Bustino's Breeding Bits

Just to highlight one of the interesting parts of breeding and that you must consider the whole pedigree when assessing the likely stamina of a horse it's interesting to consider Hazy Idea's best son, indeed best produce, Hittite Glory. He was by Habitat (a miler) yet won the Flying Childers Stakes and the Middle Park. She won as a 2yo over 6f and as a 3yo over 10f and 14f, yet got the fastest 2yo of 1975.

 

At just past half way for the season Cotai Glory has 25 wins, with Ardad (who set the early First Season Sire pace) in second with 18 wins. Galileo Gold seems solid on 12 wins.

As regards leading 2yo sire Cotai Glory is doing well, being 2nd behind Mehmas who is on 31 wins. Next comes Kodiac on 22 wins. Kodiac was champion 2yo sire in 2017, 2018 and 2019 but Mehmas has taken over his mantle.

When you get to 2nd crop sires it will not surprise you that Mehmas is out front. What may surprise you is how far ahead he is of other sires. He has had 75 wins so far, his nearest challenger is Twilight Son on 39. Even Andrew Balding called him the super-sire the other day.

 

As if to order, after yesterday's questioning of his potency, Galileo has the first in Ireland today with the second also being by Galileo.,

 

Bustino, you’ve shoved a knife through me by mentioning Hittite Glory, Scobie’s horse. I backed him before the Childers but was abroad on holiday when he won . I nearly fell to the floor when I saw his price in the newspaper-100/1. Frankie Durr rode him,I think.

 

Yes I'm sure you are right it was Durr. Strange horse, ran 13 times and won two top 2yo races yet only won one other race. Suppose that's why he was 100-1. Can't remember if he was Holliday owned, definitely Holliday bred.

 

Interesting news today that Wootton Bassett covered a massive 242 mares this Spring. As you would expect many of them were Coolmore mares and many of them by Galileo.. A big throw from Coolmore and they won't know if they've thrown a 7 until 2025.

It was also reported that Galileo covered 45 mares this year.

 

A few more words on Wootton Bassett. His attractiveness to Coolmore is that he was an effective outcross to Galileo mares. It's usually considered that you are not inbred to a sire if you have no duplications in the first 4 generations of your pedigree. On that basis WB is not inbred to any sire. His largest level of inbreeding is to Northern Dancer to whom he is inbred 5 X 4 X 5, these 3 strains are provided by The Minstrel, Nureyev and Danzig respectively. He also shows 5 x 5 inbreeding to Secretariat. Of course many horses are inbred 4 x 4 to a horse (usually a stallion) but this is not considered particularly close inbreeding. For example the great stallion of the 40s/50s Hyperion was inbred 4 x 4 to Galopin (the sire of one of the most influential sires in Thoroughbred history St Simon) and 4 x 3 to St Simon himself.

So using Wootton Bassett means you will not have a duplicated line of Northern Dancer (and he's the problem if I can put it this way) emanating from the sire in your foal. Galileo has been a phenomenal success as a sire of racehorses, sires and broodmares. An example of that broodmare success is St Mark's Basilica, as though by Siyouni he's out of a Galileo broodmare. So St MB will not be overly sent to Galileo mares as you will immediately get 3 x 2 inbreeding to Galileo. It will happen, that you can be sure of but breeders tend to be wary of such close inbreeding. People point out that Enable was inbred 3 x 2 to Sadler's Wells and it didn't do her much harm. That may be so but as I say breeders tend to be wary of that level of inbreeding.

So Wootton Bassett has been chosen to resolve this issue of close inbreeding for all those Galileo mares. With Galileo being such a successful sire of sires much the same applies to broodmares for whom Galileo is the damsire's sire.

 

RP had an article on the Coolmore's stallion activity this year
Blistering start at Coolmore for Wootton Bassett as he covers 244 mares in debut | Bloodstock News | Racing Post

Gleneagles only had 36 mares

 

The Gleneagles figure doesn't make sense when you realise he's the leading 3rd Crop Sire.

 

Both Group 1s won by First Season sires. The filly was Caravaggio's first ever winner. Considering Perfect Power ran much further than any other horse you'd say in the end he won a touch handily. A first group 1 for Adad in GB/IRE, who set the pace for most of the year but has hardly had a runner for a while. He had less foals than Cotai Glory who is walking the FSS championship. Can't help feeling Ardad will have a bigger book of mares to cover next year: another Kodiac sire..

 

First day of Tattersall's Book 1 Sale at Newmarket today. Will be interesting to see how lot 32, a Roaring Lion colt from Luca Cumani and lot 61 a Roaring Lion filly from the Meon Valley stud do. There's also lot 106 today from this sadly deceased one-crop sire.

Some lucky people who paid peanuts (relatively) in 2019 for a Mehmas or Cotai Glory covering will see their reward today (and this week).

Of course the Galileos will be of interest to the big guns but my tip for a good show this week is the Australian stallion Zoustar.

Looks like only one Frankel today and that's from the Kirlington Stud, famous for breeding two Derby winners from the same mare. This filly is not from that family but a tough USA mare, Keertana.

 

Sorry Lot6 is a Frankel, just going under the hammer

 

A losing sale for Highclere Stud as lot 6 sells for only 110,000gns

 

Lot 61, the second Roaring Lion to go through the ring looked a touch narrow and was led out unsold at 190,000gns. The earlier lot 32, a Roaring Lion colt, sold for 100,000gns.

 

A Mehmas colt, produced at a covering fee of €12,000 goes for 150,000gns to Kevin Ryan. A Cotai Glory colt, produced at a similar price, goes for 130,000gns to the Doyles (Hannon bound?). Not a bad return on investment.

 

Unsurprisingly The Lloyd-Webber Sea the Stars colt out of Lah Ti Dar went for a comfortable 1.2 million guineas and sold to ex-US Ambassador Will Farish. Apparently he may stay in England (as far as I know Balding and Gosden have trained horses for him).

Today it's the turn of the German W family to strut its stuff. The first 3 lots this morning (if you're doing nothing at 11am go onto db.tattersalls.com:8080/4DCGI/Sale/Live?site=NMT ) to see what they sell for. The quality of German families, despite their lack of numbers, was thrown into relief by last Sunday's Arc.

 

The first yearling to go through the ring this morning was a Dubawi colt out of Waldlerche, who is of course the dam of Arc winner Waldgeist. The colt made 1.25 million guineas.

 

More on the Germans. Of course they had the winner of the Arc and although more was made of the fact that he was recently beaten by Prescott's Alpinista some people mentioned Torquator Tasso's defeat of this year's German Derby winner, Sisfahan. This colt has been relatively lightly raced and may go for a Breeder's Cup race and may stay in training next year.

What is of interest to breeders is that Sisfahan would be an almost total outcross to Northern Dancer mares. He's by a sire called Isfahan, who also won the German Derby, and who in turn is by the recently deceased Lord of England, who was pretty useful and won one Group 1 race.

Looking at Sisfahan's pedigree you see he is inbred but to Sharpen Up (5 x 5 x 4): hardly closely inbred. As regards Northern Dancer he has one cross in his 5th generation. One other positive factor is that Isfahan (and Sisfahan of course) is from the Mill Reef sire line. That is because Lord of England's sire is the Dewhurst winner Dashing Blade, who in turn was by Paul Mellon's Elegant Air, he being a grandson of Mill Reef.

The Mill Reef line has suffered a hard time in the last 20 years. Before that Darshaan, Doyoun and Daylami all seemed to point to a great future for the Mill Reef line. The last great hurrah was Dalakhani, who was not as successful as many had hoped and today Sir Percy is the strongest flagbearer for this line in UK/Ire. Despite reasonable success he does not get the mares he deserves and will not leave a son.

Sisfahan and Isfahan may change this. There would have to be further success for the fashion conscious, conservative breeders to seek them out. But let's hope there is.

 

Jim Bolger's Iron Horse Poetic Flare has been sold to Japan. Maybe we don't need another Galileo-line sire but this colt was very tough and had a great attitude. Probably more against him was the sire Dawn Approach who's hardly fashionable.

With Shadwell announcing it's to slim down its racing and breeding interests it could present an opportunity to The Royal Stud get back into the Height of Fashion branch of the Feola family. Sold in 1981 to Hamdan, this mare and her daughters and granddaughters have provided Shadwell with a number of fine winners. The latest is of course Baaeed.

 

With the end of the flat turf season the First Season Sire has been decided. As expected (and surprisingly predicted by me) Cotai Glory (34 wins) was the winner and reasonably comfortably. Second was Profitable (28) and Ardad (28), followed by Churchill (21), Galileo Gold (20), Caravaggio (19), Aclaim (20) and Ribchester (14). The best 2yo by a FSS was Perfect Power who gave Ardad a Group 1 win. Ardad had a higher wins to runner ratio than Cotai Glory. Two sires that you'd think were more likely to have 3yos than 2yos yet got good scores were Ulysses (14) and Time Test (12).

As expected Mehmas had most 2yo wins, with Ardad's sire Kodiac coming 2nd. Mehmas was of course the leading 2nd crop sire too. More surprising is perhaps that he covered 292 mares this covering season, which, by any yardstick, is a large number.

Leading 3rd crop sire was Gleneagles, who now looks relatively cheap. He perhaps needs to get a bit more quality. .