There are no specific plans or targets for stud failure Legislate even though the 2014 Durban July winner is back in work at Summerveld with the rest of Justin Snaith’s KZN string.
Drakenstein racing manager Kevin Sommerville said: “He has now been back in training for about a month and it’s to see how things go with him. There are no plans to geld him and he seems to be a happy horse at the moment.”
The former Horse of the Year also won the 2014 Cape Derby and Daily News as well as the following year’s Rising Sun Gold Challenge and he still holds the record for the Kenilworth mile that he set in the 2014 Green Point.
Legislate (Snaith Racing)
But his first season at stud (2016) proved a commercial disaster. According to the NHA records his fertility was only 48% – 50 mares, 24 foals and 26 no returns.
Sommerville said: “Twenty or thirty years ago that sort of fertility might have been just about OK but nowadays it is not good enough for him to continue as a stallion. Commercial breeders simply can’t afford the risk of sending a mare to him in case they are forced to miss a year and in his second season he only had 15 to 20 mares.
“Maybe if he does well on the racecourse once more he could come back as a private stallion but even then he could never cover more than 20 or so mares in a season.”
Certain aspects of the horse’s physique apparently lie at the root of Legislate’s poor fertility including, crucially, unusually small testicles. He stood at a fee of R20 000.
Richard Fourie, who rode Legislate to most of his triumphs, has been fined R 7 500 for hitting another rider in what the NHA calls “an altercation” in the jockeys’ room at Durbanville last month. Fourie is normally a pretty calm individual but this happened after he suffered interference on the fancied but unplaced King Of Aces. Fourie admitted his guilt at a hearing last week.
Smart Call proved most disappointing on her return in a Listed race at Kempton on Saturday. She started 7-2 joint favourite and raced in second but she failed to quicken when the race began in earnest and managed only seventh of ten. It was her first run on the all-weather but she had been working well on a similar surface at Newmarket.
Trained by Sir Michael Stoute, the 2016 Met winner last year ran six times in four different countries – all in Group 1 or 2 races, finishing third at York and fourth at both Royal Ascot and in a Deauville Group 1.
By Michael Clower
