Globetrotting Dansant doing Keller proud
Owner Barbara Keller has unbounded enthusiasm for international racing and is fuelling this ardour via her adventurous campaigning of the Gerard Butler-trained Dansant. The Dansili six-year-old has won six Listed races and recent visits to Deauville and Veliefendi meant he has run in six countries, including America, where he finished sixth in last year’s Santa Anita Handicap. “I originally bought him to run in the Melbourne Cup but every time I was ready to send him to be trained in Australia, Gerard would win another race with him,” she explained. “He chipped bones in both front knees in last year’s Geoffrey Freer, then had a bad attack of colic and nearly died in January when we were getting him ready for a second visit to Dubai. “I wouldn’t have the heart to take him away from Gerard now and he won’t run on turf again – I need to scour the programme book to find suitable all-weather races for him.” Though a resident of St Moritz, where for ten years she helped organise the unique White
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Dansant (right) flies the flag for Keller
Turf meeting on the frozen lake racecourse, Keller is a familiar face among the racing communities of Britain, Ireland and Australia. “In 1979 I was one of the first European girls to go to Australia, where I worked for Bart Cummings at the same time as [future trainers]
William Jarvis and Charles O’Brien,” she recalled. “I was the regular exercise rider of the dual Caulfield Cup winner Ming Dynasty, and Bart won the Melbourne Cup with Hyperno while I was there – I will always remember drinking champagne out of the cup when he brought it back to the yard the evening after the race.” She then went to college in Britain but was hardly a model student. “I spent more time in Epsom riding out for Brian Swift and Geoff Lewis than I did in the classroom,” she joked. Her time in Ireland was largely spent at Cleaboy Stud in County Westmeath, owned by her late husband Patrick Clarke. Now back in Switzerland, she also has horses in Ireland with John Oxx and Germany with Christian von der Recke, including Tarkheena Prince, a Listed winner on the Flat who is set to go jumping. Before Dansant her previous British winner was the von der Recke-trained Translucid, who crossed the North Sea to win a novice hurdle and two novice chases. Her grey colours with black seams will surely continue to grace Europe’s top venues for years.
Austrian ace’s Amico bound for Abbaye
Amico Fritz, who less than 15 months ago was a long-priced winner in claiming company, is set to bid to become only the fourth hometrained winner in the last 30 renewals of France’s top sprint, the Prix de l’Abbaye, at Longchamp on October 3. Yet, though the son of Fasliyev is trained by Alex Pantall, he should really be regarded as representing Austria, as that is the nationality of his owner/breeder Alexandre Pereira. Pereira hails from Vienna and had his enthusiasm for racing fired by the exploits of one of his relatives, Count Paul Marveldt, who managed Ballylea Stud in County Wicklow, Ireland, with great success to produce a number of top class horses, most notably the 1977 Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Pampapaul. “To me, Paul moving from Austria to win a major Classic race was like someone from Namibia winning the downhill skiing at Kitzbühel,” Pereira mused. In 1987 he acquired his first horse, Ballylea Girl, and sent her to Paul Kelleway. Almost a quarter of a century later and Pereira’s yellow and blue silks have taken part in a rich variety of races. His most durable horse was Galtee, who ran 65 times in 11 countries and won the Czech St Leger and Stockholm Stora Pris. His
THOROUGHBRED OWNER & BREEDER INC PACEMAKER
classiest was a homebred, the dual Group winner Komtur, fourth behind Lando and Monsun in a vintage German Derby in 1993. He calls Amico Fritz a “beautiful parting gift” from the multiple winner-producing mare Arctic Appeal, as he was her last foal. An incredibly tough son of Fasliyev who has run 22 times in the last year and a half, he fulfilled an ambition of his owner in running at Royal Ascot, but trumped that by taking Germany’s
most prestigious sprint, the Goldene Peitsche. Pereira has three broodmares, split between his niece, Lorli Higgins, in County Kildare in Ireland, and Ralf Ernst’s Gestut Eulenberger Hof, near Heidelberg in Germany. Pereira lives in Zurich, where he is director of the Opera House. But in 2012 he will be moving back to Austria to take up the job as manager of what he calls ‘the Epsom Derby of classical music’ – the Salzburg Festival.
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The incredibly tough Amico Fritz and owner/breeder Alexandre Pereira
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