Wouldn't we all like to have had a mare like this?! The last Danehill.

[Chief Stipe]

Stallion Danehill has one mare left at stud in Australia

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And then there was one.

Thirty years after his first mare went to stud, breed-shaper Danehill has only one active daughter left at stud in Australia.

Numbering literally in their hundreds for season after season, time has finally had the last say on an era that reshaped Australian breeding and racing.

The Danehill-era.

A nine-times Champion Australian Sire, Danehill also won the Broodmare title on nine occasions.

For the longest time, every breeder wanted one and every stud needed one.

Now there is only one left and it belongs to New South Wales breeders John and Karen Sheather.

The mare's name is Starspangled and on August 1, she turned 23.

It is only fitting that Danehill's last surviving broodmare is one of the best bred of all the Danehills.

Her dam is User Friendly.

"User Friendly, you don't have to say anymore,'' John Sheather told Racenet.

"Have a look at her record. She won all the Oaks over there; the English Oaks, the Irish Oaks and then she had the audacity to come out and run a brilliant effort in the greatest race in the world some would say, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe."

User Friendly was purpose-built to win ‘a Classic'.

Incredibly, her sire Slip Anchor, grandsire Shirley Heights and great grandsire Mill Reef all won an Epsom Derby.

Sheather's role in the Starspangled story started at the old Newmarket complex at Randwick in 2014.

"I had a couple of foals here at the farm but I wanted to have a really good go at it, as far as the commercial aspect was concerned,'' Sheather explained.

"So we were there at the sale and John North from Bowness Stud gave us a hand with it all.

"I saw her page, I can't remember what lot she was now, but I folded it and I thought if I could only afford it.

"But when we got her for $30,000 I couldn't believe it and while being in foal to High Chaparral which was Youngstar."

 

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Youngstar (right, red cap, ridden by Craig Williams) chases home Winx in the Group 1 Turnbull Stakes at Flemington in 2018. Picture: Scott Barbour / Getty Images

Two years after Youngstar was foaled, in the southern New South Wales town of Young as it happened, along came another soon-to-be Chris Waller star, this one called Funstar.

She was a daughter of Adelaide – a Cox Plate winning son of Galileo, yes, but a stallion who some, well actually most, commercial breeders would consider ‘unfashionable'.

It's a riposte which still irks Sheather today when it's directed his way.

"The Galileo/Danehill cross was the greatest in the world at that time and probably still is,'' he argued.

"At the when Karen analysed it a bit more, I think there were 31 Group winners bred on that cross which you cannot find today so I don't see why it was unfashionable."

For the record, one of those Group winners was Frankel.

The Starspangled story sounds like a never-ending sequence of fame and fortune for the Sheathers but not so.

"We almost lost her twice,'' Sheather revealed.

Once from complications arising from a paddock accident, followed soon after by a critical hoof issue.

Thankfully she made it through each time with Sheather there as a devoted, and sometimes exhausted, carer.

"For months and months,'' he recalled. "It was a real chore to look after her.

"We had to keep her stabled and she was getting sour because she is a handful at the best of times.

"I had to go and pick her milk thistle because she loves it, most horses do. I used to cut a little bit of lucerne out of pasture with a hedge-trimmer.

"Honestly it was a full-time job just looking after her."

 

 

Starspangled's next scheduled foal to race will be her 12th foal, a filly by Yes Yes Yes named Rising Queen who is trained, unsurprisingly, by Waller.

She has an Adelaide yearling colt to follow and remarkably given her age, went in foal last season to Ghaiyyath, a stallion chosen by Sheather primarily owing to his broodmare sire, Galileo.

So, will there be a Danehill mare registered in 2026 or is this the end of the line?

"To answer that question, a lot of people on the street would think we would be doing it just wholly and solely to extract the financial gains out of her but in all sincerity, and honestly, yes I would.

"If all goes well, I probably will put her back into foal because like I said she is just a happy, happy horse when she is in foal.

"She is 23 so we'll take one step at a time. It will be whatever is best for the mare. We'll be guided by that.

"She has been so good to us."