Tobe Or Nottobe’s first crop recently turned three and the SA-bred stallion was credited with his first winner when gelding Tobeastar scored over 1200m at Kenilworth on Wednesday 31st August.
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Tobe Or Nottobe was trained throughout his career by Mike Bass and was a high class performer who won nine races between 1000m and 1400m. He achieved his greatest success when winning the Gr1 Cape Flying Championship over 1000m as a three-year-old, a performance which earned him the Equus champion sprinter award for 2003/04. He also won the Gr3 Cape Classic over 1400m. An injury later derailed his career and he was not the same horse on his return as he had been before, but he’d already done more than enough to earn a place at stud.
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Tobe Or Nottobe is a son of Nureyev horse Caesour, who is perhaps widely known as a better sire of fillies (the full sisters Irridescence and Perfect Promise being amongst the most notable), but whose male offspring have included another winner of the Gr1 Cape Flying Championship in O Caesour. Other Graded Stakes winning sons of Caesour include Hail Caesour and The Eiger Sanction, but Tobe Or Nottobe is the stallion’s only son at stud.
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Tobe Or Nottobe is out of the unraced J O Tobin mare Miss Tobin, who bred five other winners including Stakes placed Little Madam, the latter in turn the dam of Gr2 runner-up Madoba. Miss Tobin is out of the Dancing Moss mare Sumac, a Gr2 and Gr 3 winner in Argentina who is herself in turn a full sister to multiple Gr2 and Gr3 winner Sundae. Tobe Or Nottobe’s fourth dam Sung produced Gr 1 winner Sunup.
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Now aged eleven, Tobe Or Nottobe was retired in 2007 to David Hepburn-Brown’s Hemel ‘n Aaarde Stud near Hermanus in the Western Cape. The stallion’s fee for 2011 is listed as “on application.”
