Snitzel keeps satisfying Gerald Ryan’s appetite for winners

GERALD Ryan is on the brink of a rare milestone and thinks stud-bound Spill The Beans is the horse to achieve it in Saturday’s QTC Cup.

Nathan Exelby

less than 2 min read

June 1, 2016 - 3:59PM

Spill The Beans will retire to stud after his Brisbane campaign. Picture: Jenny Evans

GERALD Ryan is on the brink of a rare milestone and thinks stud-bound Spill The Beans is the horse to achieve it in Saturday’s QTC Cup.

Ryan has trained 40 individual winners by top sire Snitzel for a total of 99 race wins.

“Snitzel has been a pretty amazing horse for me, first as a racehorse and now as a stallion,’’ Ryan said. “He was a terrific racehorse and he’s lived right up to that as a sire.’’

Spill The Beans is not on a Stradbroke mission and in fact will only have one or possibly two more starts before retiring to stud at Aquis Farm in Queensland.

“This could be his last start or if not, the Healy Stakes after he was recently sold for stud,” Ryan said. “I think it’s a lovely race for him and the prospect of a soft track doesn’t bother me at all.

“He’s well in as a three-year-old on the limit and I think 1300m is the perfect trip for him.”

Ryan is happy to keep Spill The Beans, winner of the Hawkesbury Guineas two starts back, at Group 2 level rather than chase greater riches next week.

“The Stradbroke is a very good race and it would be asking a lot of him to back up in seven days,” he said.

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Ryan is also looking forward to Dances On Stars making his fifth consecutive appearance at the Queensland carnival when he runs in the Spear Chief.

“He’s been here as a two, three, four, five and now six-year-old,” he said. “People like to knock him, but he’s won $640,000 and not many horses are as durable as that.”

Dances On Stars won the Listed Prime Minister’s Cup in 2014 and in each of his other three years here was placed at Group 2 level.