A first Gr1 winner is a significant landmark in any stallion’s career and Ascot Stud’s Global View reached that milestone when his son Dave The King ran out a smashing two-length winner of the Hollywoodbets Gr1 Gold Challenge at Hollywoodbets Greyville.
Always racing in close proximity to the pace, the big-striding bay boldly took the lead a long way out and kept up his relentless gallop in the straight to score unharassed.
The handsome Ascot resident Global View by Galileo (Pic – Pauline Herman)
It was a performance out of the very top drawer from Mike de Kock’s four-year-old, given that he soundly defeated no less than seven Gr1 winners in a vintage renewal of this revered mile event.
This was a deserved and overdue first Gr1 success for Mike de Kock’s charge and ended a frustrating string of placed efforts in distinguished company going back to last year, when he ran second in the Gr1 Daily News 2000 and third in the Gr1 Champions Cup, whilst this season, he again had to settle for second in the Gr1 H F Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut Stakes.
Dave The King’s sire retired to Ascot Stud in 2016 as a rare American-raced son of the mighty breed-shaper Galileo.
Dave The King strides clear under Muzi Yeni to score a peak career victory (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
He had proved himself a tip-top miler with Gr2 and Gr3 victories on turf and boasted a fine female line, his dam, the Storm Cat mare Egyptian Queen, tracing to Canadian Stakes winner Ocean’s Answer, a three-parts sister in blood to Storm Cat’s own sire Storm Bird.
Significantly, he is bred on the same Galileo x Storm Cat cross as successful Coolmore stallion Gleneagles.
Global View made a promising start to his stallion innings, with his first two runners Delicasea and Global Drummer being sharp enough to score on debut.
The latter, in particular, gave notice of a bright future when trotting up by the best part of six lengths and would become his sire’s first stakes winner with victory in the Listed East Cape Nursery.
Global View’s fifteen-time winning son Global Drummer (Pic – Pauline Herman)
He eventually ended up as Port Elizabeth’s leading juvenile, having added the Listed Dahlia Plate and Champion Juvenile Cup. Now six, he is very much a local hero, his formidable 15-win tally featuring no less than half a dozen stakes successes.
Stakes-performed Storyland and Fireview also featured amongst Global View’s first-crop juveniles, hence it came as no surprise that he won the battle for supremacy amongst the 2020 freshman class.
Remarkably versatile, his black type winners to date have come over a wide range of distances.
Second-crop daughter Sound Check won the East Cape Fillies Nursery, the very smart three-year-old Fairy Knight claimed the East Cape Guineas, Zimbabwe-raced Ideal View won the Castle Tankard and Decorated landed the Gr3 Track And Ball Derby.
Bred by co-owner Gary Player, Dave The King is a half-brother to dual stakes-placed My Bestie and is one of four winners out of Jet Master’s daughter Touche, whose own sister Butterfly Girl won the Ladies Mile and produced Gr3 Merchants runner-up Tread Swiftly.
While Dave The King is the horse driving this family at present, he is also its second stakes winner of the current racing season. The Beck-owned Fire Away colt Fire Attack, a fluent winner of the Gr2 SA Nursery, just happens to be out of Bonnie Beers, a half-sister to Touche and Butterfly Girl.
Grandam Fire Tread, who claimed both the Gr3 Diana Stakes and Sophomore Sprint, went on to do sterling service at the Gary Player Stud, for in addition to Butterfly Girl, she also bred Gr3 Cape of Good Hope Nursery victress Empress Crown and Mighty Atom, who finished second in both the Gr2 Peninsula Handicap and Gr2 Selangor Cup.
Hollywoodbets’ Devin Heffer is flanked by winning rider Muzi Yeni and Anthony Delpech (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
With a view to future targets, the jury is probably still out on Dave The King’s optimum distance, suffice to say that he has been entered for next month’s Hollywoodbets Durban July.
In the same race twelve months ago, he pulled his way to the front and faded late to finish sixth, 5,50 lengths behind the winner Winchester Mansion.
With maturity and gelding, he has learnt to settle better and his connections must be tempted to let him have a second crack at the most coveted race on the racing calendar.
As De Kock remarked: “This is why we’re in the game, it’s all about Group 1 racing and these are the ones we want all the time.”
