Super Easy: A Sign of Things to Come Methinks

It may only have been a Class Four event in Singapore but the many high profile New Zealand breeders who have invested so heavily in the stallion career of the five-time group one winning Danehill entire Darci Brahma should sleep a little easier tonight, following the emphatic victory earlier this evening by his well named three-year-old son Super Easy.

The colt who had looked so promising in his three previous starts - all in New Zealand last season - was making his Singapore debut and despite the opposition, could hardly have been more impressive, drawing away to win by five lengths without any apparent effort from horse and rider.

It was difficult to assess Darci Brahma's first crop to the races last season. A listed winning colt and a stakesplaced colt in Australia from a handful of starters, and three individual winners of three races and two stakesplaced horses from eleven starters in New Zealand would normally be considered a most satisfactory start, but Darci Brahma is no normal stallion.

Bred in the purple and a most attractive and talked about foal, Darci Brahma may have been a colt burdened with enormous expectations from the day he was born yet he never once showed it, fashioning a racing career the like of which you would expect to see in a Hollywood movie, winning on debut as a two-year-old on the opening day of the Karaka Yearling Sales a year to the day after he had sold there for a record $1.1 million, and culminating  in two consecutive group one sprint victories as a four-year-old.

A group one winner at two ( in Australia), three and four years of age between 1200m and 1600m, rarely is our industry blessed with such a well credentialed stallion prospect. Serving books of mares that would have done George Best proud, buyers from throughout Australasia liked what they saw when his first crop yearlings hit the sales in the summer of 2010, paying accordingly for a line-up that were on the whole strikingly similar in type to dad - medium sized, athletic, strongly girthed horses with attractive and intelligent heads.

Although Darci Brahma was a group one winner at two, it was over 1600m in June of his juvenile season and it could be that his progeny throw more to his distaff line, which while full of black-type, does lack two-year-old form - extending to his dam, an Oaks winner by Zabeel. Also, while it is easy to be wise in hindsight, but if one could select one trait from his yearlings that may have suggested his stock would need to be handled patiently, it was that some lacked a touch of maturity, especially through the neck and head.

Super Easy, who was selected from the Karaka Premier Yearling Sale for his Singaporean owners by Michael Wallace Bloodstock and Michael Freeman for $140,000, was always an eyecatcher in the yard here last season but he looks to have matured considerably from his first preparation, especially through the girth, shoulder and neck. This result, all of eight days into the new season should give confidence to Darci Brahma's fans, of which there are many, both financial and non.