9 minute read
It has been a summer of Stars
The Gilltown stallion Sea The Stars has enjoyed a fine August, writes Aisling Crowe
Sea The Stars’ stellar reputation has been enhanced by the midsummer exploits of two chestnut offspring of the 2009 world champion. Stradivarius hit all the right notes as he claimed the inaugural Weatherbys Hamilton Stayers’ Million adding the Group 2 Lonsdale Cup to his second Goodwood Cup (G1), to sit alongside his earlier Royal Ascot triumph and the Group 2 Yorkshire Cup which began his winning symphony.
Bred by his owner Bjorn Nielsen, the four-year-old colt was offered for sale as a yearling at Tattersalls Book 1 in October 2015 through Watership Down Stud, but was retained by the vendor for 360,000gns.
He is the last foal of his dam Private Life, who is a grand-daughter of the Wildenstein’s superstar racemare Pawneese, heroine of the Oaks, Prix de Diane and King George in 1976. Sea Of Class, his year younger paternal half-sister, became her sire’s ninth individual Group 1 winner with her breathtaking victory in the Darley Irish Oaks at The Curragh in July.
Owned, like Sea The Stars, by the Tsui family her victorious performance in the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks a month later was reminiscent of her sire in its utter ease.
Trained by William Haggas, Sea Of Class was purchased by Johnny McKeever on behalf of the Tsui family at the Tattersalls December Yearling Sale for 170,000gns from Old Buckenham Stud.
She is the fourth Classic winner bred by Razza Del Velino out of the Hernando mare Holy Moon, who won the Listed Premio Terme di Merano.
Holy Moon is the dam of three Italian Oaks winners.
Cherry Collect by Oratorio was Italy’s champion three-year-old of 2012 after her victory in the Group 2 Oaks d’Italia. She was also second in the Group 1 Premio Lydia Tesio and was sold to Northern Farm after her racing career ended.
Cherry Collect is the dam of two fillies of racing age by Deep Impact – Danon Grace, who won on her debut at two, and the unraced Diana Bright, retained by Northern Farm. Her yearling colt by Heart’s Cry was sold for $1million at the 2017 JRHA Select Foal Sale.
Holy Moon’s second Italian Oaks winner is Charity Line and the daughter of Manduro went one better than her year-older half-sister by winning the Group 1 Premio Lydia Tesio.
Like Cherry Collect, Charity Line is now a broodmare in Japan where she has a two- year-old colt by Orfevre and was covered by Deep Impact in 2017.
Her third Italian Oaks winner is the Dylan Thomas filly Final Score, who emulated the year-older Charity Line with victories in the Group 1 Premio Lydia Tesio and the mares’ Classic.
Like her two elder half-sisters she, too, is in Japan where her first foal by Deep Impact was the most expensive filly foal at the 2016 JRHA Select Sale selling for 167,400,000 yen (€1.3 million, £1.2 million) to Hidenori Futaigi from Northern Racing.
Now named Noble Score she finished second on her debut at Niigata on August 12 and has a yearling brother by Black Tide, a Group 2-winning full-brother to Deep Impact.
Holy Moon is the dam of Group 3 Premio Verziere winner Wordless, a daughter of Rock Of Gibraltar, and the Group 2 Derby Italiano second Back On Board, from the first crop of Nathaniel.
Her yearling colt by Oasis Dream, named Honor And Pleasure, was bought back by Razzia at last year’s December Foal Sale for just 55,000gns and is Lot 404 in the Tattersalls October Book 1 Yearling Sale, due to be consigned by Jamie Railton.
Sea The Stars also added Knight To Behold to his list of 28 individual Group winners as the Listed Lingfield Derby Trial victor returned to winning ways at Deauville in August.
The three-year-old colt trained by Harry Dunlop was an impressive winner of the Group 3 Prix Guillaume d’Ornano at Deauville a week before Sea Of Class’s stroll on the Knavesmire.
Bred by owner Neil Jones’s Abergwaun Farms, Knight To Behold is closely related to Group 3 Diamond Stakes winner Cosmo Meadow by King’s Best, a Kingmambo halfbrother to Urban Sea.
Knight To Behold is also a half-brother to Group 3 Blue Wind Stakes winner Beauty O’Gwaun by Rainbow Quest.
Their dam is the unraced Sadler’s Wells mare Angel Of The Gwaun, who is a full-sister to Derby third Let The Lion Roar and a half-sister to St Leger winner Millenary by Rainbow Quest.
He was also victorious twice in the Group 2 Doncaster Cup and won the Lonsdale Cup, Yorkshire Cup and Princess Of Wales’s Stakes (all Group 2 contests).
Millenary is a full-brother to Group 3 Princess Royal Stakes winner Head In The Clouds, who is the dam of Roses For The Lady by Sadler’s Wells, second in the Irish Oaks of 2009.
Head In The Clouds is also the second dam of 2015 Investec Oaks third Lady Of Dubai (Dubawi).
Sea The Stars is the sire of 47 black-type winners from six crops to race so far, with his largest crop of 134 foals two-year-olds of this season. So far he has sired five individual two-year-old winners in 2018 from just 15 runners, which is early in the season for a sire more noted for producing later types and one more than he recorded in all of 2017.
His winners to runners ratio is second to none at 67 per cent with a fantastic percentage of 15 black-type performers to runners.
This year his fee increased to €135,000 at the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud where he covered 162 mares, including Ezima, the dam of his Oaks and King George heroine Taghrooda, Sanwa, who produced his Deutsches Derby winner and first-season sire Sea The Moon, and Green Room, who is the dam of two Group 1-winning fillies by Sea The Star’s half-brother, Galileo.
He has 106 yearlings and 42 foals reported so far in 2018 with representatives of both crops due to come under the hammer in the coming months.
It is turning into an exciting season for Sheikh Fahad al Thani’s bloodstock interests with the first yearlings by Hot Streak selling and with two Group 1 winners about whom there will be much anticipation when they retire to Tweenhills Stud, most likely next season.
The popular and durable Lightning Spear finally broke through the Group 1 glass ceiling in the Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood after 16 attempts at the highest level.
This season alone, prior to that richly deserved victory he was second to Rhodendron in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury and third to Accidental Agent in the
Queen Anne at Royal Ascot. Overall he has been placed seven times in Group 1 races run over a mile.
His glorious win was his seventh in total after making a winning debut over 7f, his only start at two.
Lightning Spear won his first three starts at three for trainer Olly Stevens. Switched to David Simcock, his two victories at Group 2 level have both been at Goodwood when he took the Celebration Mile in 2016 and 2017.
Now a seven-year-old, the chestnut became the 28th individual Group 1 winner for his sire, the excellent Pivotal, who is also enjoying a fantastic season as a dam-sire – his record when crossed with Galileo being particularly strong.
Lightning Spear was bred by Newsells Park Stud and purchased by David Redvers for Qatar Racing for 260,000gns at Tattersalls October Book 1 in 2012.
He is the sixth foal out of his dam Atlantic Destiny, a Listed winner in England and the US, who has also produced the Listed Newmarket Stakes winner Ocean War by Dalakhani.
Atlantic Destiny is inbred 3 x 4 to Flaming Page, the dam of Nijinksy and of his halfsister Fleur, who produced The Minstrel.
Nijinsky is the sire of Royal Academy, the Breeders’ Cup winner and sire of Atlantic Destiny, while her dam-sire is The Minstrel.
Three lines to Northern Dancer feature in Lightning Spear’s own pedigree through Nureyev, the grand-sire of Pivotal and The Minstrel and Nijinsky.
As a consistent, high-class horse who has raced at the top level for such a long period of time, Lightning Spear will be a huge addition to the Tweenhills and Qatar Racing stallion roster, which includes first-season sire Charm Spirit, second-crop stallion and Group 1 winner Havana Gold, the exciting shuttler Zoustar for 2019, who was champion first-season sire in Australia for the 2017- 2018 season, as well as the aforementioned Hot Streak.
He could also be joined at Redvers’ Gloucestershire base for the next breeding season by the new dual Group 1 winner Roaring Lion.
The three-year-old son of Kitten’s Joy was a neck second to Saxon Warrior in the Group 1 Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster last year, after winning the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes.
Roaring Lion
His roar has grown louder with each run this season which began with third place in the Craven Stakes behind Masar; the same position he filled behind the same horse in the Derby.
In between those two races were a fifth place to Saxon Warrior in the Guineas and victory in the Group 2 Dante Stakes. Running over 1m2f, Roaring Lion has found his forte and he became the second Eclipse winner in three years for his sire Kitten’s Joy, after Hawkbill in 2016.
Hawkbill took until March this year to add to his Group 1 tally with victory in the Dubai Sheema Classic, but Roaring Lion did so on his very next start, returning to the course and distance of his Dante win to add the Juddmonte International Stakes.
In doing so, Roaring Lion gave himself an ideal profile for a new stallion as the winner
Roaring Lion gave himself an ideal profile for a new stallion as the winner of two Group 1 contests over 1m2f that have records as stallion-making races of two Group 1 contests over 1m2f that have records as stallion-making races.
Previous Juddmonte winners who have excelled in their second careers as stallions include Halling, Singspiel, Giant’s Causeway, Sea The Stars and Frankel, while he joins Sea The Stars and Giant’s Causeway as three-year-old winners of both the Eclipse and Juddmonte.
One of the greatest stallions of all-time, the breed-shaping Sadler’s Wells, is one of the luminaries who won the Eclipse at three, while Tulyar, Ragusa, Mill Reef, Nashwan and Medicean all claimed the Sandown Group 1 during their racing careers.
Roaring Lion will be the second son of Kitten’s Joy to retire to stud in England after Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Bobby’s Kitten, who stands at Lanwades Stud with his first crop hitting the foal sales in the winter.
Kitten’s Joy was champion Turf male in the US at three and has been America’s champion Turf stallion on four occasions so far.
A grandson of Sadler’s Wells through his sire El Prado, Kitten’s Joy is the main carrier of the Sadler’s Wells sire line in North America and the most successful descendant of the behemoth by far on that continent.
Roaring Lion’s pedigree, with Street Sense as his dam-sire, provides support and strength to his future career as a stallion.
The son of Street Cry has sired nine individual Group 1 winners since retiring to stud after the 2007 season, which saw him win the Kentucky Derby and Travers Stakes (G1).
Dubai World Cup hero Street Cry, who died at just 16, is the sire of 20 individual Group/Grade 1 winners, including a pair of outstanding mares – Zenyatta and Winx – and his full-sister Helsinki is the dam of leading European sire Shamardal, who has 20 individual Group 1 winners to his name.
Oasis and Showcasing get the first European juvenile Group 1 winners of 2018 Pretty Pollyanna and Advertise continue to demonstrate just how good Oasis Dream is as an influence on pedigrees, despite some lack of popularity in the sales ring through the last couple of years – a failure of bloodstock buyers and surely an anomaly that will be rectified this autumn.
Pretty Pollyanna, a daughter of the Juddmonte star, provided Oasis Dream with his 16th individual Group 1 winner when taking the Group 1 Prix Morny at Deauville while Advertise, by Oasis Dream’s son Showcasing, became the Whitsbury Manor Stud’s sire’s second Group 1 winner with victory in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at The Curragh.
Pretty Pollyanna’s wonderful season, which includes victory in the Group 2 Duchess Of Cambridge Stakes, is a fantastic success for her owner-breeders Bill and Tim Gredley as it represents several generations of breeding at their Stetchworth and Middle Park Studs. The third winner from as many foals out of the unraced Shamardal mare Unex Mona Lisa, Pretty Pollyanna’s second dam Friendlier is a half-sister by Zafonic to Gredley’s Oaks, Irish Oaks, Yorkshire Oaks and St Leger heroine User Friendly.
Martyn Meade’s gumption in sending Advertise into the lion’s den that is Aidan O’Brien’s domination of the Phoenix Stakes was handsomely rewarded with victory in the first two-year-old Group 1 of the season
Showcasing’s first Group 1 winner was the high-class sprinting filly Quiet Reflection and with a second Group 1 winner, and a juvenile colt to boot, adding to his reputation.
Showcasing’s foals of 2017 were bred off a fee of £25,000, his highest at the time and the 106 born was his biggest crop to date.
They reflect the increased quality of the mares he covered and seven are catalogued in Tattersalls Book 1, including Lot 143, a half-sister to the dam of this season’s Group 1 Poules d’Essai des Pouliches winner Olmedo, and Coln Valley Stud’s Lot 394, a half-brother to Give And Take, winner of the Group 3 Muisdora Stakes in May, out of a full-sister to Fame And Glory.
The sire of 15 Group winners from five crops of racing age, including Tasleet, Prize Exhibit, Dice Roll and Capella Sansevero, who were all Group 1-placed, Showcasing has a 46 per cent winners to runners ratio.
His fee increased to £35,000 for 2017 which resulted in his biggest foal crop so far with 110 reported foals, and his fee remained at that price for the 2018 season.
