Most bloodstock observers with a detached sense of perspective rue the development of the modern trend which has produced a situation in which a tiny number of stallions each cover a large amount of mares, a consequence of which is that the world’s pool of stallions is far lower than it would otherwise be.
Several factors have brought this about, with the two most obvious being the fact that stallions are no longer restricted to covering, say, 40 mares and can instead cover four of five times that number in a season; and the practice of shuttling stallions, which means that a stallion can cover two seasons in one year, rather than just one. A further contributory factor is that so many modern breeders breed to sell, which means that the motivation to breed a horse with a pedigree deemed popular by the market-place can be just as strong as (or, in practice, stronger than) the motivation to breed a good, sound horse, writes John Berry.
The breeding world used to be a free-for-all until Lord Rosebery, having become president of Britain’s Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association in 1932, persuaded his peers to set a limit to the size of a stallion’s book. In the recent past one British stallion had covered 82 mares in one season, but the spring of 1933 saw not one single horse covering more than 45 mares. This became the accepted limit – and remained accepted as such for half a century or more. The consequence was many more stallions finding themselves a place a stud – and those who were deemed not quite good enough to stand in the Old Dart could always head to the lesser-funded nations in the southern hemisphere.
Things are very different nowadays, of course. To have any decent chance of getting a stud career off the ground in any of the major northern hemisphere nations, a stallion has to ‘tick all the boxes’ as regards form and pedigree. In theory this is fine because it means that only the best of the best will be going to stud. In practice, though, this is is less good. The problem is that the difference in credentials between the elite and the next rank down is slight, and history has shown that great sires can emerge from the ranks of the slightly-less-obvious as easily as poor sires can emerge from the tiny group of stallions whose credentials appear flawless.
It is, therefore, regretful that nowadays there are so many horses who might have a worthwhile contribution to make who are not given the chance to be weighed in the balance. Many/most of these would, of course, be found wanting under such examination, but that is the nature of the game: the majority of the stallions who retire to stud are always going to end up deemed to have been disappointments, however exacting the selection process.
With the weak rand South Africa carries a strong tradition of giving less obvious sires a go.
Happily, more or less alone among the major racing and breeding nations, South Africa still carries a strong tradition of giving less obvious sires a go. This, of course, might stem as much from necessity as from intent: the rand is still very weak on international exchanges, and quarantine restrictions more or less rule the country out of the shuttle-sire market. The result is that stallion importation into the country largely revolves around horses who would otherwise not be offered the opportunity to make any worthwhile contribution to the breed – and the happy consequence is that some of them rise to the challenge handsomely, enriching the racing and breeding world through their descendants.
Durban’s recent big weekend, when a magnificent race-day at Greyville is highlighted by the Durban July Handicap, provided some interesting reminders of the situation.
Of the four Grade One races on the card, the winner of one (Gr1 Garden Province Stakes, a 1600m contest for fillies and mares) was sired by an outstanding South African champion: the winner, Beach Beauty, is a daughter of DYNASTY, the son of Fort Wood who won four Grade One races in the 2002/’03 season to earn himself Horse of the Year honours.
The winners of two of the Grade One races were sired by two of the relatively few proven top-class imports brought to South Africa in recent years: the good American stallion TRIPPI (sire in the States of R Heat Lightning) and the outstanding German horse SILVANO, responsible for Golden Slipper winner For The Lads and Durban July Handicap winner Heavy Metal respectively.
Silvano, incidentally, was exported to South Africa by his owners early this century to stand at Gestut Fahrhof’s sister stud Maine Chance Farm, but has made one trip home since then, covering at Fahrhof in the spring of 2009 before making what will almost certainly prove to have been his final crossing of the equator later that year. That one-off season at Fahrhof (where he had been born in 1996 and then had subsequently kicked off his stud career in 2002) yielded Lucky Speed, recent winner of this year’s Deutsches Derby. Of all the unusual doubles which a stallion could achieve, being represented by the winners of the Durban July and the German Derby on the same weekend must take some beating!
JUDPOT
The fourth Grade One race at Greyville, though, was won by a horse whose creation depended on the old-time practice of giving the less likely horses a chance. Forest Indigo, winner of the Golden Horseshoe, is a daughter of JUDPOT, whose lineage is faultless but who never raced.
Bred by the Niarchos family by the dual champion US stallion A P Indy from the late Stavros Niarchos’ great racemare Miesque, JUDPOT was bred to be a true champion.
When Judpot was born in 2005, A P Indy had already been America’s champion sire once (in 2003) and was shortly to repeat the feat (in 2006). As a quadruple Grade One-winning son of Seattle Slew from an outstanding family, A P Indy had retired to stud as a very exciting prospect; and he had, if possible, exceeded expectations. By 2004, when Judpot was conceived, only top-class mares could gain a nomination to visit him.
Miesque, of course, fitted easily into A P Indy’s book. Winner of 10 Group/Grade One races between 1986 and ’88 including the Prix Marcel Boussac, 1,000 Guineas, Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and two editions of the Breeders’ Cup Mile, she had been arguably the world’s best miler of the ‘80s – and certainly the world’s best female miler. Her first foal was Kingmambo (winner of three Group One races in 1993 including the Poule d’Essai des Poulains en route to a stellar stud career) and her second was East Of The Moon (winner of three Group One races in 1994 including the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and Prix de Diane before becoming an extremely good broodmare). None of her subsequent foals was quite in their class, but her third foal was Miesque’s Son (a Group Three winner who now ranks as sire of the outstanding Deauville specialist Whipper and of the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Miesque’s Approval) and she became dam of a fourth Group winner when Mingun won the Meld Stakes at the Curragh in 2003.
Judpot, therefore, had plenty to live up to when he joined Sir Henry Cecil’s stable in Newmarket in advance of his two-year-old season in 2007. Sadly, he didn’t race that year, nor the following year – and that, for most countries, would have been that. However, South African breeders are still happy to give unraced horses a chance at stud if their pedigree is good enough – and now Judpot has a Grade One winner in his first crop of two-year-olds. Forest Indigo has thus become the principal star of this first crop, but he is not its only star: Judpot’s few runners to date also include Colour Of Courage (a Grade Two winner at Scottsville in April) and Golden Slipper runner-up Along Came Polly, who had previously finished second in the Grade One Allan Robertson Fillies’ Championship at Scottsville in May. Only time will tell whether Judpot goes on to emulate the likes of Northern Guest and National Assembly (two unraced patricians who each topped South Africa’s General Sires’ Table in the relatively recent past) or even produces a horse of the calibre of Ipi Tombe, the Zimbabwean-bred champion racemare whose unraced sire Manshood had headed south with the credential of being by Mr Prospector from the great Henry Cecil-trained filly Indian Skimmer. Judpot has, though, already done enough to remind us that we are potentially losing a lot if only the most obvious stud prospects are given a chance.
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Of the four Grade One winners on Greyville’s big day, two were bred from daughters of stallions whose situations were similar, being from mares by Winter Romance and Baroon.
Bred by the late Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum, WINTER ROMANCE was an admirable racehorse as well as a good one. Forty years ago, his achievements would have been enough to have gained him a berth at stud in the UK. However, he didn’t win as a two-year-old, got off the mark in a handicap as a three-year-old, and then didn’t win again (in another handicap) until he was a four-old-veteran of 13 starts. A late-developer, he did eventually add two more victories to his CV (in a Listed race over nine furlongs at York as a four-year-old and a Group Three race over a mile and a quarter at Ayr as a five-year-old) but forays into races still more competitive saw his limitations exposed. In an earlier age, he’d have done enough to land a berth somewhere at stud in the British Isles, but the farms which used to stand horses of his ilk have mostly gone out of business.
However, Winter Romance could be bought for 23,000 gns at Tattersalls’ December Sale in 1998. As a Group Three winner (and a very tough one at that) who was by Britain’s best surviving Hyperion-line stallion (Cadeaux Genereux) from the family of Storm Bird, Green Tune and Pas De Reponse, he was given a chance in South Africa, where the British-bred stallion who had recently been dominating the General Sires’ Table (Foveros) also came from the same sire-line. And now Winter Romance is the maternal grandsire of a top-class two-year-old.
It is a similar story with BAROON. He, too, was trained by Ed Dunlop in Newmarket for the late Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid al Maktoum. However, while Dunlop had found Winter Romance to be wonderfully tough, he found Baroon far more fragile, as he strained a tendon. The colt had been previously trained in Germany by Andreas Wohler (under whose care he finished second to Borgia in the 1997 German Derby before exacting his revenge on that lovely filly in a Group Two race over 2000m in Berlin the following month) but he never raced again after coming back to the UK, the country in which he had been bred (by Hesmonds Stud, who had sold him as a yearling to the Sheikh for 120,000 gns).
A son of Rainbow Quest, Baroon was clearly a stayer (unlike his two good half-brothers Struggler and Vision Of Night, sons of Night Shift who each won Group races over sprinting trips). After going amiss, he had no future as a racehorse and limited appeal in Europe as a stallion – but his form and his pedigree made him appealing to South Africa, and at an affordable price. And he is now the maternal grandsire of this year’s winner of what many still regard as South Africa’s biggest race.
The 21st century bias towards fashion and uniformity (in all aspects of modern life, not just thoroughbred breeding) has a lot to answer for – so we should be grateful to the South African breeding industry for collectively giving so many nice horses a chance at stud, horses who would otherwise be discarded unproven, whether they had something to offer or not.
