Beauty Only is taking Massimo Parri from Il Palio to the BMW Hong Kong Derby

11/03/2015

The weekly sport at Sha Tin racecourse is a far cry from the Palio di Siena. Not even the famously tight turns of its sister track, the high-rise encircled Happy Valley, can offer anything close to the sharp corners and short stretches of the Piazza del Campo. Yet if Beauty Only should win the BMW Hong Kong Derby at Sha Tin on Sunday, 15 March, Il Palio will have played its part.

Massimo Parri was raised in Siena, Italy. The Palio, an almost harum scarum contest with medieval roots, is in his blood; it is a passion at the core of his heritage. The race sees 10 bareback riders tear around three laps of Siena’s main square, cheered loudly by a trackside throng packed into every square inch. A building developer with a love for horses, Parri captained his “contrade” Istrice - one of 17 such competing districts within Siena - to victory in the July 2002 running of Il Palio. Nowadays he is a breeder of thoroughbred racers, and some fine ones at that.

“Everyone in Siena knows horses and at least a little bit about thoroughbreds,” says Parri’s son, Giovanni Parri. “My father started with his friend with half-breds. He bought a half-bred mare and he was very lucky. He had Maestrale, she won a big half-bred race in Siena, the Gran Premio del Mezzosangue. From there he started to breed for himself. He had a dream, with my mother, to have a farm and breed racehorses.”

Beauty Only is among those Parri has since bred. When the Tony Cruz-trained gelding lines up at Sha Tin against 13 opponents for the HK$18 million BMW Hong Kong Derby, a local Group 1 contest for four-year-olds over 2000 metres, Parri and his family will be there, recalling the athletic young colt with the flashing white face who once galloped around the paddocks of their farm outside Siena.

“He was really a bit different from the others; he was always strong and athletic. He always seemed to like to race the other horses around our paddocks,” says Parri junior, who plays a vital role in coordinating with the stallion farms and overseeing the boarding arrangements for their mares overseas. Beauty Only was foaled in Ireland and raised in Tuscany.

Parri senior and his wife, Letizia, established Allevamento Le. Gi. 10 years ago, not long after purchasing Beauty Only’s dam, the Ali Royal mare Goldendale. Their success since has been remarkable. From around 10 mares at any given time, the Parris have produced at least nine black type earners. Among them is Biz The Nurse, an Oratorio entire out of their 11-year-old Tobougg mare Biz Bar. Biz The Nurse, nowadays in training in the US, won the G2 Derby Italiano and G1 Gran Premio di Milano in 2013.

“Goldendale was the first important mare that my parents bought,” says Parri, whose girlfriend Francesca is also involved in the family enterprise. “They decided to make a journey to Keeneland and they saw a lot of mares, but they had a close eye on two or three. Goldendale was one of them. She cost US$50,000 and that was a big investment for us at that time - it was November, 2004. They bought the farm in 2005, so when they bought her they only had two or three mares. You could say that everything started from Goldendale.”

The mare was five when the Parris heard the hammer drop on their successful bid. Young and once-raced, she was a half-sister to Late Parade, a prolific winner in Italy including three times in Group 3 company, and another Italian scorer, Sweet Ludy, who went on to claim a pair of Grade 2 wins in the US. 

“We are not able to invest like a big farm, so we try to find value,” says Parri, who will accompany his parents to Hong Kong. “We like to buy Italian mares because we know them; we know we have good genealogy in Italy. At the sales, we obviously look at pedigree, but we like to buy a mare with good bone; we buy big mares, not small mares. If they are not very correct, that to us is not too important, it is important that they have good bone and they are strong.”

Goldendale’s first foal for the Parri operation was a Distant View filly named Sogna, in utero when her mother went through the Keeneland sale ring. Beauty Only, known originally as Gentleman Only, came along six years later, the product of a mating with Holy Roman Emperor, the Coolmore stallion responsible for the outstanding 2014 BMW Hong Kong Derby victor Designs On Rome.

“We sold Beauty Only for 72,000 euros: he was top priced at the ITS sale,” says Parri. “He had a problem and was beaten on debut in the June of his two-year-old year; then, in the autumn, from his second race to winning the Group 3 Premio Guido Berardelli, he demonstrated that he was a very good racehorse. In the Group 3 he didn’t start very well but he performed very impressively.”

That win prompted interest from Hong Kong and the then colt’s owner, Scuderia Effevi SRL, sold their rising star to Eleanor Kwok. Parri admits that, initially, his family was not too thrilled about the sale to the Far East.

“When he was sold to Hong Kong we were not very happy,” he says. “Biz The Nurse had won the Italian Derby that year and, for us, it would have been a dream to have two consecutive Italian Derby winners. We knew he would have had a big chance. Now, of course, we are very happy. He has done so well and now he has a good chance to win the Hong Kong Derby, which is great for the horse as well as for our farm!”

And the Hong Kong connection has solidified recently with Misterious Boy joining the ranks at Sha Tin. The three-year-old, one of Biz Bar’s talented sons, won the same Group 3 race as Beauty Only at his last start. All in all, the future is exciting for the Parri operation.

“Goldendale is in foal to Fastnet Rock to continue the cross with Danehill, and this year she will go to Australia because me and my dad think he’s an amazing horse; and he’s by Galileo out of Ouija Board - two champions!” says Parri. “The mare also has a Rock Of Gibraltar three-year-old called Roccia d’Oro and he has had just one race, he won by six lengths. He has the goal of the Italian Derby and he also has an entry in the French Derby.

“Biz Bar will go to Sea The Stars and Sogna will go to War Command,” he continues. “Sogna was in foal to Holy Roman Emperor and she produced a filly on Valentine’s Day, so that filly is a close sister to Beauty Only.

“We are a commercial farm so we breed to sell our produce as yearlings. The Holy Roman Emperor is a nice filly, she is big and strong and we are very happy with her, and we will probably sell her. This year we are probably going to sell some of our foals too because the industry in Italy is hard right now.”

Horseracing in Italy is struggling along, but should Beauty Only win the BMW Hong Kong Derby on Sunday, it will be yet another feather in the cap for Massimo Parri’s “dream” farm and a nod to the spirit of Il Palio.