What’s In A Name? Montien

Greg Delponte was making one of his regular visits to Terry and Annabel Andrews’ Sorrento Stud in Paarl. He had previously bred a few horses in partnership with them and owned a few horses and mares over the years. 

Annabel mentioned that they were taking a few mares to sale at Mistico, one of which was the dam of a filly they were racing together at the time and that they should consider buying her. Having taken a look at her and deciding to buy her, fate then stepped in when he stuck his head over the next door stable door. “Who is THAT?” he enquired when he saw the broodmare in her box. “Hope Downs,” came the reply, “she’s in foal to Louis The King”. 

She was one of the nicest broodmares he had seen and was a winner by Fort Wood with a decent pedigree to match.

The red-blooded racing man says he told Annabel that he wanted in and would they take half with him as he still had to re-register as a breeder after a few years absence. “It didn’t matter who she was in foal to,” he laughs. And so the deal was done.

Greg and his wife had gone on holiday to Thailand that year and had great memories of the time they spent at a quaint Beach Resort on Chaweng Beach called “Montien House”. “We returned on the Friday and Terry let us know that Hope Downs was close to foaling, so we went out to Sorrento for the weekend just in time to see a colt foal born in the early hours of the Sunday, 4th August 2019.

With the holiday so fresh in mind Greg suggested calling the colt after the Resort they had just visited, and so Montien came to be named.

Montien has certainly made everyone invovled with him proud. The Piet Botha-trained five-year-old has won four times and comes off the back of a second to One Stripe in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate and third to Eight On Eighteen in the WSB Cape Town Met, taking his stake earnings to R1.7-million.

He was the third produce of the Louis The KIng x Hope Downs mating, following Louis Gem (2017) and Louis’ Diamond (2018), both of whom won twice. The Ford Wood mare went on to produce De Janeiro (Oratorio), Thunder Downunder (Captain Of All), Carpanica (Hawwaam) and Kassiopi (also Hawwaam).

“As fate would have it, we have bought back Carpanica. I have Italian heritage and the name comes from a beautiful mountain top town in the Italian region of Lazio. We’re looking forward to him giving us a lot of fun as well and I’m hoping that the presenters and commentators get the pronunciation of his name right.

Montien caused all sorts of fun and games with the pronunciation of his name, being called Montain, Monteen and even Martini once, and it took a couple of races before he was finally correctly called home as Monti-en”.

By Gary Lemke