Gloria de Campeao: striking advert for
little known sire
GLORIA DE CAMPEAO 6 h Impression - Audacity (Clackson)
IN the ideal scenario, the richest horserace ever run would have been won by the greatest horse in the world, but we knew before Meydan staged its first Dubai World Cup that we would have to settle for something less.
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But Saturday's contest at least provided a thrilling spectacle, with the camera required to determine the result after three horses representing different countries flashed across the line together, while little more than three lengths separated first from tenth. The idea that this was an open race was amply confirmed.
Was it a fair result? As the race was run, yes, but it was hard to avoid the conclusion that it might have been very different with a different pace scenario. The pace determined the outcome, and Gloria de Campeao won because his jockey, TiagoPereira, was allowed to dictate the tempo throughout and judged matters supremely well.
This was Gloria de Campeao's third shot at the World Cup. He had been beaten some 16 lengths as a 50-1 eighth behind Curlin in 2008 and 14 lengthswhen 25-1 and runner-up to Well Armed last year.
His 16-1 odds this time were chiefly a reflection of the weaker opposition, but he had delivered a career-best performance when collecting the Singapore Airlines International Cup at Kranji on turf last May, and he had run close to that form in both of his starts on Meydan's Tapeta surface before the weekend. With the run of the race under a canny ride, he was able to improve again, showing tremendous gameness when the situation demanded it in the final strides.
Gloria de Campeao now has a career record of nine wins, five seconds and three thirds from 24 races, with earnings of US$8,864,476. He ranks as one of the sport's all-time greatest bargains, having been purchased on behalf of Swedish owner Stefan Friborg for just US$20,000 by gifted horseman Renato Gameiro, the agent associated with the acquisition of such other notable runners as Einstein and Cara Rafaela, the latter also being the dam of Bernardini.
Gloria de Campeao was something less than a superstar in Brazil, but he was smart enough, collecting five wins over 1m, including a Group 3 at Cidade Jardim and a Group 2 at Gavea. His two ventures in Group 1 company in his home country brought him third place on each occasion.
He has been a French resident since September 2007, but has competed there only three times, his best effort being a third in an unimportant race on Deauville's all-weather. His performances in France - and in America, where he ran down the field in last year's Arlington Million - have been far below the level he attained in Singapore and in most of his races in Dubai.
Gloria de Campeao comes from the first crop of his sire Impression, and is by far the best of that horse's representatives to date. His only other runner of much distinction is the filly Confederada, successful at Group 3 level, though it has to be acknowledged that he has not had large crops - never more than 31 - and the group who turn three this year number only five, three colts and two fillies.
Impression was conceived in Kentucky to a southern hemisphere-timed mating between Fappiano's high-class sprinting son Rubiano and the unraced mare Improbable Lady, whose dam Gioconda had been acclaimed champion sprinter in Argentina. Imported in utero to Argentina and foaled at Haras La Vacacion, Impression duly became a smart sprinter, collecting five wins from ten starts, with a Group 1 score in the Gran Premio Maipu (5f on dirt) as his stand-out performance.
From a family that had produced major winners in several South American countries, Impression might have found a berth at stud in any of them, but he wound up in Brazil, at the Haras Santarem in Parana state, south of Sao Paulo, a farm whose owner Sylvio Bertoli has been involved in racing and breeding for some 40 years.
Among the mares Bertoli put to Impression in his first season was the five-year-old Audacity, whose only venture to the racecourse had proved fruitless, but who came from an excellent family and was a daughter of Clackson, one of the best racehorses ever seen in Brazil, and subsequently a multiple champion sire and successful broodmare sire.
Clackson's outstanding merit, at the track and at stud, could not have been foreseen in Britain, where the fine performances of his sire I Say as third in Sea-Bird's Derby and winner of the Coronation Cup were fast forgotten because of his lamentable record as a stallion. I well recall a colt-foal by I Say changing hands for only 20 - yes, twenty - guineas at the 1970 December Sales. He was not going to last much longer at stud in England after that.
But it's not unusual for a stallion to achieve widely different results in different environments, and I Say got a genuine star in Brazil in Clackson, who won 15 of his 23 races and finished in the frame in the other eight.He notched Group 1 victories on dirt and turf, his most fabled triumph coming in the 1982 Grande Premio Sao Paulo at Cidade Jardim, when he set a course record for the 1m4f grass course.
A solid stayer who habitually raced up with thepace, he soon made his mark at stud, getting a Derby winner in Old Pretender in his first crop, and he never looked back after that. His lifetime tally of 88 stakes-winners represented 11 per cent of his live foals, conceived over 20 seasons.
At the time of Gloria de Campeao's purchase by Renato Gameiro, the notable racing performances of Audacity's first foal, Alucard, still lay in the future; there was no knowing that he would become a Group 1 winner.
In pedigreeterms, what impressed Gameiro about the mare's second colt was the inbreeding that featured Gran Premio Jockey Club hero Farnesio in the dam and his three-parts sister Gioconda in the sire. But more especially what attracted him was that Gloria de Campeao was a good physical specimen and grand walker who clearly took after his maternal grandsire, rather than his sire.
Now that Gloria de Campeao has emulated Clackson as a front-running top-notch middle-distance performer we can all recognise what Gameiro discerned.
