Fastnet Rock sire’s stakes double assures first season title
Thoroughbred Racing
A STAKES double at the big Doomben meeting last Saturday should assure the Fastnet Rock sire Hinchinbrook, a resident at the Mitchell's Yarraman Park Stud at Scone, the 2014-15 first season sire title.
His progeny earnings were lifted by $450,000 to over $1million by the brilliant wins at the meeting by the Snowden trained filly Flippant in the $100,000 Listed Lancaster Stakes (1200m) and then the Chris Waller unbeaten Press Statement in the $600,000 Group1 JJ Atkins (1600m).
The latter effort suggested that Press Statement, a colt bred by T. Mullo and family members, could be a good candidate in the spring for the Golden Rose and Caulfield Guineas. He has maternal stamina, his dam Kaaptive Empress being by Kaaptive Edition, a Group1 winner at 2400m, and from Nile Empress, a daughter of the Nijinsky sire Upper Nile. Royal Academy, the sire of the dam of Fastnet Rock, is a distinguished son of Nijinsky.
Flippant, the Hinchinbrook winner of the Lancaster, her second successive stakes victory, was bred by Bruce Reid Racing NSW and runs for a tribe of owners, including Yarraman Park. She is from Lady Beckworth, a winner once,1100m in Sydney and is a half-sister by General Nediym to Regard, dam of Group1 winners Atlantic Jewel (by Fastnet Rock, four Group1 wins – MRC Thousand Guineas, Caulfield Stakes, ATC All-Aged Stakes, MRC Memsie Stakes) and Commanding Jewel (Commands winner MRC Thousand Guineas, also two Group 2s).
The annexation of the first season sire title by Hinchinbrook will mean that the distinction has fallen to a Yarraman Park sire for the second successive year. They collected the title last year with I Am Invincible and he has powered on in 2014-15, looking certain to be the most successful two crop sire by winners and also on the top eight leading juvenile sire on national earnings.
One of his current juveniles, Look To The Stars (dam imported daughter of Southern Halo), followed up a win on May 23 in the Group 2 Queensland Sires' Produce Stakes with a third behind Press Statement in the JJ Atkins.
Exceed and Excel excels in both hemispheres
TWO Australian bred Danehill champion racehorses who are dual hemisphere used sires had stakes winners at big carnivals at England's Epsom and Brisbane's Doomben at the weekend. The major achiever was Coolmore's Fastnet Rock, the source of Group1 winners Qualify (English Oaks) and Magicool (the Queensland Derby), but also making a contribution was Darley's seasoned traveler Exceed and Excel.
His biggest winner was Jabali, the Mick Price trained colt who took the $400,000 Group 2 Queensland Guineas by 1 ¼ lengths, but he was represented the same day on the other side of the world by the Darley bred, Sheikh Hamdan Maktoum raced Buratino. Running as favourite, the chestnut colt Buratino won his third race in five starts in succeeding by six lengths in the Listed Woodcote Stakes, the juvenile event on the Derby program at Epsom.
Like Qualify and Magicool, both Jabali and Buratino are the results of matings of Danehill sires with mares carrying Sadler's Wells maternally and all of them are inbred three times to Northern Dancer.
Jabili, a chestnut colt bred by Andrew Calvert on the family's Kornong Stud Farm, Streatham, Victoria and sold in Melbourne for $220,000, is from Balaika, a stakes placed daughter of the Coolmore shuttled Sadler's Wells English Two Thousand Guineas winner King of Kings and Love of Mary, a Zeditave VRC Edward Manifold Stakes winner. Love of Mary's sister Courtrooom Sweetie produced to Encosta de Lago the Calvert bred Sacred Kingdom, a Hong Kong Horse of the Year and four times champion sprinter.
Jabali had not won before Saturday's success in13 starts, but five seconds included appearances in the Blue Diamond Stakes and Blue Diamond Prelude.
Buratino, the Exceed and Excel juvenile stakes winner at Epsom, is from Bergamask, a Kingmambo winner out of the Sadler's Wells Listed winner Adonesque. She is a half-sister to Danehill Dancer.
The champion Australian sire 2012-13, a year Fastnet Rock was his nearest rival, and also leading juvenile sire, Exceed and Excel has captured the latter title for 2014-15 but is in a tussle with Sebring, Redoute's Choice and Sebring for the distinction of being second to Fastnet Rock in the champion sire of the year contest.
Currently winding up his 2015 northern hemisphere breeding season at Darley's Kildangan Stud in Ireland, Exceed and Excel is again having an impact as a sire with his European offspring. He is about twentieth on the European sires' list and in the top ten by juvenile earnings.
Aussie sire's historic two hemisphere classic double
WORLD thoroughbred history was made on Friday and Saturday June 5-6 by the winners 17,000 kilometers apart of the double comprised by Qualify, successful in the English Oaks (Epsom Downs; first run 1779) and Magic Pool in the Queensland Derby (this year at Doomben; established1868) who genetically are three-quarter relations.
In Stud Book Law they are not related in family, but they carry the same genetic structure in three quarters of their breeding as they are bred on the same sire cross, one comprised by sires used in both the southern and northern hemisphere seasons at the Coolmore studs.
Both are by Australian bred Fastnet Rock, a Danehill leading juvenile and champion 3yo, and from mares got at Coolmore in Ireland by the Sadler's Wells English and Irish Derby winner Galileo. He visited in five seasons, 2002-06, leaving about 550 foals.
The Oaks result is historic in world breeding in that, besides both horses being bred on the same cross, it was the first time a two hemisphere classic double had been achieved by an Australian bred sire. Also the Oaks win meant that for the first time champion Australian racehorses had supplied a winner of this race and the English Derby (kicked off 1780), albeit over a hundred years apart.
Back in 1906 the Derby was won by Spearmint, a poor front legged son of New Zealand bred giant of Australian racing Carbine who went on to carry his sire's name into posterity through a daughter, Catnip, who became the grandam through Nogara, an Italian One Thousand Guineas and Two Thousand Guineas winner, of world breed shaper Nearco. Catnip has been described as a weedy type of filly who won a 100 pounds ($200) racehorse.
Carbine was shipped to England after four seasons in Victoria and stood beside St Simon at Welbeck Manor, North Notinghamshire. He died at 29 in 1914.
Another Coolmore bred and partnership owned Classic winner, albeit at 50-1, this year's English Oaks winner Qualify is inbred to Nearco's grandson Northern Dancer 4x4x4. She resulted from the mating of Fastnet Rock with the Coolmore produced Perihelion, a staying maiden winner and Group 2 Doncaster Park Hill Stakes second (beaten six lengths) by Galileo.
The second dam, Medicosma, a non-stakes winner up to two miles, was a half-sister by the Robert Sangster raced English and Irish Derby winner The Minstrel to stakes winning fillies and distinguished producers Eva Luna (by Alleged), a Park Hill Stakes winner, and to Rougeur (Blushing Groom).
Eva Luna's four stakes winners included Brian Boru, a Sadler's Wells English St Leger winner, and Sea Moon, a Beat Hollow winner of two Group 2s at home and in Australia successful in the Herbert Power. He finished second in the American Breeders' Cup Turf and third in the English St Leger.
Soviet Moon, an unraced sister to Brian Boru, produced Workforce, a King's Best winner of the English Derby and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.
A representative of Fastnet Rock's second Ireland sired crop, Qualify's success in the Oaks, a race in which another runner from Coolmore by Fastnet Rock, Diamondsandrubies (dam by Galieo's sire Sadler's Wells), finished fourth after being badly hampered a furlong out, has pushed him further ahead as Europe's current leading three crop sire and probably put him in the top ten on the main sires' list.
At the same time, the Gold Coast based John and Fu Mei Hutchins bred, Coolmore Easter Sale graduate ($250,000) Magicool put his sire Fastnet Rock in an unbeatable position for the title of 2014-15 champion Australian sire on earnings – over $9.2million. Also the leader by stakes winners (14), it will be the second time he has been the champion Australian sire.
The Mark Kavanagh bought and trained Magicool, a bay gelding, had previously raced 13 times for four wins, but none of them stakes level. However, he finished a competent fourth in the South Australian Derby and fifth in the Victoria Derby.
He is from an imported Ireland bred daughter of Galileo in Perfect Truth, an Aiden O'Brien trained mare who in 2009 won the Listed Cheshire Oaks, but tailed the field home in the English Oaks.
She is from Charroux, a non-winning half-sister by Darshaan to Gildoran (by Rheingold), a two times Royal, Ascot Gold Cup winner who resided at Kia Ora Stud, Scone for four years 1987-89, but served only 122 mares.
Magicool's third dam, the Lyphard Group1 winner Durtal, was a half-sister to Detroit, a Riverman winner of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, a race also captured by her Sadler's Wells son Carnegie.
