Now That's A Decent Proposal

The Age

Friday November 14, 2008

Phil Wilkins

Viewed's half-sister had en even closer shave than the Cup winner, writes Phil Wilkins.

VIEWED'S win in the Melbourne Cup had plenty of reverberations across the thoroughbred industry, not least for a mare named Decency and her owners.

Decency, a half-sister to Viewed, can now be found at Woodwinds Farm in the mountains behind the Gold Coast, a long way from a dogger's yard in Brisbane, where she was waiting to be slaughtered early last year.

She was saved by a horse lover who paid $600 for her. She is now in foal, with breeding experts saying that, as a close relative of a Melbourne Cup winner, she would be worth $100,000 and her foal about the same.

The powerful brown mare, who had a terrible scar extending from mid-belly to her flank from being impaled on a stake while squeezing through a gate, was discovered in the abattoirs by an astute young woman, Rebecca Bates, who was searching for a riding horse for a friend.

There was something about the doleful animal standing at death's door that attracted her horse lover's eye. She returned home and told husband Shannon: "I can't get this mare out of my head. She's so lovely, so quiet, so nice to ride. We have to save her. I've got a feeling there's something good about her pedigree."

They bought her and, for want of a better name, they called her "Mary", as in mare. They took her back to Woodwinds Farm, a 40-hectare stud, in the Gold Coast hinterland's Numinbah Valley.

Pursuing Bates' hunch, they began research. The mare's brands made her traceable through the Australian Stud Book and they discovered she was New Zealand-born, that she came to Australia as a yearling and was, in fact, the daughter of the well-credentialed stallion Defensive Play from an obscure mare named Lovers Knot. Further research authenticated Mary as the thoroughbred mare, Decency.

The suspicion was she had a history of slipping foals, and this was further complicated by her terrible belly wound. The Bates discounted her for breeding purposes, regarding her as a sale proposition to a nearby riding school.

The day before Decency was to be inspected for purchase by the trail farm operators in July of last year, a quail burst out of the grass, startling her and sending her tumbling down a bank, leaving her with a fractured wither.

"She was so sore it put paid to her becoming a riding horse," Rebecca recalled. "We nursed her through the injury and I looked at her and said: 'You don't want to leave us, do you? You just want to stay here. But that's all right. You're a lovely, big girl'."

In August of last year, equine influenza struck, slamming shut all property gates, preventing movement of horses in Queensland and NSW. Ambitions the family had of utilising the new stud's two stallions for servicing mares flew out the window. In desperation, they covered Decency with Tanabota, their Redoute's Choice-sired stallion. Now, Decency has her own brown filly foal, nicknamed Tyra.

Earlier this year, browsing through the weights for the Melbourne Cup, Shannon Bates spied the nomination of the five-year-old stallion, Viewed, trained by Bart Cummings. Viewed was out of Lovers Knot, the same mare who threw Decency.

So, the cheering as Viewed and Bauer duelled along the Flemington straight last Tuesday week was even more thunderous in the community hall at Numinbah Valley as locals celebrated their "connection" with Viewed.

© 2008 The Age

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