older stallions
Changing Nations Wootton Bassett’s transfer was the biggest stallion news in 2020, reports Jocelyn de Moubray who goes on to review the progeny racing year for established stallions
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Wootton Bassett’s results just kept on improving through 2020
T HAS NOT been a year or a racing season like any other and for once in 2020 the most significant development in the European stallion business didn’t come on the racecourse. A racing season with some two months taken out and a completely new Classic schedule saw, nevertheless, the emergence of some new stars among Europe’s stallions. But, for the future and as a reflection of where the business currently is, nothing will have as great an impact as the announcement in August that Coolmore Stud had purchased Wootton Bassett from the Haras d’Etreham and its partners. Wootton Bassett will stand at Coolmore in 2021 and, what makes this so significant, is that one of the world’s leading stallion farms should believe it is in their interests to pay what must have been a lot of money
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....nothing will have as great an impact as the announcement in August that Coolmore had purchased Wootton Bassett
for a 12-year-old son of Iffraaj, who had started his stud career standing at the Haras d’Etreham for €6,000 and who had attracted only 70 mares in his first two years at stud. Etreham bought Wootton Bassett at the end of his racing career for the price of a good yearling. His first crop produced from only 15 named foals the multiple Group 1 winner and European champion three-yearold Almanzor. When the Coolmore deal was concluded in August, Almanzor was his sire’s only Group 1 winner, though by then he had also produced the Group 3 winners Wootton, The Summit and The Black Album. No one would have doubted that Wootton Bassett was a very promising sire – and one who had succeeded in making an international mark, despite having started his career covering a handful of mainly average mares in France at a low fee. The
