Preferment
Raced 19 times for four wins, five minor placings and $2,438,405.
ONLY one performer has ever won all three of Flemington’s oldest top class races, the Victoria Derby (first held 1855), Melbourne Cup (1861) and Australian Cup (1863), and this was Spearfelt, a Victorian bred son of the imported Carbine grandson Spearhead. Spearfelt captured the Derby in 1924, the Melbourne Cup in 1926 and the Australian Cup in 1927.
Later a top sire from use at Alma Vale in Queensland, Spearfelt is one of only six whose careers have encompassed wins in both the Victoria Derby and the Australian Cup, a race run over the equivalents of 3600m1863-1942, 3500m 1943 – 1962, 2800m 1963 and 2000m in 1964-2016.
The others who have won this double have been Trident (by AJC Derby winner Robinson Crusoe) 1886 and 1887, Dreadnought (by Melbourne Cup and Victoria Derby winner Chester) 1889 and 1890, Craftsman (by imported Better Boy) 1963 and the Australian Cup in both1965 and 1966, Dulcify (by England bred Decies) 1978 and 1979 and Preferment (Zabeel) 2014 and 2016 (elevated from second).
Two of these horses, Preferment and Craftsman, a winner also of the VRC Queen Elizabeth twice, Turnbull Stakes, C.B. Fisher Plate, MVRC J.F. Feehan Handicap thrice and AJC Autumn Stakes, are very remote relations, both being products of the family established here in the 1880s with the importation of the German bred White and Blue to NSW.
Craftsman went back eight generations to White and Blue’s daughter Water Lily, a half-sister by Doncaster winner Rapid Bay to Somniloquist (by Somnus (GB), ancestress of Preferment.
A brother to Rezoned (won South Australian Fillies Classic-G3) and half-brother to the Lonhro gelding Loophole (8 wins, $398,435), Preferment is a 4-year-old entire who is the third named foal from Better Alternative, an Ian Smith, Edinburgh Park Stud, Wingham NSW bred Flying Spur mare who ran 21 times for two wins, 1250m and 2000m, and $18,700.
She is a half-sister to the Anabaa (USA) Villiers winner Dances on Waves and from Ancient Lights, an AJC PJ Bell Country Championship Final winning sister by Canny Lad to Ancient Song, a Group1 and 2 winning sprinting mare who produced Tampiko, a Lonhro Gold Coast Prime Minister’s Cup winner.
Preferment and Ancient Song are the only Group1 winners under the first six dams, but the sixth, the Nilo (GB) sprinter Queen of Egypt, was a half-sister to Pompilia (by Abbots Fell (GB), a winner of seven races at 1200m who went to Matrice (Masthead (GB); 45 starts, 27 wins) and produced the South Australian rocket Pago Pago. He won nine races in succession including the Golden Slipper and VATC Merson Cooper, and sired Group1 winners from use in America and then Australia.
Another very speedy performer from this branch of the White and Blue family was Apple Bay, a Newtown Wonder (GB) winner of the Doomben 10,000, AJC Challenge Stakes and VRC Lightning Stakes. He was from Silver Words (by Talking), a product of a sister to the third dam of Pago Pago and a grandaughter of a sister to Lady Medalist, a mare by St Alwyne (GB) (by St Simon sire St Frusquin) bred in 1906 on the Moses brothers Arrowfield Stud a Jerrys Plains Hunter Valley. She won 12 races, including the Caulfield Cup.
Trained by Chris Waller for many owners, Preferment, the latest Group1 winning edition to the family, has now raced 19 times for four wins, five minor placings and $2,438,405. Five Group1 cheques have come from wins in the Australian Cup, Victoria Derby and Turnbull Stakes, a second in the Rosehill Guineas and fourth in Sydney in the Chipping Norton.
Preferment was too strong for his stablemate Royal Descent
