodmoving horse.”