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Annus Mirabalis
Annus Mirabalis
After a record-breaking year enjoyed in 2021, Martin Stevens chats to Kirsten Rausing about the amazing times she has enjoyed as a racehorse breeder and the leading pedigrees she has developed with such care at Lanwades Stud
KIRSTEN RAUSING enjoyed a simply outstanding year of achievement in 2021. She bred no fewer than 112 winners and stakes-placed runners worldwide, close to her previous high of 116 first achieved in 2015 and equalled in 2018.
What stood out last year in particular, though, was the stunning rate of success of those horses who carried Rausing’s own distinctive white and green silks.
There were 26 such winners in Britain – all fillies except Aleas, who couldn’t be sold as a yearling due to an injury – plus four in Ireland, three in Germany and two in France, making a total of 35. That is, by some distance, a record annual tally in Rausing’s long involvement in racing.
And many of those horses were no “ordinary winners”. Alpinista (Frankel) was the highlight in 2021, as the Sir Mark Prescott-trained filly was unbeaten in five starts, scoring in the Listed Daisy Warwick Stakes and Lancashire Oaks (G2) before emulating her granddam Albanova’s feat of winning three German Group 1 races in a single season.
Albaflora (Muhaarar), in the care of trainer Ralph Beckett, won the Listed Buckhounds Stakes and ran second in the Yorkshire Oaks (G1) and British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes (G1), being beaten just a short head by Eshaada in the latter race, while her stablemate Aleas (Archipenko), who is also a son of Albaflora’s Group 3-winning half-sister Alea Iacta, took the Glasgow Stakes (L). Another relative, Alerta Roja (Golden Horn), won three handicaps and found only Stradivarius too good in the Doncaster Cup (G2).
Oriental Mystique (Kingman), a daughter of Rausing’s British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes winner Madame Chiang, notched a deserved first black-type win in the Prix Luth Enchantee (L) for David Simcock, while Sandrine (Bobby’s Kitten) took high rank among the two-year-old fillies, being saddled by Andrew Balding to win the Group 3 Albany Stakes and Duchess of Cambridge Stakes (G2) and to finish second in the Lowther Stakes (G2) and third in the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes. Kawida (Sir Percy), of the same age and sex, scored in the Montrose Fillies’ Stakes (L) for trainer Ed Walker at the end of the season.
There were plenty of other exciting juvenile talents for Rausing, too.
Ching Shih (Lope De Vega), the halfsister to Oriental Mystique, won a Newbury novice stakes by 4l for Simcock; Heat Of The Moment (Bobby’s Kitten) was an impressive winner at Yarmouth on debut for Jane Chapple-Hyam; Melodramatica (Bobby’s Kitten) scored in a Lingfield novice stakes in good fashion for Rae Guest; Allada (Sea The Moon) was sent out by rookie trainer Tim Donworth to win a Deauville maiden by 3l; and Alizarine (Sea The Moon) and Sablonne (Dark Angel) both won maidens before running with promise in black-type company for Jessica Harrington in Ireland.
Horses bred and sold by Rausing were also to the fore on the international scene. Zaaki (Leroidesanimaux) became the new darling of Australian racing after Group 1 triumphs in the Doomben Cup (G1), Underwood Stakes (G1) and Mackinnon Stakes (G1), while Le Don De Vie (Leroidesanimaux) and Pondus (Sea The Moon) also ran with credit Down Under. Time Warp (Archipenko), a former triple Group 1 winner at Sha Tin, was still competing in top-level racing in Hong Kong, too.
Melodramatic: sixth generation Lanwades
To put the icing on the cake, many of those horses who contributed to Rausing’s wonderful year in 2021 are by Lanwades sires and all hail from families she has meticulously nurtured for many generations.
Melodramatica, who started the new year with an encouraging fourth in a Lingfield novice stakes after a long lay-off, hails from the family with which Rausing has enjoyed the longest association.
“She is by Bobby’s Kitten out of a With Approval mare, who in turn is out of a Niniski mare, so couldn’t be much more Lanwades-bred than that; but more to the point she’s a sixth generation homebred, which is quite difficult to achieve these days,” says Rausing. “I purchased the original mare Actress, who was a foal of 1958, when she was being sold by Limestone and Tara Studs at the December Sales of 1966.
“It’s a family that, like most of mine, goes back to a very famous mare – namely Lord Derby’s Selene, the dam of Hyperion, Sickle, Pharamond and Hunter’s Moon, who were all champion sires.
“Melodramatica’s fourth dam, Highlight, was the champion two-year-old filly in Sweden in 1973, when ridden by Rae Guest for his uncle Nelson Guest, who trained her for my grandfather. So Rae and I have been associated in racing since then. I don’t think there can at present be many other racing associations that go that far back anywhere in the world.”
The “A” family
Melodramatica’s family is not the only pedigree with roots that stretch back to Rausing’s time managing her grandfather’s Simontorp Stud as a young woman in Sweden. In 1967 her grandfather bought Ayesha, a daughter of Right Royal bred by Madame Jean Couturié and descended from the Aga Khan III’s celebrated mare Mumtaz Mahal.
Ayesha produced Ayah, who was trained on The Curragh by Richard Annesley and finished second in the Park Stakes and Silken Glider Stakes to become the second highestrated two-year-old filly in Ireland in 1975.
She died leaving only one filly foal, who died young too, but Rausing remained “mad keen” on this wonderful family, though frustrated in her desire to get back into it for many years as the Aga Khan didn’t sell many of its female members and when he did they were enormously expensive.
Eventually the minor Brighton winner Alruccaba came up for sale, but with a tendon, at the December sales of 1985. The daughter of Crystal Palace, from the same Mah Iran strain of the Mumtaz Mahal family as Ayesha, was bought in partnership with Captain Tim Rogers’ wife Sonia for 19,000gns, one bid above the 18,000gns reserve, and subsequently became a highly influential producer.
She was the dam of eight winners including Alleluia, who landed the Doncaster Cup and produced Group 1 Prix Royal- Oak winner Allegretto, and Last Second, winner of the Nassau Stakes (G1) and Sun Chariot Stakes (G1) and later an important broodmare for Denford Stud. Even one of Alruccaba’s less talented daughters, Jude, produced Quarter Moon and Yesterday and founded a flourishing family for Coolmore.
The daughter of Alruccaba who has been key to Rausing’s fortunes as a breeder, though, is Alouette, the 1990-foaled Darshaan mare whom Rausing owned outright after buying out Rogers’ share.
Alouette won the Killavullan Stakes, produced nine winners headed by the dual Group 1 Champion Stakes heroine Alborada and the German champion Albanova, and features as ancestress of numerous blacktype horses including Alpinista, Albaflora, Aleas, Alerta Roja, A La Voile and Amboseli in 2021 alone. The unexposed three-yearolds Allada, Alizarine and Eldar Eldarov – a 5l winner at Nottingham for Roger Varian and KHK Racing – could well add to that haul in the months ahead.
Members of Rausing’s “A” family Top, Alborada, below, Albanova
The subsequent three-time 2021 Group 1 winner Alpinista (Frankel) with her dam Alwilda at Lanwades in 2017
Reflecting on the Alouette clan’s winning streak in 2021, Rausing says: “Dare I say it, but the family’s success might be to do with the fact that I kept nearly all of them, except Eldar Eldarov, who was sold due to being bred on a foal share.
“But I kept the rest – Alpinista, Albaflora, Aleas, Alerta Roja and so on – and there is quite some thinking that goes into their allocation, so that they all go to suitable trainers. When you have to sell everything you lose control over allocation, of course, and it doesn’t always benefit the animal.”
Asked if there are any recurring qualities in Alouette’s brood, she says: “I can discern various strains within the family, and one tries to mate them accordingly, but I think one certain trait is that most of them have a remarkable will to win, and the fillies are especially tough – they take a lot of hard training and come back for more. They’re also good doers and eat well, with the obvious occasional exception. If you asked Sir Mark Prescott, who knows them as well as anyone, I think he would agree.”
According to last year’s Weatherbys Return of Mares, Rausing bred from 26 mares descended from Alouette last year – all with names beginning with the ‘Al’ prefix – and sent the vast majority to home stallions to lend them invaluable support. Is she attempting to corner the market in this family? The answer is perhaps a little surprising.
“No, not at all!” she counters. “It’s just that I’ve tried to sell fillies from this family and the market doesn’t seem particularly interested. I sold two very high-priced fillies well, both the result of foal shares to Sadler’s Wells, but that’s going back a long time now – the filly out of Alakananda who sold at Goffs and was the European sales-topper of 2006, and the filly out of Albanova who topped Goffs in 2007.
Study Of Man
Bobby's Kitten
Sir Percy
Sea The Moon
“I sold a filly by Sea The Moon out of Albizzia at Goffs last year; she was a lovely filly who vetted very well and her whole page was black, yet she made very little money. Why was there no one there for her? I don’t understand it. It’s not as if they are all extreme stayers. Alerta Roja does go a long way, but she’s won over 1m4f three times, and Alpinista and Albafora have also won over shorter distances.”
Alpinista, Albaflora and Alerta Roja stay in training for 2022, and could very well make agents, owners and trainers regret not paying this astonishingly prolific family more attention at the sales.
From Captain Rogers and bought on credit
Another of Rausing’s fruitful families, one that proved particularly crucial in the establishment and ongoing success of Lanwades Stud, has its roots in her time working for Captain Rogers in Ireland in the 1970s.
“Sushila was being sold by Captain Rogers, who owned her in partnership with a French entity, as a yearling at Goffs in the second year of the sales being held at the new complex at Kill,” says Rausing. “There were 900 or so yearlings in the catalogue, but I picked out this one filly on pedigree, which was all I understood at the time.
“I loved her sire Petingo, and although her dam Shenandoah was a non-winner, she was an own-sister to the great champion Val De Loir and a half-sister to Valoris, a very good filly who won the Irish 1,000 Guineas and Oaks, so the pedigree was all there. Sushila herself was correct, if a little low to the ground and rather long.
“She was the only yearling I wanted and I went to the sale with what I thought was the reasonable sum of Ir£8,000, but she made a fair bit more than that in the ring.
Sushila was trained for Rausing by George Bridgland in Chantilly, and won at Deauville at two and at three before retiring to the paddocks. It didn’t take her long to repay her owner’s investment in her, many times over.
“Her second foal was Petoski, who, of course, won the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and was one of two horses – the other being Kala Dancer – who put Niniski, myself and Lanwades on the map,” relates Rausing. “She and Ninsiki paid for Lanwades and then the next farm, St Simon Stud, and so I’m immensely grateful to them both.
“Sushila also produced some pretty good fillies for me, not least Shimmering Sea, who in turn gave me Starlit Sands. She was a very good two-year-old who was beaten a nostril in the Queen Mary and then won her Group race in France, the Prix d’Arenberg, beating colts. She is still with me, and is the dam of six winners from her first seven foals including Sablonne, who won well at Naas at two last year for Jessie Harrington and is a nice prospect for the year ahead.”
Starlit Sands is the granddam of another exciting three-year-old in Sandrine, by Lanwades Stud sire Bobby’s Kitten out of Seychelloise.
“We’ll look at the 1,000 Guineas with Sandrine, all being well, and she’ll take in a trial race either at Newbury or Newmarket over 7f before that,” says Rausing. “Her dam was a 7f specialist and Bobby’s Kitten was a miler who could also sprint, so I would think there’s the possibility she could get the mile at three.”
With Sandrine and Starlit Sands having so much pace and precocity, it might be thought that the Sushila clan has not faced the same market indifference as the somewhat stouter Alouette family, but that is sadly not the case.
“This is, again, a family where I try to sell the occasional filly and no one is much interested, even though they are all sprinters and would barely get a mile,” reflects Rausing. “Even Shimmering Sea, who was by Slip Anchor out of Sushila, was her sire’s only ever 5f winner, which she did at two. They are of limited distance aptitude, which should suit the market, but really, people don’t seem very interested in my offerings any more!”
Maria Waleska: one of the last great Italian champions
Rausing’s time working in Ireland in the 1970s sparked her interest in another family with which she has enjoyed significant success.
She explains: “I looked after an Americanbred mare called Miss Protege, who was owned by an Italian breeder that called itself Scuderia National, and while I was still working there she bred Maria Waleska, who was a great champion three-year-old filly and horse of the year in Italy in 1979.
“She won the Italian Oaks – not before she had deposited Mr Dettori snr on the floor two or three times, although they held the start as she was such a short-priced favourite – and the Gran Premio d’Italia, beating visiting English colts, which was quite something in those days.
“She was one of the last great Italian champions, and was later purchased by interests in America, where I found her in the late 1980s in a Keeneland November sale. She was a 12-year-old and in-foal to
Chief’s Crown, who had only recently retired and at the time was very fashionable.
“She had been bred to all the best stallions in America, and bred one or two winners but nothing of note.
“I wasn’t convinced by Chief’s Crown but she did have a yearling filly and a colt foal by Danzig at the time, which was helpful, as one could work out that one of those might not be much good, but it would be unlikely that both would be useless.”
Rausing seldom forks out large sums for mares, but Maria Waleska came onto the market at an opportune moment.
“I had just lost Kalazero, the dam of Kala Dancer, and I had a bit of insurance money burning in my pocket, so I was very keen to have Maria Waleska, who was a legend in her own time, possibly not in America but certainly in Europe,” she says. “I bought her for $160,000, which was an enormous amount for me, but luckily the insurance money I had just about covered it.
“She came back here and had the Chief’s Crown filly, which turned out to be no good, but the Danzig colt foal that she left behind in America proved to be Polish Patriot, who won the Cork and Orrery Stakes (G3) and July Cup (G1) and was the champion threeyear-old sprinter of Europe in 1991.
“Polish Patriot made Maria Waleska, and, because he was by Danzig, I like to try to mate the mares in this family back to the Danzig sire-line. So it was that Maria Waleska’s unraced daughter Scandalette, by Niniski, became the dam of ten winners including the Group 1 winner Lady Jane Digby, who was from the first crop of Oasis Dream, by Danzig’s son Green Desert, and the Group winner Gateman, who was by another son of Green Desert in Owington.”
Lady Jane Digby, who, like Gateman, was trained by Mark Johnston, is the dam of seven winners from her first seven foals, all also trained by Johnston. They include Galapiat, a son of Galileo who achieved a high rating by winning three races and is now at stud in Peru, and Madame Ambassador, a three-year-old daughter of Churchill who won at Nottingham last summer.
Diablerette, a winning daughter of Green Desert and Scandalette, has also served Rausing well. She is the dam of four winners including Pondus, a son of Sea The Moon who won the Lenebane Stakes (L) and finished second in the Group 2 Curragh Cup, and is now running with credit in top races in Australia for Robert Hickmott.
Moving on to today
A more recent family that Rausing is enjoying tremendous success with is that descending from Kaldounya, a Kaldoun half-sister to Italian champion Altieri bought from the Keeneland November Sale in 2001.
“In those days I always scoured those sales, in particular for mares and fillies with European connections,” says Rausing.
“That year I found Kaldounya, who had been raced in America but was by Kaldoun, who would have been unknown over there. She was from a great Wertheimer family going back to Riverqueen, and her halfbrother Altieri had won 16 races in France and Italy, including the Presidente della Repubblica twice. But the main point about Altieri was that he was by Selkirk, so it seemed the obvious thing to do was to buy the half-sister and breed her to Selkirk too.”
The Rausing-bred Zaaki selling at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training Sale in 2020. By Leroidesanimaux and out of Kesara, he is now a three-time Group 1 winner in Australia for trainer Annabel Neasham
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and so it was with that brainwave of sending Kaldounya to Selkirk; but Rausing was quick to change course when the misfire became apparent, sending her instead to a number of home and outside stallions, including Sir Percy to produce the dual Listed winner Persona Grata.
“The Selkirk foal out of the mare was a complete disappointment so I never repeated that mistake again,” she says. “She was sent to Sadler’s Wells one year, in a foal share arrangement with the Niarchos family, and the result was a filly called Kesara who was trained by Pascal Bary for the partnership. She won twice in France, and was quite useful, and was sent to the December sales as a three-year-old to dissolve the partnership.
“She didn’t make a fortune and I bought the Niarchos family out. She has been very good to me, producing six winners so far including Zaaki and a nice filly called Kandahari by Archipenko. No one wanted Kandahari as a yearling, so she went on a free lease to John McConnell in Ireland, and won twice for him before I bought her back from the people who leased her.
“Because of Persona Grata I bred her to Sir Percy for two years running, and the first runner from those matings is Kawida, who won the Montrose Fillies’ Stakes (L) for me last year and is possibly a Classic candidate. Kawida’s year-younger full-sister is called Khinjani, and she is also with Ed Walker. She’s nice, possibly even nicer than Kawida.”
Khinjani and Kawida are just two among many horses who promise to carry Rausing’s outstanding success from last year into 2022. Indeed, it was a close relation to the pair who suggested it could be another annus mirabilis when they carried the white and green silks to victory on New Year’s Day.
Arriviste, another with an out-and-out Lanwades pedigree, being by Sea The Moon out of Apparatchika, a daughter of Archipenko and Kesara, won a hotly contested All-Weather Fast-Track Qualifier. And who trains the mare? None other than Rae Guest, who was riding for Rausing half a century ago, when she was still developing the ideas and expertise that would secure the ongoing success of her breeding operation.
The phone call that led to a Special family
IT WAS A CHANCE PHONE CALL that Rausing took while at home in Sweden, on a short summer holiday from her work in Ireland, that led to her enduring involvement in one of the best families in the stud book.
“The holiday happened to coincide with the Keeneland July Yearling Sale and my friend, the late Magnus Berger, rang me in a state of some excitement,” recalls Rausing. “He said to me, ‘Kirsten, can you help me? Something awful has happened!’.
“Mr Berger explained that Richard Galpin, who was a great character and an outstanding judge of a horse, if a rather idiosyncratic valuer of the same, had pestered him to let him buy a yearling filly at Keeneland and he had agreed, instructing Galpin to buy the nicest filly he could find for $25,oo0.
“Galpin had rung back and said ‘I’ve bought the nicest filly in the book – she’s absolutely marvellous and she was only $40,000’.
“So Mr Berger asked me what he could do about this, given the mandate was $25,000 and the agent had paid $40,000! I asked him to tell me the lot number so I could look it up.
"This was a long, long time before the internet but luckily I had a catalogue with me in Sweden, so I saw that the filly was by Hawaii, who was yet to sire Henbit and who was in fact a flop, and her dam, Special, had run unplaced on her one start in the US but was very nicely bred and had at the time a colt foal by Northern Dancer.
“I said to Mr Berger that from my own selfish point of view it was a shame I didn’t have the $15,000 he needed because if I did, I would have gladly taken that share.
Berger acted on Rausing’s advice and the Hawaii filly came to Britain to be trained by John Dunlop. Named Kilavea, after the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea, she won a maiden at Glorious Goodwood on her only start at two and was mentioned all winter for the 1,000 Guineas, but was struck down by a serious illness and never ran again.
However, her value continued to increase – the Northern Dancer colt out of Special turned out to be Nureyev, and another of her foals, the Bold Reason filly Fairy Bridge, had been crowned joint-champion two-year-old filly in Ireland, though she was still yet to foal Sadler’s Wells.
While Kilavea produced her first two progeny at stud, fillies by Vitiges and High Top, Rausing was in the process of purchasing and establishing Lanwades Stud.
“I managed to convince Mr Berger, not without a lot of trying, to send Kilavea to Niniski in his first season at Lanwades, and he later sold the mare, in-foal to Niniski, to a new owner who had just arrived in the industry called Sheikh Mohammed,” remembers Rausing.
“The Sheikh’s main adviser, Colonel Warden of the Curragh Bloodstock Agency, approached me personally to buy the mare, who was a permanent resident at Lanwades. I initially said she wasn’t for sale, and we went through protracted negotiations before she was eventually sold for a vast amount of money.”
Kiliniski was retired at the end of her three-year-old season and sent to be boarded for Sheikh Mohammed at Mill Ridge Stud in Kentucky, where she was mated with many of the most glamorous stallions of the age but with largely disappointing results. Rausing had not forgotten about her, though.
“Many years later I found her in the Keeneland January Sale, where she was catalogued as barren for the last two seasons and covered by Diesis with a last service of February 15 but not in-foal again, and I managed to buy her for the minimum bid of $2,000,” says Rausing.
“I was delighted. I had my own horse, Northern Park, at Gainesway at the time so I sent the mare to him, even though the mating provided relatively close inbreeding to Northern Dancer. But I thought I’d better get this mare in-foal before I spend shipping fares on her, and she got straight in-foal.
“The resulting filly, Kiruna, was quite good but she fractured her skull by banging her head on the stalls first time out. However, I later bred a very highly rated filly from the mare called Robe Chinoise, by Robellino. She was trained, naturally, by John Dunlop and won two races for me but always finished just outside the money in black-type races.
“She was bred to Archipenko in his first year at Lanwades, and there was certainly a bit of thought about that mating as Archipenko reintroduced two strains of Special, as his sire Kingmambo was out of Nureyev’s great daughter Miesque and his dam Bound was a threeparts sister to Nureyev.
“With Robe Chinoise having Special at the base of her pedigree, the resulting filly, Madame Chiang, was three times inbred to Special. She won the Musidora Stakes and British Champions Fillies & Mares Stakes for me.”
MADAME CHIANG is promising to carry her brilliance on the track through to her career as a broodmare, as her first foal, the Kingman filly Oriental Mystique, was a Listed winner last year; her second produce, the Invincible Spirit filly Rose Of Jhansi, won by 2l at Lingfield in November; and her third foal, the Lope De Vega filly Ching Shih, is an exciting prospect at three this year after breaking her maiden at Newbury in such good fashion.
Needless to say, all three half-sisters are trained by David Simcock, who saddled the dam to her stakes victories.
Rausing also bred from Kiliniski the German Listed winner Kiswahili, by Lanwades mainstay Selkirk, and bred from Kiswahili the Star Stakes (L) scorer Kinetica. But Kiliniski was not her only entry point into Kilavea’s family.
She explains: “Puget Sound, the High Top filly who was the second produce of Kilavea, won for Mr Berger at three and was then sold to the Niarchos family, and she was sold several more times again – but not before I had purchased, pretty inexpensively, her daughter Ninotchka, who hailed from Nijinsky’s final crop of eight foals.
“She won the Listed Premio Giovanni Falck in Italy for me, and from her stem various ‘N’ fillies, including the Archipenko filly Nebulosa, who was trained by Andrew Balding to win for me in 2020 and 2021.
“Puget Sound had another daughter by El Gran Senor called, stupidly, Thong Thong Thong, who in turn foaled a daughter by the Mr. Prospector stallion Jarraar in Brazil called Hot Thong. She was a grade 3 winner in Brazil, where I bought her in the late 1990s before brining her to Newmarket via Kentucky where she was covered by Lear Fan."
The result of the mating between Lear Fan and Hot Thong was Heat Of The Night, who was trained by John Dunlop and later by Peter Chapple-Hyam, and won a Listed race in Germany. The mare, who has just risen 20, has allowed Rausing to deploy further intricate inbreeding to Special.
“Her first foal was the filly Here To Eternity, who is by Stormy Atlantic, another stallion tracing back to Special’s family,” she says.
“The foals turned out to be the Hong Kong Group 1 winners Time Warp and Glorious Forever. So, as you can see, I’m very keen on inbreeding to influential mares, even if they didn’t win themselves.”
This branch of Kilavea’s family has given Rausing yet another exciting three-year-old for 2022, in the shape of Heat Of The Moment. The daughter of Bobby’s Kitten and Heat Of The Night beat subsequent Listed runner-up Favourite Child by two and a half lengths when she scored on her sole start at Yarmouth in October.
