Cover image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Breeders Norm and Di Bazeley are looking forward to offering a half-sister of the talented son of Extreme Choice at the upcoming Magic Millions Gold Coast National Weanling Sale; a filly that they justifiably have a lot of faith in.
Not that selling has ever come easy to Norm.
“I spend a lot of time with my horses,” Norm said, laughing at the idea of anyone coming across him in the stables. They'd see me and wonder who I was talking to there on my own - they'd think I was crackers!
Norm admitted that parting with this filly will be "quite emotional”. When he returned to Elswick Stud after a recent stint in hospital, she was the first to greet him.
Norm Bazeley | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
“My wife was in the driveway with the buckets ready to feed the horses and I heard this thumping; bang, bang, bang. It was the filly banging on the gate. I went up to her and said, 'what's wrong, Sunshine, did you miss Dad?'
“Her head was going up and down, she put her nose forward for a kiss and by this time I am crying.
“Horses are like any animal, you give them a lot of love and they give it back, you can pick the intelligent ones that way. The ones who don't return the love are the ones you have a question mark on.”
“Horses are like any animal, you give them a lot of love and they give it back, you can pick the intelligent ones that way.” -Norm Bazeley
Creating a big impression
“Sunshine” is Norm and Di's nickname for the daughter of Midnight Pearl (More Than Ready {USA}) and The Autumn Sun, a filly who Norm says created a big impression from birth.
“She is a very athletic filly, very similar to Knight's Choice. Their temperaments are so alike in so many ways, though hers is probably just a little bit better.”
Knight's Choice (lime cap), winner of the 2024 G1 Melbourne Cup | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Norm - whose long career in the thoroughbred world includes stints as a track rider and hobby trainer - loves taking Sunshine on her educational walks, taking note of her attitude and presence.
“She has that good bit of spirit about her, you put the lead rope on and she steps up a couple of notches! She prances along as if to say 'how good am I?!' She is a queen of the turf!”
“She (The Autumn Sun x Midnight Pearl filly) has that good bit of spirit about her, you put the lead rope on and she steps up a couple of notches! She prances along as if to say 'how good am I?!' She is a queen of the turf!” - Norm Bazeley
It took a while for the decision to sell to be made, but time forces Norm's hand.
“By the time she is ready to hit the big time, I will be 81. I will be 77 in September, (so) it's the end of the road for us in the breeding game. Midnight Pearl is in foal to Hitotsu and, at this stage, it is likely we will sell that one as a weanling as well.”
The highs and the lows
A health scare after Knight's Choice's (Extreme Choice) G1 Melbourne Cup win threw the future into sharp focus; still riding the Group 1 high two weeks later, Norm was told that he had serious kidney issues that forced him to have one removed just weeks ago.
“It was certainly a time that showed what highs and lows life can have,” he said.
Whilst in recovery mode, he is still staying busy with the VRC's renowned Melbourne Cup tour heading to Walcha, the town in which Norm's father was born and which Norm and Di have called home since retiring from running a successful civil construction business in Brisbane.
Sheila Laxon and John Symons with Knight's Choice and the 2024 Melbourne Cup trophy | Image courtesy of The Image Is Everything
Norm is excited to be showing Walcha and its history off, and is delighted that Knight's Choice's trainers Sheila Laxon and John Symons, as well as the horse's owners and the trophy itself, are planning to be at the nationally televised celebration.
Local businesses are getting involved with the event to be a great fundraiser for the town. Norm is on the organising committee, and is also involved in the application for a VRC $50,000 grant, with the hopes of building a Knight's Choice statue for the town's popular gardens.
The horse is the second Walcha-born Melbourne Cup winner after Blue Spec took out the coveted prize (in record time) in 1905.
Blue Spec, winner of the 1905 G1 Melbourne Cup | Image courtesy of Wikipedia
“I can't think of another small town to have produced two Cup winners,” Norm said.
Small stud, big results
Planning on getting a new sign made for his farm - something along the lines of 'the birthplace of Melbourne Cup winner Knight's Choice' - Elswick Stud is no one-horse operation, with Norm and Di proving to be excellent judges of first season stallions.
For not only did they breed (for a fee of $22,000 inc GST) Knight's Choice from the debut crop of Extreme Choice, but also the high-class Singapore galloper Top Knight from Zoustar's first crop.
Sold for $65,000 at the 2017 Gold Coast March Yearling Sale, Top Knight won 10 races including a number of Singapore's features. His dam Nero Cavallo (Charnwood Forest {Ire}) was purchased by Norm for $75,000 at the 2002 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
Eleven years later, he secured a bigger bargain when paying just $1000 for Midnight Pearl off the track.
Anything but ordinary
“I wanted a More Than Ready mare and saw her in the Inglis Great Southern Thoroughbred Sale catalogue," Norm said. "I had a friend look her, but he didn't like her, he said she was too fine and pretty ordinary.
“I did some quick research and found that the finer More Than Ready mares were producing better types than the thicker set ones. She was a good race mare, she fit the bill for me so I bought her.”
In 2018 when booking Midnight Pearl into Not A Single Doubt, Norm was disappointed when told that she was not good enough for him - something he said he and Arrowfield “still have a laugh about!”
There were certainly no hard feelings with Midnight Pearl later returning to the stud for her dates with The Autumn Sun and Hitotsu.
The switch to Extreme Choice, to whom Midnight Pearl got in foal to first time, proved a fortuitous one, that colt selling for $85,000 at Book 2 of the 2021 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
Knight's Choice as a yearling | Image courtesy of Magic Millions
Norm remembers the day he was sold; a stranger approached Norm to say that he was intending to buy the colt.
“He pointed to a woman standing nearby and said, 'if I go home without this colt, it will not be worthwhile me going home at all!'”
“He (John Symons) pointed to a woman (Sheila Laxon) standing nearby and said, 'if I go home without this colt (Knight's Choice), it will not be worthwhile me going home at all!'” - Norm Bazeley
The man was John Symons, the woman of course Sheila Laxon.
It was not Norm's first encounter with Laxon, who one evening had rung him out of the blue.
“The phone rang and this lady said 'what are you doing with my Pearl?'," Norm recalled. “I thought she was talking about a pearl necklace. Then she explained that she was upset as she'd lost a favourite horse at track work that morning, that horse being Denoninator, Midnight Pearl's half-brother.”
Laxon had a clear soft spot for Midnight Pearl, who she trained to seven wins around Victoria. She joked with Norm that he had “stolen” her for $1000, a line he remembered when talking to her after Knight's Choice won the won the G3 Sunshine Coast Guineas; “you stole him for $85,000!"
Hitting The Autumn Sun jackpot
Norm is hoping that Sunshine will be purchased by someone happy to have him come along the ride; “I will probably see if I can negotiate retaining a share in her,” he said.
The Autumn Sun had made a lasting impression on Norm at an Arrowfield Stud parade during his first season.
The Autumn Sun | Standing at Arrowfield Stud
“I just liked him and, when Extreme Choice's fee went up, he looked a great choice for Midnight Pearl. When his 3-year-old fillies started running so well, I thought 'we have really hit the jackpot here!'
"When his (The Autumn Sun) 3-year-old fillies started running so well, I thought 'we have really hit the jackpot here!'" - Norm Bazeley
Norm invests a lot of time studying his small broodmare band's pedigrees and stallion-matching; "We have never bred with more than five mares a year. Considering that, we think we've had pretty outstanding success.”
The results certainly speak for themselves.
