Cover image courtesy of Morphettville Racecourse
The red sprinter Redelva was the horse from the bush... bred in the bush and trained in the bush by South Australian Greg Varcoe. Specifically, he came from the township of Millicent in South Australia, a coastal spot not far from the state’s Victorian border.
Bred in 1983, Redelva was by the obscure stallion Romantic Hope, a son of the Golden Slipper and Blue Diamond S. winner John’s Hope. This was the Wilkes (Fr) sireline and it was a good one, even if Romantic Hope was a backyard breeder for Varcoe.
When Redelva came along in 1983, stretching into one of the biggest sprinters seen in Australia for a long time, only a few South Australian horses had mixed it with the best over the border. Even fewer had come from the southeast of the state, but Redelva put himself on the map.
Redelva
Across a career that began in September 1985 through to its final appearance in February 1993, the big horse won 21 races in 61 starts and $1.8 million in prizemoney. It was a small fortune for his owners, Millicent locals Reg Holloway and Bill Walter.
Redelva won the G1 Lightning S. in 1990 and the Group 1 pair of the William Reid S. and Futurity S. the following year. He twice won the G2 Linlithgow S., as well as the G2 Memsie S. and G2 SAJC Spring S. three times, and his overall Group haul was 14 races.
The chestnut consistently ran into the likes of Special (Habituate {Ire}) and Zeditave. He met Better Loosen Up (Loosen Up {USA}) at stakes level, as well as Planet Ruler (Kaoru Star), Shaftesbury Avenue (Salieri {USA}), Mannerism (Amyntor {Fr}) and Schillaci (Salieri {USA}).
He was campaigned without fear of defeat for nearly a decade, from his 2-year-old season when “he was fast and that’s about all” until he was nine years old.
For much of that time, Varcoe had a small team in his charge. It often numbered between four and eight horses, which gave Redelva superb individual care.
He wasn’t a horse that liked to be away from home for any length of time, so Varcoe consistently drove the horse the 900km roundtrip between Millicent and Melbourne for big-money races. It might have been the reason why Redelva never made it to Sydney.
Watch: Redelva winning the 1991 Memsie S.
The horse's big, powerful and lengthy stride was well-known throughout his career. He was also a handy horse first-up and he disliked wet weather. Such is the case with horses that have these long, brilliant careers, the race-going public had plenty of time to get to know Redelva, and he was a popular horse by his retirement in 1993 when he followed home Better Loosen Up in the G3 R N Irwin S.
Redelva’s name was forever entwined with Varcoe’s, but also with his two main riders, John Letts and Neville ‘Nifty’ Wilson. In 2018, when the horse was inducted into the South Australian Hall of Fame, both riders were among the audience, as was Varcoe.
In 2006, the Listed KMPG S. was renamed after Redelva, and it’s remained in his honour ever since. Over 1050 metres at Morphettville, it’s an appropriate kick to one of South Australia’s smartest-ever sprinters.
