A shy family finally sings as Birdy flies for Martin Denton

Martin Denton has never been one to chase the money. He will tell you, plainly and more than once, that he gets a far bigger kick out of watching a good horse stride out than he has ever got from a betting ticket. So when Birdy came swooping late to win Sunday's $25,000 Hydroflow Silk Road Fillies and Mares Final at Addington, the thrill for her Brighton breeder had next to nothing to do with the $16 she was paying.

In the hands of New Zealand's premier reinsman Blair Orange, the five year old Royal Aspirations mare Birdy was driven for one telling run, settled back off a wide draw before tracking the favourite into the race and bursting over the top of a smart field of mares to score by half a head. It was only the third win of her career, and it came at just her 14th start, but for those who know her best it was no bolt from the blue.

"It was no surprise at all," Denton said. "I was talking to Laura during the week and we both agreed she was well capable of beating that field. She had beaten a lot of those horses anyway. She just had to get the right run."
Birdy is a mare who has long flattered to deceive on paper, and there are good reasons her name has tended to slip under the punters' radar. She ties up, and she can be slow to find her feet away from the stand, the sort of quirks that turn a talented horse into an each-way riddle. Her trainer Laura McKay has worked out that the answer is to nurse her into her races and produce her with one sharp burst, and Denton is in no doubt the best of her is still to come

"At this stage Laura reckons she's actually better over the shorter course, because of her tying up," he said. "She can only work the one mile each day. She will get fitter and get out to 2600 in time, but it just takes longer to build that fitness, and the racing will help."

Birdy is the latest, and perhaps the sweetest, chapter in a breeding story Denton has tended for the best part of two decades, and like all the best harness yarns it is equal parts triumph and heartbreak.

She is the third foal of Mum Beat Lyall (Earl), a mare who gave Denton five of his 39 career training wins and a deal more besides. Those five wins came with five different reinsmen, and the roll call tells you plenty about the company Denton kept.

"She won five races with five different drivers," he said. "John Dunn won one, Dexter won one, Matty Williamson, Nathan Williamson, and myself."

That last name is the one that matters most. Mum Beat Lyall provided Denton with the only driving win of his life, on a mare he had bred and trained himself, and he knew exactly what he had just done.

"That was probably the highlight of my career," he said. "I said after that night, I can retire now. I'd done everything I wanted. Bred, trained and drove."

The name itself carries a story. Mum Beat Lyall is out of Sunny Action (Sundon), the 1997 New Zealand 3YO Trotting Filly of the Year and the winner of the 2000 Group One New Zealand Trotting Free For All, a day she got the better of the great Lyell Creek. When Denton came to breed from her, the tribute wrote itself. Mum beat Lyell, and so Mum Beat Lyall she became.

Getting hold of Sunny Action was the easy part.

"She came up for sale through the old stock agent up there," Denton recalled. "Gary Clark and I were accumulating a few broodmares at the time. Jim Dalgety wanted to sell her, so we bought her off Jim."

What followed was a long lesson in patience and bad luck. Sunny Action proved heartbreakingly shy at stud, and Denton still shakes his head at the run of it.

"Breeding wise we had nothing but bad luck," he said. "I was thinking about it the other night. I reckon Mum Beat Lyall was about the only foal we got out of her."
He is barely exaggerating. The mare had done some of her best producing before the partnership ever owned her, with Jim Dalgety responsible for the smart Flaming Action (Dr Ronerail), a winner of three in New Zealand and another three after she was exported to Australia, before he passed the mare on. For Denton and Clark, across the best part of a decade of trying, that one priceless filly in Mum Beat Lyall was very nearly all they had to show for it.

The family has more than made up for it elsewhere. Sunny Action's first foal, Sunny Lane (Lindy Lane), bred before the mare ever changed hands, founded a tail line that has since thrown another New Zealand 3YO Trotting Filly of the Year in Vacation Hill (Muscle Hill) and a Group One winning three year old in Australia in Commodus (Father Patrick).

Wind the page right back to its source and the scale of it is enough to take the breath away. Birdy descends from Roydon Gal, and the spread of her descendants reads like a roll of honour for the gait. More than 30 of them have banked six figure cheques, better than a dozen have cleared a quarter of a million, and four have surged past half a million, led by the Cantab Hall horse Gaines Hanover with upwards of US$750,000. The European arm runs just as deep, with the Ready Cash gelding Mellby Jinx beyond ten million Swedish kronor. For raw speed the numbers tell the same story, more than 25 of the family taking a mile mark of 1:55 or faster and close to 40 going 1:58 or better, from the 1:50 brigade of Locatelli, Gaines Hanover and Mr Mouton down through a long line headed by Leader of the Gang, Tacs Delight and Madhatter Bluechip.

Yet for all that prizemoney, Roydon Gal's greatest contribution never went near a totalisator. In her son Arndon she bred the sire of Sundon, the most influential trotting force this land has produced, and a stallion who turns up again in Birdy's own page as the sire of her granddam, Sunny Action. The blood does not get more important than that.

What makes Birdy such a fitting flag bearer for the family is that she carries the blood twice over. Her sire, Royal Aspirations (Monarchy), springs from the very same Roydon Gal source through the Aspiring Lass branch, which puts four crosses of the great matriarch inside the first five generations of Birdy's page, two through the sire and two through the dam. There is no shortage of substance in behind her, and precious little of it has gone to waste.

If anything underlines just how much was lost to ill fortune, it is Sigrid (Pegasus Spur), the first foal of Mum Beat Lyall and a very talented filly in her own right. She managed only one win from six starts and yet she set a national record doing it, was placed at her other four outings, and the single time she finished out of the money was when sixth in the Group One New Zealand Trotting Oaks. Denton broke her in himself and knew early she had a good deal of ability.

"She always showed she was pretty smart," he said. "She never ever galloped, she just wanted to trot."
The speed was the genuine part of her.

"When she won at Ashburton she set a national record for a three year old filly," Denton said. "The two starts before that, where she was placed, she actually broke the national record for those distances too, but being only placed she never got them. Unbelievable speed."

A soft tissue injury in the knee brought it all to a premature end.

"We tried different things, put the blood plasma back in, spent a fair bit of money, but in the end we just retired her."

Rather than fuss over the breeding himself, Denton handed Sigrid on, and the way he did it speaks to the man. The mare went to Laura McKay, whose association with Denton stretches back the best part of ten years to the day she rang him asking for a drive at Forbury Park. He kept her on, and when he wound down his own training and McKay was starting out, he began sending her horses, Sigrid the first of them. Gifting the mare to breed from was the natural next step.
"I told Laura I'm getting too old to worry about breeding, so she may as well have her," Denton said. "I just wanted someone to carry on with her, and she was a logical choice."

McKay now has a King Of The North filly out of Sigrid, freshly weaned, and the line rolls on.
It is a habit of his. The second foal of Mum Beat Lyall, Milky Way (Peak), never made the grade, so Denton gave her away too, this time to old friend Dennis Aitken ONZM, a Taieri dairy farmer and former Forbury Park board member who has since bred three foals from her.

"Dennis was after a good broodmare, so I said why don't you take this one," Denton said with a chuckle. "Probably the best thing I did and the worst thing he did."
The generosity runs right through his program. Take Och Aye The Noo (Pegasus Spur), another Denton breeze who won eight races, every one of them at a Forbury meeting, and who is out of a full sister to the Group Three Canterbury Park Trotting Cup winner The Fat Controller. She has left the eight time winner Ah Dinnae Ken (Majestic Son), and her two year old full brother, Och Aye Son (Majestic Son), is now in work with Alex Milne, who along with his wife Karen has taken over the mare to breed from. Denton would not have it any other way. He has spent years quietly placing his good mares with younger people who have the passion to carry them on.

The passion in him runs deep, and it goes back a long way.
"I actually trained gallopers when I was 21," he said. "My younger brother was a jockey. Then I got married, so I got away from the horses, as you have to do."

It was only later, after a divorce and selling his share of the family farm, that the bug bit again.

"I got to know Stewie Campbell, just up the road from me at Brighton, and I'd go and help out," he said. "Stu was very much into his trotters, and I enjoyed the trotting gait more than the pacing."

He held a trainer's licence from 2008 to 2021 and won most of his 39 races at Forbury Park, the track he served on the board of for the best part of a decade. When Forbury shut its gates, he quietly handed his licence in.

"That's just the way the world goes," he said. "You move on."

What has never moved on is the simple joy of it. Denton rarely backs his horses, and he backed Birdy just the once. The money was never the point.

"I get a bigger thrill out of the horses than I ever do for myself," he said. "I just love seeing them go."
He would have cruised up to Christchurch to watch this one too, given the choice.

"I've got an Aston Martin and I like cruising up in it," he said, "but I get too many speeding tickets, so I took the ute."

At an age when most would be content to watch, Denton is not quite done. He has the two year old Spin Twice (Majestic Son), a younger brother to Birdy and Sigrid, coming through with McKay, a colt who needs a little time but is heading the right way. And there is a final small stake to keep him interested, a ten percent share in a youngster McKay bought at the sales out of Beaudiene Beaut Babe.

"Laura was looking for someone to take the rest," he said. "I told her if she couldn't get rid of all of it, I'd take whatever was left. That's about it."

It is a fitting way to keep a hand in. For all the bad luck this family has thrown at him over the years, Martin Denton has answered every twist of it with patience, generosity and an unshakeable love of watching a good trotter do its thing. On Sunday at Addington, with Birdy flying home and the old Roydon Gal blood singing once more, the game gave a little of it back.