 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2000
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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John Hay had a bit to talk about at Addington on Tuesday. Prior to the NRM Sires' Stakes Final he had a quick chat to Franco Heir's owner Bob Proberts; just past the finish line he turned to acknowledge Tony Herlihy and Young Rufus alongside him, and returning to the birdcage he looked skywards and said a few silent words.
So just what did he have to say? "Bob came down to the stall before the race, asking me how Franco Heir would go. I said that he felt as good as Franco Enforce did the day he won the Sires' Stakes Final, and that Franco Heir was a better stayer," Hay reiterated. "I told Tony how much of a thrill it was to win the race - but only after we had crossed the line ahead of him. And then to Wayne I said 'that's for you'." On the track, Franco Heir had done all the talking for him.
Settling second last from his wide draw, the Holmes Hanover gelding was asked to move as the field wheeled around the Showgrounds bend, and he zoomed up to join pacemaker City Rogue who had done a power of work to get there. "I was waiting for Tony to go on Young Rufus; I thought he was the one to beat," Hay said. "He ended up following us around, then I think he got a bit held up when Niobium shifted into the three-wide line. I wanted to get up to the death seat with 800 metres to go, that was the plan; they had gone really hard early too, which played into my blokes hands. I honestly wasn't happy with him up until about six days ago. After arriving from Australiahe had got a cold and had a nasal discharge, but since that trial at Rangiora last week he has improved out of sight. His coat had picked up, everything had picked up; he worked unreal at the weekend. But it was hard to know how much work to put into him after he came back from Australia and he's still a big dummy so he should improve yet."
For Franco Heir's Australian owner, simply having a horse like him is a dream come true. Proberts first learnt about the 3-year-old from a newspaper article after his first-up win at Ashburton. He asked his trainer Noel Alexander to make inquiries, who in turn rang the horses connections in New Zealand, but the original message they got back was that Franco Heir was not for sale. "I remember thinking...'a kiwi horse that is not for sale? It must be a good one'," Proberts said. "I was hell bent on getting him after that. I have been to yearling sales in Sydney, Victoria and New Zealand and bought 12 horses in the past year; I wanted a good one, but suddenly I didn't want to wait. We started at a lot lower price than what he eventually sold for, but I can acknowledge now that he was a cheap horse," Proberts said.
Franco Heir is raced by the Dalcom Corporation Ltd, a finance and investment company that Proberts is the Managing Director. The 54-year-old and his "better half" Di own a 130 acre horse farm in a town called Coldstream in the Yarra Valley, and just up the road is another 100 acre property that is in the process of becoming their first vineyard.
Credit: John Robinson writing in HRWeekly 16Nov00