A BREEDING LINE THAT IS A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

By Graham Potter | Saturday, June 28, 2025

It is a breeding line that has turned into a gift that keeps on giving.

The victory of Amuseantes in the opening race at Eagle Farm was the latest in a very long line of winners coming out of Amuseante’s dam-line.

Her dam is Funtantes. In turn, Funtantes’s dam is a horse called Cantantes … and that is where this story started … a long way back, over twenty years ago in fact …and is continuing to this day to put a smile on the face of trainer Robert Heathcote and the stable connections.

“Even I continue to be amazed at what the mare Cantantes produced … and how Funtantes is carrying on the tradition,” said Heathcote.

“I bought Cantantes off Fred Brown up in Glen Avon Lodge up in Toowoomba,” continued Heathcote. “She only had the two wins and then she went amiss … and then we bred from her, and it has just been an amazing story.

“I haven’t done the research, but I think its seventy plus wins out of one original mare … with her wins and all of her progeny’s wins.

“What a family!”

Cantantes had her last run in August 2003.

Funtantes won ten races, including a win in the Champagne Classic which gave Heathcote his first Group 2 success … and that was in 2009.

Startantes won six races, including the 2022 edition of the Group 1 Tatts Tiarra.

Excellantes won twelve races, including the Chief De Beers, the Falvelon and the Hinkler (twice) … all Listed races … between 2010 and 2015.

Guntantes was a six-time winner … and so you can go on and add in a host of other runners who have also played their part in helping build this formidable family history.

No wonder Amuseantes’s win on Saturday had Heathcote beaming and he was quick to pay homage to Cantantes, that unassuming two-time winner who started it all when she went to the breeding barn all of those years ago.

But there was also another reason for taking further real satisfaction from Amuseantes’s win.

‘This filly, Amuseantes, spent a good month at the Equine Vet hospital at Gatton as a two-year-old with an ear infection,” explained Heathcote. “A grass seed got into her ear and sort of germinated … got into the bone and threatened the skull.

“She’s been through the wards before she ever ran.

“I said to the team we have got to spend the money … this family is too good …and she’s repaid us with the win today ...under a great ride by Angela Jones ... and has added her name to that list of achievers from that winning dam-line.”

Maybe Cantantes was not that flash on the track but, in the role she undertook after her retirement from racing, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say she was akin to a superstar.

Certainly, those who have travelled on the wave of success she started think so.

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