The champions of the 2023-24 racing season were honoured at the recent Equus Awards in Cape Town and it was quite illuminating that a number of category winners were sired by ‘lesser’ stallions, those that seldom hog the limelight.
Step forward Global View, whose son Dave The King took home the ultimate prize, that of Horse of the Year.
SA Horse Of The Year, Dave The King – a son of Global View (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Also named the Champion Older Male, the dual Gr1 winner is by far the best progeny of the Ascot Stud resident, an American-raced son of the mighty Galileo.
A Gr2/3 winner on turf, Global View boasts 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.
Until the rise to prominence of Dave The King, Global View had put together a respectable innings as the sire of Gr3 winner Decorated, the smart Listed Caradoc Gold Cup winning stayer Rule Book and the Port Elizabeth stakes winners Global Drummer, Fairy Knight and Sound Check.
Bred by co-owner Gary Player, Dave The King is out of a mare by Jet Master and joins Rainbow Bridge as the second Horse of the Year recipient bred from a daughter of the remarkable seven-time champion, who himself earned the ultimate accolade in 1999 and became the sire of three-time Horse of the Year Pocket Power.
Champion 2yo Filly, Quid Pro Quo – a daughter of Lance (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
The Jet Master saga does not stop there. In addition to being the damsire of both Dave The King and Gr1 Cape Town Met winner Double Superlative (as well as runner-up Rascallion), he features as the sire of neglected son Lance, whose juvenile daughter Quid Pro Quo was an overwhelming winner of the Champion Juvenile Filly award.
Two Gr1 victories would have been beyond her connections’ wildest dreams at the end of her two-year-old season, or indeed when she was bought back as a yearling for a mere R60,000, yet she utterly dominated the division, whilst her fine treble of the Gr1 Allan Robertson Championship, Gr1 Douglas Whyte Thekwini Stakes and Gr2 Golden Slipper is a rarity in itself and a feat never achieved before.
By the way, the juvenile filly division yielded a second Gr1 winner in VJ’s Angel, who upset the boys in the Premiers Champion Stakes. It just so happens that her dam Tally-Ho is out of Jet Master’s stakes winning daughter State Coach.
Underrated stallion Pathfork was in fine form this past season and he too sired his first champion when four-year-old son Royal Victory was the recipient of the Champion Middle Distance award.
The KZN-based four-year-old took his career to new heights when he travelled to Turffontein to annex both the Gr1 Betway Summer Cup and Gr1 Premier’s Champions Challenge.
Pathfork also had a sniff at the Champion three-year-old male award with Gr1 winning son Main Defender, winner of the H F Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut Stakes. Alas, he had to bow to Cape Derby/Daily News 2000 ace Green With Envy, one of no less than three Equus winners on the night for the season’s dominant stallion Gimmethegreenlight, who also accounted for the undefeated Champion three-year-old filly Gimme A Nother and Champion juvenile male Proceed.
Interesting that for all his successes, the only gap in Gimmethegreenlight’s glittering resume remains a Horse of the Year!
Champion Older Female, Princess Calla – a daughter of Flower Alley (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Not so Flower Alley, another stallion who has never hit commercial heights, yet is the sire of former Horse of the Year Princess Calla, most appropriate, given that his best South African performers have been his fillies.
Although she failed to hit similar heights at age six last season, she won the Gr1 Majorca Stakes and reached the frame in the Gr1 HF Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut and Gr1 Paddock Stakes, good enough to retain her Champion Older Female award.
A look down the Honours List provides more compelling evidence that less ritzy stallions have sired a Horse of the Year.
Rainbow Bridge, who took the honours in 2020, is by Ideal World, who, despite his impeccable pedigree and access to Mauritzfontein Stud’s exalted broodmare band, has never quite made the same impact as former barn mate Fort Wood.
Besides, many will argue that Rainbow Bridge’s dam Halfway To Haven deserves to take credit for her son’s achievements, given the fact that she produced three Gr1 winners, all by different sires.
The wonderful miler Legal Eagle claimed successive Horse of the Year titles in 2015 and 2016 and was sired by champion Greys Inn, a Durban July winner who had subsequently performed with credit at the highest level in Dubai, Hong Kong and Australia.
Sadly, the son of New Zealand powerhouse stallion Zabeel failed to grab the imagination of the country’s breeders and unfortunately never received the support his fine credentials deserved.
Classic Flag, the 1997 Horse of the Year, likewise was sired by a blue-collar stallion in the shape of Allied Flag, who stood with breeder Peter Blythe at the erstwhile Clifton Stud in faraway Lothair in Mpumalanga. He boasted a fine pedigree, being by Danzig from the family which gave us Secret Prospector, but being too inaccessible to mainstream breeders, covered primarily his owner’s mares and Classic Flag is his sole top level winner.
Granted, the top echelon sires will always have the added advantage of bigger books, higher fees and greater quality of mares. Yet it is heartening to see that horses like Dave The King, Princess Calla, Legal Eagle and Classic Flag are proof that any stallion is capable of siring a Horse of the Year.
