Roch ‘N’ Horse retired

Connections of Group 1-winning sprint mare, Roch ‘N’ Horse, have called time on her outstanding career. The six-year-old mare is to return home to Little Avondale Stud before a date with 2022/23 New Zealand Champion Sire, Proisir.

Little Avondale Stud owner/breeders Sam and Catriona Williams reflected on a career that included wins in the Group 1 Yulong Stud Newmarket Handicap (1200m) and Group 1 Darley Champions Sprint (1200m) at Flemington.

“She has retired sound and a very happy mare. There was nothing else left for her to prove,” Williams said.

“She won the two biggest sprints in Victoria and Catriona and I watch those replays all the time and she has done us proud, she’s done the whole syndicate proud and it’s just been fantastic.”

Roch ‘N’ Horse began her racing career easily accounting for her maiden rivals at Te Aroha for Pam Gerard, training partner of the recent New Zealand Hall of Fame inductee Michael Moroney. Pam identified her talent early on.

Roch ‘N’ Horse steadily progressed through the grades before a breakthrough Listed win in the Power Turf Sprint (1200m) at Hastings after a light spring in which she finished second to quality mare Levante in the Listed Hanui Farm Counties Bowl (1100m).

Returning in the summer of 2022, she had a run to forget in the Group 1 Sistema Railway (1200m), never seeing any daylight in the run from barrier 1.

Her brave effort in the Group 1 JR & N Berkett Telegraph (1200m) put her on a path to Australia for a crack at some of the nation’s premier sprints.

In 2017, Redkirk Warrior became the first horse to win the Newmarket Handicap first-up from a spell. Roch ‘N’ Horse would repeat that feat just five years later, and at cricket score odds of 100-1. The win gave jockey Patrick Moloney his first Group 1 success and justified the decision to bring the mare across the Tasman.

Her return in the spring of 2022 saw her finish close up in the Listed Carlyon Stakes (1000m) at Moonee Valley before two Group 2 seconds down the Flemington straight in the Bobbie Lewis Quality (1200m) and Gilgai Stakes (1200m).

A stellar field assembled for the Group 1 Darley Champions Sprint (1200m) on the final day of the Melbourne Cup Carnival. Rivals included her Kiwi sparring partner Levante, Group 1 winners Masked Crusader, Bella Nipotina and Rothfire, subsequent Group 1 winners Giga Kick and Paulele, and the then highest-rated sprinter in the world, Nature Strip.

She was again underrated in the race, sent out around 20-1. With jockey Jamie Mott in the saddle, she chased down a gallant Nature Strip who was eyeing a third win the race and a tenth Group 1.

Settling mid-field, she burst through the middle of the pack at the clocktower and grabbed Nature Strip at the 50-metre mark. It would be Mott’s second Group 1 after his win on another Kiwi galloper, Callsign Mav, in the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes (1400m).

Roch ‘N’ Horse would race three more times, with her best finish a third in the Group 1 William Reid Stakes (1200m) in March before retiring a winner of five races and earnings in excess of $3 million.

Her record at Flemington stands at two Group 1 wins and two Group 2 seconds from five starts up the straight track and she will be remembered as the small but mighty mare who upstaged the fancied horses on more than one occasion.