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Ellis Park Stakes Worth Record $3.7M
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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Saturday's GIII Honey Fox Stakes at Gulfstream Park brings with it the next chapter in the feel-good story of Lush Lips (Ten Sovereigns), the first four-year-old start for the Keeneland pin-up girl who remains a Somerset lass at heart. Trained by Brendan Walsh, Lush Lips lines up at Gulfstream as the winner of four of her 11 starts to date. In October, she enjoyed her career highlight when making the breakthrough at the top level in the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes at Keeneland. Then, just a few weeks later, she made headlines at the adjacent sales complex when going the way of Dixiana Farms for $3.7 million, with all roads now leading back to Keeneland in the autumn and a tilt at the Breeders' Cup. Certainly, life in the bluegrass is looking good on Lush Lips, but the part of this story which elevates it into the realms of fairytale can be found in her Somerset roots, specifically at the Pocock family's Stringston Farm and in their purchase of the Definite Article mare Divine Grace for just 6,000gns at Tattersalls back in 2002. Whilst Divine Grace was added to their broodmare band for a relatively modest sum, it would be nigh on impossible to put a value on her worth to the Pococks, perhaps not even the telephone digits paid for her granddaughter last autumn. “It was very surreal, really,” Nick Pocock says of Lush Lips' star turn in the Keeneland sales ring. “We bought her granddam for 6,000gns, so to go from 6,000gns to $3.7 million was very much a fairytale. It was amazing the number of people who saw her at Keeneland and told us afterwards what a beautiful filly she was. That gave us a massive amount of pride.” Before Lush Lips came along, Divine Grace was perhaps best known as the dam of the multiple Group-winning sire Electric Beat, plus the Rockfel Stakes third Gray Pearl (Excellent Art). The dam of Lush Lips, on the other hand, the Arcano mare Lamyaa, was nothing special on the racecourse, winning just once in eight career starts for Shadwell after changing hands for 90,000gns as a foal. Lamyaa later returned to Somerset following her €28,000 purchase by the Pococks at Goffs but, with only one of her first four foals managing to win a race, there was little to foreshadow what Lush Lips has gone on to achieve. “The mare needed another winner at the time, really, and there was a bit of a question mark about Ten Sovereigns,” Pocock says of the first time Lush Lips was offered at public auction at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale. She was ultimately knocked down to Mark McStay's Avenue Bloodstock, Medallion Racing and Donnacha O'Brien for £82,000. “Mark McStay, the first time he saw her, he just absolutely adored her. She was always a lovely foal. We were disappointed she couldn't go to the foal sales, but she just tweaked something in her back. There was never a day that she wasn't the standout – she was always the apple of my father's eye.” The rest, as they say, is history, with Lush Lips going on to become the second top-level winner bred at Stringston Farm with her Keeneland success. The first was Rekindling, who provided a memorable breakthrough when winning the Melbourne Cup back in 2017, with it then proving nearly eight years between drinks at the top table. “I think Lush Lips probably rates slightly higher [than Rekindling] because we had so many seconds in Group 1s after Rekindling,” says Pocock. “Melo Melo was beaten in a close finish [to the 2023 Prix Vermeille] and Sydney Opera House went down by a very short nose [in the 2018 Criterium de Saint-Cloud]. It really does make you appreciate it when they do get their heads in front in a Group or Grade 1. “With Lush Lips, it came after a year of us sort of thinking that it was possible. She won her maiden over there by such a distance and then ran into Nitrogen twice. She was unlucky when she was second in the Grade I at Del Mar, so we just knew that, if she got her day, we were going to be very close. It was just great to see it actually happen because she definitely deserved it.” All being well, Lush Lips will have every opportunity to make more headlines in the coming weeks and months, with her Grade I update last autumn already having proved a timely one when her full-brother went through the ring at the Tattersalls December Foal Sale. McStay stuck to a winning formula there when buying the colt on behalf of Steve Weston's Parkland Thoroughbreds for 150,000gns. “He was a slightly different type of horse but a very strong and powerful type,” adds Pocock. “It was brilliant to sell him back to Mark. Mark has kept us in the picture the whole way through and we very much felt a part of the team with Lush Lips. It was a bit difficult going up there with a Ten Sovereigns when the horse had moved to Turkey, so it was great to see him get the support that he did.” The most lucrative result for Stringston Farm at that sale came courtesy of You Look So Good (Excellent Art), another daughter of Divine Grace. Already the dam of Melo Melo (Gleneagles), as well as the high-class Treasuring (Havana Gold), You Look So Good's latest filly by Chaldean went the way of SackvilleDonald for 240,000gns. “She was an outstanding filly,” says Pocock. “You Look So Good is a mare who delivered straight up, whereas Lamyaa has taken a year or two. The whole way through the summer, the Chaldean filly was just a star at home and we were just waiting to get to the sales with her. We thought that we had something pretty special and it was lovely to see that we weren't wrong once we got up there.” He continues, “We've struggled to keep daughters of Divine Grace. They seem to find ways of dying, but we have Lamyaa and You Look So Good and we're very appreciative of having them. Divine Grace was a mare where it didn't matter what stallion we sent her to, she would give us a very good racehorse. It's the same with Lamyaa and You Look So Good, they've both just followed on in the tradition.” Pocock is now counting down the days until April when Lamyaa and You Look So Good are both due to foal. Lamyaa is carrying a three-parts brother or sister to Lush Lips by Little Big Bear, while You Look So Good is in foal to City Of Troy. You Look So Good will then visit Gleneagles in a repeat of the mating that produced Melo Melo, with the hope being that she'll produce a full-sister that the Pococks can breed from. Lamyaa, meanwhile, has had her choice of mate narrowed down to either City Of Troy or St Mark's Basilica, with the latter also set to receive another exciting young mare in Sitara's Legacy (Sea The Moon). The unraced Sitara's Legacy, who is reportedly in foal to Auguste Rodin, capped a “dream week” for the Pococks at the December Foal Sale when her Chaldean colt sold to Juddmonte for 180,000gns. “It was a dream sale for us and it came after a very hard year the year before as well,” says Pocock. “To be honest, I don't think we've had such an easy crop of foals before. The whole way through the foal prep, we were kind of waiting for a problem to arise. All six foals we couldn't really fault and to average 110,000gns was unbelievable, really.” Of the 15 mares who call Stringston Farm home, Sitara's Legacy understandably holds a special place in the hearts of everyone there as the final foal out of Sitara (Salse), the dam of their Melbourne Cup winner Rekindling, as well as the Group 1 placegetters Golden Sword and Sydney Opera House. “That was always the intention with her being the last foal of Sitara,” Pocock says of the decision to retain Sitara's Legacy. “It's very nice to carry it on between Divine Grace and Sitara. They've given us some great memories and there are pictures of them all over the house. They've done us very proud and their daughters are continuing it for us as well which is great.” To have had one mare like Divine Grace or Sitara is one thing, but for both of them to have come along at the same time is quite another. Indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this whole tale is that Divine Grace and Sitara were both bought by Nick Pocock's parents, Robert and Wendy, on the same afternoon at Tattersalls over 20 years go, with Sitara proving only the slightly more expensive of the pair at 10,000gns. If Carlsberg did Park Paddocks spending sprees… “It was a day we always try to recreate!” Pocock says of that fateful session from December 4, 2002. “Funnily enough, when my parents bought Sitara it was the most that we'd paid for a mare. I was away in Ireland and I think dad walked out from the ring a little bit shocked that he'd spent so much on a mare. He walked up and spoke to Eddie Fitzpatrick who asked, 'Do you want to know about the sister?' That turned out to be Shouk, the dam of Magical Romance quite quickly afterwards and later Alexandrova. “For a long time, Sitara was kind of broodmare of the month before she'd really had a big winner. We lived off the family and it was great to be involved in such a family – and it still is. They are really good-looking horses who do the job properly, both in the sales ring and on the racetrack. Having that success on the racetrack is so important. It's a bit more than trying to be commercial for us – it's for the pleasure on top.” One filly most definitely holding up that end of the bargain is Lush Lips. Indeed, this Keeneland pin-up girl has already given the Pococks untold pleasure, far beyond what they could have imagined when this Somerset dairy farm first became home to the odd broodmare around five decades ago. “We are farmers, first and foremost,” Pocock sums up. “That's why we sell as Stringston Farm. It isn't a stud and they are a part of farming to us. The whole intent was just to get my parents off the farm back in the day. It was a bit of fun and, originally, the idea was to pinhook some relatively cheap foals and take them up to the old St Leger sale. It kind of grew from there. We were simply lucky to get into two very good mares early on and it's taken us to places that we would never have envisaged going.” The post Lush Lips Continuing the Fairytale for Stringston Farm and Divine Grace Dynasty appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Over three months after a spill at Aqueduct hospitalized him with serious injuries, jockey Dylan Davis will return to the races Saturday with a pair of mounts at Gulfstream Park, including one in the GIII Honey Fox Stakes for trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. That Nov. 14 incident, in which Davis's mount Tarpaulin (Leofric) fell over a stricken horse in front of them, resulted in a laundry list of ailments in what Davis referred to as the most serious fall of his career. “Three months [off], 11 broken bones, a collapsed lung, a punctured lung, and I lost a kidney,” Davis said. “It was tough the first month. But once I was able to get more mobile and get going, I was able to get my mind right.” Davis's recovery involved intense physical therapy to build back up the strength he'd lost from the time off. “I was able to work with weights, strength training and resistance bands to get my body back in the right spot,” he said. I wanted to really make sure that I was 100% going back out there, in respect for my owners and trainers and all the hard work they put into their horses.” Davis is a long-time successful NYRA-based rider, having begun on the circuit in 2012 and capturing two rider's titles along the way in 2022 and 2024 during Aqueduct's winter meet. And while he meant to return to the Big A for his comeback, opportunity arose first in South Florida where he rode his first Championship meet just last season. “I was actually just planning on coming to breeze horses down here because the weather was nice, but I got offered some mounts for [this] weekend,” Davis said. “My agent [Mike Migliore] and I talked and we're interested in finishing this meet up next month. Then I think we'll go back to New York in April.” It will be a quick turnaround for Davis who admitted that he's only been back working horses for a week. “I haven't been on a horse in three months! So I was a little nervous before,” he said. “But once I got legged up, I was really happy. I was so happy to be back on and it just felt really comfortable. Once I got that first ride out of the way, it was like I hadn't missed a beat.” His fall and subsequent injuries have led Davis to re-evaluate how he approaches his routine as he faces a comeback, putting more emphasis on getting his body ready ahead of time. “I'll be changing some things,” he said. “You can get a little comfortable about what you're doing. I'll be getting in more strength training for myself and doing a couple more added things to my routine than what I was doing before. I always want to try and push myself a little more.” Davis kicks his weekend off Saturday with just a pair of rides but has a busier day Sunday, getting the leg up on no fewer than five mounts. “I've put a lot of cardio in my workout before I [got here],” he said. “I think I'll be alright there [stamina-wise]. My agent's been doing it the right way. He's putting me on a few mounts, nothing crazy the first week or two. I'm just gradually getting myself back to where I was to make sure that everything goes well.” Davis confirmed that he'll spend the month of March finishing up Gulfstream's Championship meet which concludes March 29 before returning to New York for the Aqueduct Spring meet Apr. 2. “Our base will be [Florida] for March and obviously we may ship out of there if we get to,” he said. “There's some stakes and Derby preps that we're interested in. But otherwise, base is Gulfstream and then we'll work from there.” The post Sidelined By Injury, Dylan Davis To Make Riding Return Saturday appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
The Wertheimers unveiled a smart prospect on Friday as Turbulente (Australia) scored in style on debut at Chantilly. Sent off at 5-1 for the 9 1/2-furlong contest on the Polytrack, the Christopher Head-trained relative of the Melbourne Cup-winning champion Americain (Dynaformer) shadowed the early leader before taking control two out en route to a comfortable two-length success from the experienced Persian Grace (Persian King). The winner, whose family also features the Prix Marcel Boussac runner-up Tasmania (Zoffany), holds an entry in the Prix de Diane. The post Wertheimer Diane Prospect Turbulente Lights Up Chantilly appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Thelastmanfrompenr (Passing Glance) (lot 1), a winner of his debut bumper at Kelso earlier this month, is one of three lots catalogued for the GoffsGo Early March Sale. A half-brother to the Grade 1-placed Notlongtillmay (Malinas), he is joined by lot 2, War Officer (Westerner), who has placed twice in his first two point-to-point efforts. He is a full-brother to the graded-placed Anything Will Do and a half-brother to the graded -placed Stand Up And Fight (Flemensfirth). The catalogue is rounded out by Mr Diafoirus (Sir Percy) (lot 3), a dual winner on the Flat and third on his hurdling debut at Chepstow on Saturday. His is a full-brother to the listed winner and graded-placed Cleonte. Bidding will open at noon on Wednesday, March 4 and close beginning at 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 5. Goffs Group chief executive Henry Beeby said, “This sale immediately follows the GoffsGo February Sale which saw the platform achieve the highest price in its short history of £245,000 which is a huge vote of confidence in our service and a great achievement from just the second scheduled GoffsGo sale. “The very nature of the GoffsGo online platform is that sales can be held any time and can be highly selective. Indeed, we are not afraid to focus on quality with small numbers as is the case with this sale, which features horses with highly relevant recent form. We already have entries for our sale later in March which will be held on the 26th. “GoffsGo offers outstanding value with an entry fee of just £49 and the lowest available vendor commission of 1.5% which is only charged for lots that sell on the platform. That is unmatched by any other European online platform. Vendors and purchasers also benefit from the same terms of business and the unique and transparent Goffs service that is evident at all live Goffs sales regardless of location.” The post Debut Bumper Winner Anchors GoffsGo Early March Sale appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
The 25th running of the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup will break new ground when run as a World Pool fixture. The meeting, which will be staged at Ascot on Saturday, August 8, will also for the first time feature a team from the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Led by Vincent Ho, the rider of the legendary Golden Sixty, the team will consist of three riders licensed to ride in Hong Kong and will replace the Asia team. Australian jockey Jamie Melham, who made history in 2025 when becoming the first female to complete the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double aboard Half Yours, will captain the Rest of the World team. She will also act as a global event ambassador for the Shergar Cup. “This will be the 25th running of the Shergar Cup at Ascot and it's exciting to see another evolution of the event, with World Pool and Hong Kong Jockey Club involvement for the first time,” said Nick Smith, director of racing at Ascott. “As ever we are hugely grateful to Dubai Duty Free for their support of this event, and of British and Irish racing as a whole.” The post Shergar Cup Joins World Pool for 25th Anniversary appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article
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