From Bargain Buy to Racing Superstar, it’s Chi Chi Time at Hastings

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Ask anyone on the Hastings’ backstretch what time it is these days and you’re likely to get the same reply: “It’s Chi Chi time!”

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The three-year-old filly made it four wins from four lifetime starts at Hastings on Monday evening and she did it with a swagger that’s becoming something of a trademark.

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Bred in B.C. by Gladys and Karen Dittloff, Chi Chi Time pulverized a previously competitive field of rivals by more than nine lengths, without even being asked for a serious effort by her rider Kuri Powell. She is now widely considered to be the best three-year-old, male or female, on the East Van property.

Chi Chi Time’s latest win came in the $50,000 CTHS Sales Stakes, one of four equally valuable races held on Monday night that were restricted to horses purchased at the annual Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society Yearling Sale. This year’s sale will be held at Hastings on Wednesday afternoon.

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However, anyone trying to unearth a replica of Chi Chi Time may need to venture to Calgary later in September, where Chi Chi’s sister from another mister, named Happy Melody, is being offered for sale at the CTHS’s Alberta auction. Whether Happy Melody is made of the same stuff remains to be seen, but the mother had already produced some fast horses before Chi Chi Time came along and there is little doubt Happy Melody will have plenty of visitors to her sale-ground stall.

However, trying to identify which yearlings have the right stuff is notoriously difficult, as Chi Chi Time’s trainer, and part owner, Pat Jarvis pointed out this week.

“We obviously liked her, but it wasn’t until she’d started training as a two-year-old that we knew she had some ‘game’,” Jarvis said. “I remember calling over Elaine Willberg (another of the subsequent owners) and getting her to come and look at the sale, but you can’t tell how good they might be at that stage. You just use your knowledge and experience to try to spot a good one.”

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Just how hard it is to find a good one at the auction is perfectly illustrated by Chi Chi Time’s pedigree. Her direct female descendants include a host of high-speed equine athletes but an even greater number that would have trouble winning an egg-and-spoon race on school sports day.

Chi Chi Time’s fifth maternal great-grandma produced one of horse racing’s all-time flops in Snaafi Dancer. Purchased at auction as a yearling in 1983, by Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for a then record US$10 million, Snaafi Dancer certainly looked the part and had a pedigree to match. Sadly, he was so slow it was decided to save him the embarrassment of racing and he was ushered off to stud, where he was subsequently discovered to be borderline infertile.

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The electrifying Chi Chi Time, by contrast, failed to make her reserve as a yearling and, as part-owner Herb Willberg who, along with his wife Elaine, has been involved with horse racing for decades explained, she was purchased privately from her breeders immediately following the auction.

Willberg said: “I was helping to run the bar at the sale on behalf of the New Stride horse charity and my wife Elaine, along with Pat and our other partner Gail Jewsbury, identified three they liked that had not met their reserve and so we managed to buy them privately. I have to say I wasn’t enamoured with any of them at the time and I’ve spent most of this season walking around in disbelief.”

So, the next time you’re asked the time, you’ll know it’s Chi Chi Time, but if someone asks you what it costs to buy a good race horse, the answer is somewhere between $10,000 and $10 million — with no guarantees.

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