| HARNESS JEWELS |
YEAR: 2019
BOLT FOR BRILLIANCE:2 Br g Muscle Hill - Toomuch To Do
OWNERS: Mrs S Herlihy, D I Donaldson, P J Hailes, S H Mathews
BREEDER: Brad Reid
TIME: 2:30.2 Mile Rate: 2-02.0 Last 800m: 60.7 Last 400m: 28.6
It would be fair to say that the breeding career of the top trotting mare Toomuch To Do has been quite the rollercoaster ride for all those concerned.
As a winner of 11 races including a G2 Canterbury Park Trotting Cup and an Inter-Dominion heat in Auckland, where she downed an 11-year-old Lyell Creek, Toomuch To Do went to stud with understandably high expectations.
Her Christchurch breeder-owner Simon Philip certainly did everything right by her in breeding two filly foals by Sundon and then two colts by Love You, but only one of them raced and none won.
One of the Love You colts died at an early age of a twisted bowel. The other three were all found wanting it would seem, and neither filly was used or wanted at stud.
So this rollercoaster ride had ‘crashed and burned’ and a very disappointed Philip wanted out.
“This was all in the wake of the earthquakes which had badly affected my business (Baker Boys) and I couldn’t afford to keep pouring money down that drain, or the horses,” said Philip.
“So I was looking to sell Toomuch To Do, but in the end I wound up swapping her for a service fee to The Pres, which I never used.
”Philip had bred one more foal in a filly by Revenue and wound up effectively giving her away. She was later on sold for $4000 on The Horse Trader.
Philip had signed Toomuch To Do over to Patrick Halpenny, a Christchurch fellow, now a Perth based air traffic controller, having a brief flirt with the game who then sold her in foal to The Pres to Tracey Healy.
This happened at the silent auction organised by Noel Kennard at Addington Raceway and Healy paid just $600 for her. “Bruce Hutton had the two Love You colts and when he got crook, he asked me to try one of them as he was a bit too much of a handful for his stablehands,” said Healy.
“It was the first Love You and the second one had died as a yearling.
“He had a really nice way of going and I liked him a lot, but you could tell he wasn’t happy about something, and it turned out to be arthritis.
“I could also recall Bruce telling me that the second Sundon filly could have been alright, but that she never really got tried, so the mare had had some bad luck with most of her foals and I had some sympathy for her.
“I got a colt by The Pres and he’s just had 18 months out as a result of severed tendons, but I’ve started on him again.
”So on the face of it, things weren’t looking too flash for Toomuch To Do as a broodmare – that is until that Revenue filly showed up as Hey Yo and put Jack Harrington on the map.
Healy would go through some difficult times after buying Toomuch To Do and left her empty for a year before leasing her to Brad Reid of the NZSBA.
He bred Toomuch To Do to Muscle Hill to get Bolt For Brilliance, a $30,000 sale for him at the Premier and the upset winner of the 2YO Ruby at the Jewels.
So suddenly Toomuch To Do is not only the dam of an open class trotting mare who is Group 1 placed, but also the dam of a Group 1 winning two-year-old trotter with a big future, and people are coveting what fillies she has and might have.
Healy would subsequently lease the mare to Harrington for two years and he’s bred a yearling colt and a weanling filly each by Peak, while Healy has gone in with friend Tony Wederell in putting Toomuch To Do in foal to Creatine, and now finds herself hoping and praying for a filly herself next season.
All this from a 21-year-old mare that nobody really wanted until Hey Yo showed up and won her debut at Addington just a few years ago.
“I simply couldn’t afford to breed from her myself for quite a while,” said Healy.
“I had a run of 11 horses which amounted to nothing and most of them were mine, and they all cost money to feed and work.
“Then last year I got knocked over by a horse and woke up in hospital two days later with a fractured skull.
“I’m lucky to be alive and between me and the few horses I’m working, we’re all cot cases.
“This was going to be Toomuch To Do’s last foal, but we might have to rethink that now.”
Reid is now basking in the glory of being the breeder of a Group 1 winner with the very first horse he’s bred, and sold at the sales.
He has mixed feelings about selling him now, but it had to be done at the time, with others in the pipeline.
“When I got this job I’d go along to the races and see the thrills that other people were experiencing, and I had to get involved,” said Reid.
“I thought about breeding Toomuch To Do to sires like Pegasus Spur and Skyvalley, but I could recall Tracey saying that if she won Lotto, she’d love to cross Toomuch To Do with Muscles Yankee.
“Then I was talking to Gavin Smith one day and he said why would you breed to that old horse for 9k when you can breed to his best son for not much more ($12,500).
“You couldn’t get a booking to Muscle Hill, but Bruce (Hutton) had one he wasn’t going to use and we negotiated with Peter O’Rourke getting the booking transferred.
“Hey Yo qualified the same week that Toomuch To Do was bred to Muscle Hill and then about a fortnight out from the yearling sales, she finished third in the Great Southern Star.
“If it hadn’t been for her, I probably wouldn’t have bothered putting the colt in the sales.
“Then Trent (sales preparer Yesberg) went to the trouble of drawing Tony Herlihy’s attention to the colt.
“So it was like a case of coming from nowhere to a place where all the stars came into alignment.
”Or all’s well that ends well.
Credit: Frank Marrion