Kooringal and Kehoe gunning for Todman next with Sandbar's Shaggy

Cover image courtesy of Georgia Young Photography

Saturday delivered several surprise victories across Australasian racing - but Shaggy’s (Sandbar) win would have only been a surprise to those not paying attention. For Angus Lamont, studmaster of Kooringal Stud, and Wyong trainer Allan Kehoe, the signs pointing to success have been there all along.

The perfect fit for a stallion operation

The story starts with a Strawberry Hills-bred yearling colt in 2017, who sold for $650,000 to the bid of Jadeskye Racing, BK Racing, and Gerald Ryan at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale. His dam Tallow (Street Cry {Ire}) had won the G3 The Vanity and run placings in two Magic Millions races on her way to the breeding barn, and came from a nice enough family, but only one of her three previous foals had hit the track yet, for a handful of placings. Still, being by emerging Champion Sire Snitzel, he was a quality type.

Sandbar - as he would be named - landed in the Hawkesbury stables of Brad Widdup and won his first two starts, including the Listed Lonhro Plate. He put in a good performance in the G1 Golden Slipper Stakes to finish 4l behind Estijaab (Snitzel) before being put away for the winter. Winner of the Listed The Rosebud at his first start at three and second in the G2 Roman Consul Stakes behind Sesar (Sebring) after going down by 1.5l in The Autumn Sun’s G1 Golden Rose, the colt kept coming back for more. His fourth win was as a 4-year-old and he was still running good races across Sydney when his younger three-quarter brother Farnan won his own Slipper, securing his place at stud.

In early 2021, BK Racing’s manager Ben Vassallo announced that Sandbar was ready for his career at stud, and he showed up on Lamont’s radar.

“I was looking for a Snitzel colt at the time,” Lamont recalled. The Wagga-based operation has been in the Lamont family since 1910, and stood its first stallion, Kerry Piper (GB), in 1956. “I was in negotiations with one in Sydney and I wasn't prepared to pay what they're asking. Sandbar came on the market and I thought I liked him better.

“I thought he profiled better as a stallion proposition. He was obviously well-related, out of a really good mare, by a champion sire, and a three-quarter brother to a Champion 2YO Colt. He had very good form around himself.”

It was an intriguing package - all the more intriguing was that he was offered in an early June sale on Bloodstock Auction.

“I went and organised Ben Culham from Magic Millions to go and have a look at him, as he was up in Queensland at the time,” Lamont said. “And Culham basically said, ‘you've just got to buy this horse. He's a little ripper’.”

Lamont needed little persuasion to take the colt home for an undisclosed sum. As Farnan retired to stand his first season at Kia Ora Stud in the Hunter Valley, his rising 6-year-old sibling found a home over 600 kilometres south at Kooringal Stud.

Producing that first runner

Kehoe, a trainer at Wyong Racecourse for over a decade and a renowned horse breaker who kickstarted the ridden career of Divine Prophet and Prince Of Caviar amongst others, had followed Sandbar’s racing career. He had a lot of respect for Widdup, and admitted to having a punt if he saw the colt racing. Once Sandbar retired, Kehoe lost track of his name for a while.

On the other side of the pedigree, he had also been a fan of Shaggy’s dam, Moonrush (Encosta De Lago), for a while.

“I’d followed her with my father-in-law, we were going to buy her and breed with her ourselves,” Kehoe shared. A winning full sister to South African stakes winner Purely Atomic, Moonrush was turning into a good producer, having delivered Western Australia stakes performer Panzdown (Panzer Division) and Hong Kong performer Country Star (Starcraft {NZ}) already. Kehoe had trained her 2019 foal Moonlight Grace (Scissor Kick) to two city wins and over $150,000 in prizemoney, and he had purchased Moonrush's 2021 foal I Want This (Prized Icon) at the Gold Coast for $50,000 in 2023.

So when perusing the Inglis Classic catalogue for last year, he was immediately drawn to Moonrush’s latest yearling - particularly when he recognised the sire.

“I didn’t get to the sale, but I had seen photos of him for four or five months leading in to the sale,” Kehoe said. “I was keeping a close eye on him.”

Just as well he was, as Shaggy was a late withdrawal, with Lamont citing a poor scope at the complex.

“He's a lovely horse, and he was a grade one scope at home,” Lamont recalled. “But when we went to the sale, he had a slight issue.”

It was enough for vets to fear he wouldn’t even make it to 1000 metres, so Lamont pulled the colt from his draft. When Kehoe got into contact, they made a deal.

“Allan (Kehoe) was keen on him, and I just said, ‘look, there could be a problem here. I don't think there will be, but if you're prepared to break him in, I'll let you lease him at a bit of a higher percentage than what I would normally do, because I want him out there.’

“He's a beautiful horse, and he deserves the opportunity.”

The two had never actually met in person until Shaggy’s third run this past weekend - Lamont flew in to Sydney to watch the gelding demolish a group of Slipper hopefuls in the $160,000 Pierro Plate at Royal Randwick - but Lamont has always had faith in the Wyong horseman, whose reputation has preceded him.

“It is a lot of faith, but he's a very good horseman,” Lamont said. “I thought he would do the right thing by the horse.”

That winning feeling

Kehoe related that it was probably Shaggy’s second or third preparation that gave him an inkling that there was more than a ‘nice horse’ in his stable.

“When he got to three-quarter pace, he really gave you a good feel,” Kehoe said. A better feel, it turned out, than anything else that Kehoe had ever trained. As much of his business is pre-training and breaking in, particularly this time of year, Kehoe rides a lot of his own trackwork and Shaggy was always one that he kept the ride on.

As an aside, the name - Shaggy’s stable name was promoted to race name after his early colty attitude in the stable. Even after gelding, the name stuck.

“He was a bit of a lad,” Kehoe commented.

With each piece of work, Shaggy kept improving, and it solidified in Kehoe's mind that he had something particularly special in his stable. A tilt at the G3 Breeders’ Plate in October was on the cards at one stage, but Kehoe wasn’t quite happy with how the horse was going and opted to tip him out for a while.

“He was really humming,” Kehoe recalled. “I thought they would all know what he is when he gets there as he was really smoking, but he was also getting a bit tired, so I put him away for a month.”

The 2-year-old flourished over the break and came back ready to fire in late December. After a slick Newcastle trial, he was ready to bounce out and Aaron Bullock took the reins for his first start, where the gelding flew home to win by 5.71l at Coffs Harbour. He followed it up with a similarly huge performance at the Sunshine Coast to book his place in Saturday's race.

Bullock would have been in the saddle at Randwick, had he not struggled to make the gelding’s weight.

“Aaron told me last Saturday that Shaggy is the best 2-year-old he’s ridden to date,” said Kehoe. “When Aaron Bullock tells you that, you think, that’s a pretty big rap on him. And then he tells you he thinks he could win a Group 1. For Aaron to try and get his weight down, he has a big opinion of him.”

To have Bullock in his corner has been a major confidence boost, but Kehoe may have been reluctant for the leading country hoop to come ride trackwork on his stable star.

“Why change what’s been working?,” he said.

Kooringal’s flagbearer

For both Lamont and Kehoe, it’s all systems go to the G2 Todman Stakes in three weeks time now with a view to the Slipper, providing Shaggy stays feeling in the right frame of mind. Both are committed to tipping him out for a spell the second he begins to tire.

“I want to race him for a long time, not just for one big race,” Kehoe said. “But so far, his recovery is unbelievable. He was having a mad buck and a play (on Sunday morning). I was saying to a few mates, ‘you wouldn’t think this horse raced on Saturday’. He’s on top of the world.

“We’ve been doing the same thing between runs and it’s worked for now, so we will stick with that plan for now. Hopefully he can do what he did on Saturday (in the Todman).”

He has no fears about running into Wodeton (Wootton Bassett {GB}) - or any other Slipper hopefuls.

“We are all aiming for the same race, so we can't hide from each other,” he said. “The best one on the day will win. If I ran second to him, I'd be tickled pink, but if I beat him, I'd be absolutely rapt.”

For Lamont, he hopes that Shaggy can continue to be a flagbearer for the stud and his sire. He revealed that, even before Shaggy debuted, Sandbar had been receiving a little more attention with his first 2-year-olds. The 9-year-old covered a 50 per cent larger book in the spring than he did in 2023, and for now his fee remains unchanged at $8800 inc GST.

“A lot of trainers were starting to send him mares because they had a few in the stable that were going really well, and probably four months more mature than any other 2-year-old they had,” Lamont said. “We had a lot of them up and ready to go well before the 2-year-old trials, so we ended up putting them back in the paddock. There will be another couple having their first starts in the next week or so. And quite a few more coming through that have shown they've got a fair bit of ability at this stage.”

Perhaps another Shaggy is among them? Lamont believes there could be.

“I think a few will be coming back to him, just based on what we have coming through,” he said.