Varied avenues behind Godolphin’s Classic sweep

Godolphin’s remarkable 48 hours, which encompassed victories in 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 is no stranger to securing the Guineas double, having won both on three occasions over the past decade, but you have to go back 1952 to find the last owner, Calumet Farm (Hill Gail and Real Delight) who landed both the Kentucky Oaks – Derby in the same year. As for the Classic quartet, that sweep is unprecedented.

Collectively the winners are representative of the varied avenues that Sheikh Mohammed has long pursued, whether it be the cultivation of families or regular significant investment. 

As is well known, 2,000 Guineas winner Ruling Court was a high-profile breeze-up purchase at €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 his 2022 crop of 122 foals.

Kentucky Oaks heroine Good Cheer, meanwhile, descends from the Stonerside Farm stock bought from Robert and Janice McNair in 2008. By Medaglia d’Oro out of a Street Sense mare, she represents a fusion of two stalwarts of Darley’s Kentucky roster. Medaglia d’Oro, who was also represented during the weekend by the Grade 1 Turf Classic winner Spirit Of St Louis, joined Darley in 2009 from the short-lived Stonewall Stallions operation on a valuation reportedly in the region of $40 million. The son of El Prado has been a remarkable stallion, with 185 stakes winners and counting, and at the age of 26 is still in service at a fee of $75,000.

The victory of homebred Sovereignty in the Kentucky Derby pushed his sire Into Mischief within reach of history. Once available for as little as $7,500, Into Mischief now boasts three winners of the race, with Sovereignty joining Authentic (2020) and Mandaloun (2022), to bring him level with the record last achieved in 1957 by Bull Lea and also held by Virgil, Falsetto, and Sir Gallahad III. 

Into Mischief’s career has been curated by Spendthrift Farm but Sovereignty’s dam Crowned is yet another high-profile producing daughter of Darley’s late Preakness Stakes and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Bernardini. Produced when her sire was at the peak of his powers, particularly commercially, Crowned is out of the 2007 Spinster Stakes heroine Mushka, a first-crop Grade 1 star for Empire Maker, and joined Darley as a $1.2 million yearling purchase by John Ferguson. She never made it to the track but must have remained well regarded since Sovereignty is the third of her three foals by Into Mischief, who hasn’t stood for under six figures since 2018. Unfortunately she died in 2024 but leaves behind a yearling colt by Nyquist.

As for Desert Flower, who maintained her unbeaten record for Charlie Appleby in the 1,000 Guineas, she is one of six Group 1 winners by Kildangan Stud’s Night Of Thunder, himself winner of the 2014 2,000 Guineas, and indicative of the operation’s international outlook as a direct descendant of American blue hen Somethingroyal via a branch of the family with a strong foothold in Brazil. 

Somethingroyal, who is the sixth dam of Desert Flower, was a product of Christopher T. Chenery’s Meadow Stud, for whom she made one unplaced start. As a Princequillo half-sister to 1948 Coaching Club American Oaks winner Scattered and daughter of Test Stakes heroine Imperatrice, Somethingroyal had a weight of pedigree behind her and in a remarkable stud career that consisted of 18 foals, went on to produce two exceptional colts in Sir Gaylord and Secretariat; Sir Gaylord was the champion three-year-old of 1962 and later sired 1967 2,000 Guineas and Derby winner Sir Ivor while Secretariat remains regarded as one of America’s greatest by virtue of his Triple Crown sweep of 1973 capped by that 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes prior to a successful stud career at Claiborne Farm. Somethingroyal also produced the Grade 1-winning filly Syrian Sea.

The branch responsible for Desert Flower emanates from Swansea, a 1963-foaled Turn-To full-sister to Sir Gaylord. She never won for Chenery, was moved on as a five-year-old and foaled just the three winners although several of her daughters did become black-type producers. They did not include Buck The Tide, her filly by Buckpasser who had a spell under the ownership of Nelson Bunker Hunt prior to selling out of his 1988 dispersal.

The fortune’s of this line changed following the export of Buck The Tide’s daughter Arbulus to Brazil. It was there that the Liloy mare produced a star in Aviacion (by the Shirley Heights stallion Know Heights), winner of the Group 1 Grand Prix Zelia Gonzaga Peixoto de Castro, alongside a pair of Group 3 winners, Persane and Cerutti.

Good South American runners and their families tend to be tough and various North American breeders have fared well out of importing such high-performing fillies. Aviacion, who joined Darley’s Kentucky arm during the late 2000s, is one such example. Desert Flower’s dam, Promising Run, was the result of her second visit to Hard Spun, like Street Sense a significant addition to the operation’s Kentucky roster in 2008, and in keeping with several by her sire, advertised him to good effect on turf in Britain where she won the 2015 Rockfel Stakes for Saeed bin Suroor. In all, this tough mare won six races at two to five years including a trio of Group 2 races in Dubai and a Group 3 in Turkey.

Desert Flower is only the second foal out of Promising Run after Aablan, who looked set to take high order when successful in the 2023 Solario Stakes for Charlie Appleby but hasn’t been seen since.

As with Medaglia d’Oro and Street Sense, Promising Run’s Hard Spun continues to stand as a veteran for Darley in Kentucky, in his case for $25,000. One of the last remaining sons of Danzig at stud, the 21-year-old has a handful of sons of his own currently at stud in Kentucky including the young Grade 1 winners Aloha West and Silver State. However, he is becoming particularly well regarded as a broodmare sire, with a record of 54 stakes winners topped by Jeff Smith’s multiple Group 1 scorer Alcohol Free, leading young sire Good Magic, high-class Japanese performer Danon Smash and now Desert Flower.

Desert Flower leads the way among four stakes winners from Night Of Thunder’s crop of three-year-olds, bred in the first year that his fee leapt to €75,000 from €25,000. Another representative is Juddmonte’s exciting filly Sunly, who captured the Listed Prix de la Seine at Longchamp not long before Desert Flower’s success at Newmarket.

The quartet is completed by 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. The latter, who carries inbreeding to Urban Sea alongside other stakes winners by the sire such as Isaac Shelby, Thunder Kiss, Mauiewowie and Night Tornado, is currently the sole colt among that quartet; indeed, with 39 stakes-winning fillies against 22 stakes-winning colts on his record, there remains something of a filly bias. 

However, Night Of Thunder does also have a top-level colt to represent him this year in Economics. He was bred when the son of Dubawi was still available for €25,000. The fact that Night Of Thunder is now one of Europe’s most desirable stallions at €150,000 illustrates just how far he has come in such a short space of time.