Godolphin’s remarkable early May weekend, during which Sheikh Mohammed’s operation won the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas alongside the Kentucky Oaks and Derby, has set a bar for excellence that will be hard to rival for years to come.
The Coolmore team has pulled off the Guineas double on three occasions over the past decade, but you have to go back 1952 to find the last owner, Calumet Farm who landed both the Kentucky Oaks – Derby (courtesy of Hill Gail and Real Delight) in the same year. As for the Classic quartet, that sweep is unprecedented.
Between them, the winners are illustrative of the investment and different means by which Sheikh Mohammed has pursued success.
2,000 Guineas winner Ruling Court is the most expensive breeze-up horse ever sold, having cost €2.3 million out of last year’s Arqana May Sale. From the same nursery, Norman Williamson’s Oak Tree Farm, that supplied Godolphin’s with its champion two-year-old Native Trail, he’s presented Coolmore with a superb advert with which to promote Justify; it wasn’t that long ago that Godolphin viewed Coolmore stallions as a no-go area.
Now in Ruling Court, they are in charge of a particularly valuable representative for Justify; while he is the second British Classic winner in as many years for his $250,000 sire after City Of Troy, more sobering is the fact that he is also the only Group/Graded stakes winner so far out of the stallion’s 2022 crop of 122 foals.
Later that same Saturday evening at Churchill Downs, homebred Sovereignty handed the operation a most coveted victory in the Kentucky Derby, powering through the slop to deny favourite Journalism. In the process, he provided his sire Into Mischief with a third win in the race after Authentic (2020) and Mandaloun (2022), enough to bring him level with the record held jointly by Virgil, Falsetto, Sir Gallahad III and Bull Lea, the last stallion to achieve the feat back in 1957.
Perennial champion sire Into Mischief is the king of Spendthrift Farm, his career having been developed off an early fee of $7,500 to today’s current high of $250,000. However, Darley deserve to take great pride in the fact that Sovereignty is yet another top-flight performer out of a mare by its former flagship stallion Bernardini, who has rapidly become one of North America’s premier broodmare sires. His dam Crowned, who died last year, joined Darley at a time when the operation was on a drive to target Bernardini’s progeny and indeed it took a bid of $1.2 million from John Fergsuon to secure her when she came up for sale as a yearling. Bred by Betty Moran’s Brushwood Stable, Crowned was out of the 2007 Spinster Stakes heroine Mushka, a first-crop Grade 1 star for Empire Maker, but never made it to the track. Sovereignty is the best of her three foals by Into Mischief and is followed by a yearling colt by Nyquist, the mare’s final foal.
Crowned’s yearling purchase arrived during a period of major expansion for Godolphin, a move which took in the acquisitions of stallions such as Medaglia d’Oro, Street Sense and Hard Spun during the late 2000s.
Also added into the mix was the 2008 acquisition of the Stonerside Farm stock, which reaped an immediate reward in the form of Raven’s Pass. It is that particular package, originally cultivated to great effect in Kentucky by Robert and Janice McNair, that sits behind Godolphin’s Kentucky Oaks heroine Good Cheer, appropriately the result of the Medaglia d’Oro – Street Sense cross. Both stallions today remain stationed in a veteran capacity on Darley’s roster.
Medaglia d’Oro, who was also represented during that same weekend by the Grade 1 Turf Classic winner Spirit Of St Louis and Grade 2 scorer Nitrogen, joined Darley in 2009 from the short-lived Stonewall Stallions operation on a valuation reportedly in the region of $40 million. Now 26, the son of El Prado is still popular at a fee of $75,000.
Meanwhile, 1,000 Guineas heroine Desert Flower, by Kildangan Stud’s Night Of Thunder and out of Promising Run, is representative of yet another differing investment route as a direct descendant of American blue hen Somethingroyal via a family branch purchased out of Brazil.
Somethingroyal, the sixth dam of Desert Flower, produced two exceptional colts for her breeder Christopher Chenery’s Meadow Stud in Sir Gaylord and Secretariat. Sir Gaylord, by Turn-To, was the champion three-year-old of 1962 and later sired 1967 2,000 Guineas and Derby winner Sir Ivor while Secretariat remains revered by some as the best horse to grace North America by virtue of his Triple Crown success capped by that 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes. At stud, he became a particularly effective broodmare sire, a role in which he was seen to good effect via stallions of the ilk of A.P. Indy, Gone West and Storm Cat.
Somethingroyal also produced the Grade 1-winning filly Syrian Sea.
The line responsible for Desert Flower, which stems from Swansea, a 1963-foaled Turn-To full-sister to Sir Gaylord, was not so productive until it reached Brazil. It was there that Swansea’s granddaughter Arbulus, by Liloy, produced Group 1 winner Aviacion (by the Shirley Heights stallion Know Heights) alongside a pair of Group 3 winners, Persane and Cerutti.
Several shrewd North American operators have long been well attuned to the durability and class that can be offered by the South American breed. Aviacion is one such example. She joined Darley’s Kentucky arm during the late 2000s, and not long after produced Promising Run to Hard Spun. In keeping with several by her sire, Promising Run went on to advertise him to good effect on turf in Britain where she won six races from two to five years for Saeed bin Suroor including the 2015 Rockfel Stakes and a trio of Group 2 races in Dubai.
Desert Flower is only the second foal out of Promising Run after Solario Stakes winner Aablan. Emerging with credit in this instance is the mare’s sire Hard Spun. One of the last sons of Danzig at stud, Hard Spun remains a very capable sire despite having swung in and out of fashion over the years. He has a handful of sons at stud in Kentucky but it is as a broodmare sire that he is now starting to come into his own. At the time of writing, he has 54 stakes winners to his credit in this department led by Jeff Smith’s multiple Group 1 scorer Alcohol Free, Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Good Magic (also a leading young sire in Kentucky), high-class Japanese performer Danon Smash and now Desert Flower.
Desert Flower, of course, is yet another feather in the cap of Night Of Thunder, the 2014 2,000 Guineas winner and currently Dubawi’s leading son at stud. She leads the way among four stakes winners from his crop of three-year-olds, bred in the first year that his fee leapt to €75,000 from €25,000. The quartet also comprises Juddmonte’s exciting filly Sunly, who captured the Listed Prix de la Seine at Longchamp on the same day as Desert Flower’s success at Newmarket, Coolmore’s now-retired Fairy Godmother, who looked a Group 1 winner in waiting when taking last year’s Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot, and Listed scorer Tuscan Hills.
That fee hike for 2021 was indicative of a start that consisted of first-crop stars such as Highfield Princess (Prix Maurice de Gheest, Nunthorpe Stakes, Flying Five Stakes and Prix de l’Abbaye) and Thundering Nights (Pretty Polly Stakes). While his second and third crops (which remains headed by a pair of Listed winners in Tacarib Bay and Mystery Night) failed to keep pace with that bright start, matters have changed considerably since then.
His fourth crop boasts a current star in Choisya, winner of the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley Stakes at Keeneland, while his fifth contains Economics, last year’s Irish Champion Stakes winner who remains in training with William Haggas this season.
Economics is a particularly important member of Night Of Thunder’s Group 1-winning sextet as the group’s sole male representative. Broken down, the stallion’s record consists of 39 stakes-winning fillies against 22 stakes-winning colts, so there is something of a filly bias – for now at least.
One interesting horse who could assist Economics in helping to alleviate that is Amo Racing’s Tuscan Hills, last year’s Listed Silver Tankard Stakes winner who wasn’t disgraced when midfield on his return in the Dante Stakes at York. Interestingly, he carries inbreeding to Urban Sea, a pattern found in eight of Night Of Thunder’s stakes horses overall, among them Isaac Shelby, Thunder Kiss, Mauiewowie and Night Tornado.
Farewell Henri Devin
French racing lost a valuable friend last month with the death of Henri Devin aged 71.
French bloodstock in particular has been the richer for the involvement of Devin alongside his wife Antonia at their Haras du Mesnil.
It was there that Devin, a breeder with a keen understanding of stock and bloodlines, developed Doctor Dino into a premier jumps stallion, so desirable that the son of Muhtathir today is fully booked on annual basis at a fee of €24,000 – the highest figure ever commanded by a National Hunt stallion in France.
The Mesnil stallion roster is generally select in numbers but in turn, that allowed Devin to throw his weight behind its incumbents. For example, not everyone would have cultivated Kaldounevees to such a high degree. A Group 3-winning son of Kaldoun who stood early on for just Fr15,000, Kaldounevees rewarded Devin’s patronage by producing Terre A Terre, winner of the Prix de l’Opéra and Dubai Duty Free Stakes, and Ange Gabriel, winner of the Hong Kong Vase and Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud. That success inspired some of the larger operations to take a chance on Kaldounevees, among them Godolphin for whom he sired the Group 2-placed Antiquities, subsequently the dam of its Poule d’Essai des Poulains winner Victor Ludorum.
In typical Mesnil style, Kaldounevees’ daughters have been employed to great effect with Doctor Dino, to whom they have produced the high-class Flat performers Golden Legend (Group 3 winner), Rose Jaipur (Listed winner) and Physiocrate (second in the Prix de Diane). Each were Mesnil homebreds trained by their son Henri-Francis.
Devin also enjoyed great success with Turgeon, who was world’s oldest active thoroughbred stallion when he died aged 33 in 2019. He was an excellent sire of jumpers, represented by the likes of Exotic Dancer, Pic d’Orhy, Ma Filleule and Turgeonev.
More recently, Mesnil launched Champion Stakes winner Bay Bridge, who covered over 100 mares in his first season last year, and Telecaster, winner of the Dante Stakes for Hughie Morrison. The latter, a son of New Approach, is more of a dual-purpose proposition but he has several Flat winners to his credit from his first crop of three-year-olds. They include the highly-tried pair Cortolla and Quinteplus; true to form, they are Mesnil homebreds out of mares by Kaldounevees and are trained by Henri-Francis Devin.
