Dash delivers for trotting stalwarts

The thrilling last-stride win of Dash Dosh in the Group 1 $135,100 Woodlands Stud New Zealand Trotting Oaks at the Age Group Classics meeting at Addington has delivered two popular harness racing identities a perfectly timed and sentimental farewell to their breeding careers.

The thrilling last-stride win of Dash Dosh in the Group 1 $135,100 Woodlands Stud New Zealand Trotting Oaks at the Age Group Classics meeting at Addington has delivered two popular harness racing identities a perfectly timed and sentimental farewell to their breeding careers.

For Cantabrian breeder, studmaster, bloodstock agent and long-serving official Peter O’Rourke, and Adelaide entrepreneur David Shammall, the victory was a moment of deep satisfaction. Shammall, a former South Australian Harness Racing Club committeeman, has owned a string of Group 1 winners including Derby heroes Franco Sequel and Keep It Up, as well as the high-class trotters Adella’s Dash and Light Buffy. The pair are also the founding partners behind Stallions Australasia, the company that began importing frozen semen from elite Northern Hemisphere stallions into Australasia in 2013.

Their roster over the past decade has read like a roll call of global influence: the great Muscle Hill, a five-time North American trotting sires’ premiership winner; Tactical Landing, who sired this year’s Victoria Derby and Vicbred Final winner Mecarno; and Trixton, sire of both Dash Dosh and Inter Dominion Trotting champion Arcee Phoenix. Other sires made available through Stallions Australasia have included Southwind Frank, Six Pack, Wishing Stone and Lucky Chucky.

The win comes at a poignant time. The 2025/26 breeding season will be the final chapter for O’Rourke and Shammall in shipping and distributing frozen semen to breeders across Australasia. “We are winding down the business after 13 years. We’ve got this season to go with Tactical Landing and he’s probably getting his best book since he became available,” O’Rourke said. “Hopefully some of the other studs will take over the transport of the semen.”

As it happens, the breeding of Dash Dosh occurred almost by accident. O’Rourke recalls having a casual cup of coffee with Phillip Iggo, breeder of the talented open-class trotter Bordeaux. “He offered us a half-sister to Bordeaux, and he took one of our mares who was in foal at the time,” he said. The mare O’Rourke acquired through this swap was Dosh, a qualified but unraced daughter of the 12-time Group 1 European and American-winning trotting stallion Revenue. Her maternal family traces back to the influential U Scott mare Passive, ancestress of top trotters like Call Me Now, About Now, Asia Minor, Some Direction and When.

Despite her pedigree, Dosh was a challenge in the breeding barn, producing just one live foal in four seasons—Dash Dosh. The bonny filly was sold privately as a youngster to Ohoka horseman Tom Bagrie and a group comprising Paul Howlett, Scott Bagrie, Keith Woolley and Colin and Sandra McPherson. “At the time Tom was training a mare for us called Sue’s Dash which won a race at Addington, so we offered him Dash Dosh,” O’Rourke explained.

As a two-year-old, Dash Dosh showed only flashes of her ability, winning once from six attempts. But her three-year-old season has been a revelation. From 11 starts she has won four—each at Addington—and placed twice, banking $109,346. Her dramatic Oaks triumph ended the seven-race winning streak of Victorian star Tracy The Jet, and she did it the hard way: sitting in the trail before unleashing a 57.5-second last 800m and a 27.2-second final quarter to get the bob down. Her 1980m mobile time of 2:27.4 (1:59.7 MR) carved 1.4 seconds off her previous best.

“She’s a little bit of a late bloomer,” O’Rourke said. “She’s on line to being one of the best we’ve ever bred, certainly among the fillies. She’s the sort you’d love to start a breeding programme with.”

O’Rourke’s association with the sport spans a lifetime. He began at Nevele R Stud in 1975, initially managing accounts and office work before becoming general manager. “Holmes Hanover, Live Or Die and Falcon Seelster were the three best sires to stand at Nevele R in my time,” he said. The trio collectively amassed more than 20 New Zealand sires’ premierships, shaping an era.

As a bloodstock agent, O’Rourke has sold hundreds of horses to Australia and North America, among them Atitagain, Late Bid, Kentuckiana, Breeny’s Fella, Impressionist, Franco Nelson, Franco Hat Trick, Swapzee Bromac, and Group 1 stars such as Derby winners Franco Sequel, Franco Heir and Franco Jonquil, and Oaks winners Tupelo Rose, Scent, Shrub and Madam Steward. “I tried to specialise in buying and selling good maidens that would go on and win a Derby or an Oaks. I sold a dozen Group 1 Derby and Oaks winners,” he noted.

The best horse he personally raced was Michele Bromac, an 11-time winner who claimed two heats of the Nevele R Fillies Series and placed in both the final and the New Zealand Oaks. O’Rourke, who lives in Christchurch with wife Sue, also served as chairman of the NZ Sires Stakes Board and was a long-standing committeeman of the Metropolitan Trotting Club.

For a man whose fingerprints can be found on so many of the sport’s great pedigrees and commercial success stories, the emergence of Dash Dosh as a Group 1 winner feels like a perfectly scripted sign-off. A filly bred almost by accident, raised from a mare that struggled to produce, and now delivering her breeders a moment to savour just as their commercial chapter closes.

A fitting dash at the finish.