4 minute read
A champion day
Cracksman
Brilliant performances from Cracksman and Roaring Lion ensured that British Champions Day lived up to its billing, writes Aisling Crowe
Roaring Lion and Cracksman, who have featured with metronomic regularity in these pages, signed off their British racing careers with Group 1 victories at Ascot’s October showcase.
It was confirmed after Roaring Lion’s hard-fought victory over I Can Fly in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes that he will retire to stud for 2019. Qatar Racing’s outstanding three-year-old will stand at David Redvers’s Tweenhills Stud in Gloucestershire, alongside fellow Qatar Racing’s new stallion Lightning Spear, and reverse shuttler, and exciting young sire, Zoustar.
Roaring Lion is the winner of four Group 1s and placed in two more, including the Derby, and becomes the second confirmed son of North America’s champion Turf sire Kitten’s Joy to retire to stud in the UK.
The first was Bobby’s Kitten and the Lanwades Stud resident’s first foals are due to sell shortly with four catalogued for the Goffs November Foal Sale and 25 for the Tattersalls December Foal Sale. It will be fascinating to see how the market reacts to these weanlings, although it is probably not a portent of Roaring Lion’s stallion fortunes as Bobby’s Kitten retired to Lanwades with a lower profile and won his Group 1 in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, which would suggest a different type of mare than Roaring Lion will attract.
Roaring Lion
It was a return to form on ground he favours for the four-year-old colt, trained by John Gosden for owner-breeder Anthony Oppenheimer.
Winner of the Group 1 Prix Ganay at the start of this season, Cracksman looked out of sorts when winning the Group 1 Coronation Cup at Epsom and was very distracted by the fillies in proximity to him at Royal Ascot, getting hot and bothered which contributed to his lacklustre second place in the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes.
Jockey Frankie Dettori also felt that Cracksman got hot and bothered in other ways, and that the soaring heat of the 2018 summer and the prevelant fast ground was much less to his liking than the younger fillies were.
Another superstar for Pivotal as a broodmare sire, Cracksman will now get to focus his attentions entirely on fillies without having the distraction of racing.
Where that stud place will be has yet to be announced, but Oppenheimer indicated after the Champion Stakes that negotiations on his stallion career would begin immediately.
His daughters have produced 20 stakes winners so far in 2018, headed by Cracksman, for total earnings of over £7.5m in prize-money to date.
Galileo is the broodmare sire of one more stakes winner than Pivotal in 2018, but perhaps his most significant result of the entire season was the victory of Magical in the Group 1 Champions Fillies and Mares Stakes.
She became the 74th individual top-level winner for the incredible multiple champion sire, moving him one clear of his own breed-shaping sire.
Winner of the Group 2 Debutante Stakes last season, Magical was also second in the Moyglare Stakes (G1) and fourth in both the Fillies’ Mile (G1) and Prix Marcel Boussac (G1).
She was affected by the virus that struck the Ballydoyle stable this summer, but managed to win the Group 2 Kilboy Estates Stakes in July and was fourth in the Group 1 Matron Stakes in September.
Magical is the second Group 1-winning daughter, after Rhododendron, out of Halfway To Heaven, herself the winner of the Irish 1,000 Guineas (G1), Nassau Stakes (G1) and Sun Chariot Stakes (G1) as a three-yearold.
She is the dam of four winners – all by Galileo – three of whom who have won at Group level, the other being the Group 3 International Stakes winner Flying The Flag, who was fourth in the Group 1 Jebel Hatta.
Halfway To Heaven was bred by Trevor Stewart out of his brilliant broodmare and high-class racemare Cassandra Go.
Winner of the King’s Stand Stakes (G1) and second in the July Cup (G1), the daughter of Indian Ridge has produced seven winners, including Theann, successful in a Group 3 and the dam of Group 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes and Group 1 First Lady Stakes winner Photo Call (Galileo) and this season’s Group 2 Richmond Stakes winner Land Force by NO Nay Never
The British Champions Sprint winner Sands Of Mali is out of the Indian Rocket mare Kadiania, who has also produced the Class 2 winner Kadrizi by Indian Rocket and Flawless Jewel, a two-year-old daughter of Kheleyf, who cost Con Marnane considerably more (€70,000) than Sands Of Mali at Osarus in 2017. She was purchased by Sands Of Mali’s connections at this year’s Tattersalls Ireland Ascot Breeze-Up for £95,000 and has won a novice so far.
She resides, like her elder half-brother, at Richard Fahey’s yard. He purchased her yearling full-brother for £67,000 at the GoffsUK Premier Sale from Longview Stables.
Named Kherizzi, the chestnut colt had been a €50,000 private purchase at last December’s Arqana Breeding Stock Sale.
Their star sibling will be put away for a winter break now, with one of Royal Ascot’s sprints his early season target, as owner Peter Swann feels he could drop down to 5f or remain racing over 6f.
