Stallions For All Seasons At Overbury

[Wandering Eyes]

Within hollering distance of jump racing’s unofficial headquarters of Cheltenham sits Overbury Stud. There could be no more appropriate base for the horse who has been Britain’s champion National Hunt sire nine times, but there is much more to lure breeders to step inside the honeystone walls of this understated farm than just Kayf Tara (GB) (Sadler’s Wells).

At 25, the Meon Valley Stud-bred dual G1 Ascot Gold Cup winner has bragging rights as the stallion who put Overbury, in its current guise, on the map, but he is far from the only top-class racehorse within the stallion yard. Kayf Tara’s fellow residents have been well travelled in their quest for success. Top of the tree on prize-money earnings is the horse who is instantly synonymous with his Melbourne Cup victory of 2011, but it should not be forgotten than among the 10 career wins of Sheikh Fahad Al Thani’s Dunaden (Fr) (Nicobar {GB}) are also the G1 Caulfield Cup and G1 Hong Kong Vase. Then there’s G1 Irish Derby hero Jack Hobbs (GB) (Halling), a fellow high-earner thanks also to his victory in the G1 Dubai Sheema Classic.

Another to have landed the spoils on Dubai’s biggest raceday is Cityscape (GB) (Selkirk), the Juddmonte-bred G1 Dubai Duty Free winner who made eye-catching strides with his first crop of 3-year-old runners last season.

To reinforce the breadth of stallion talent on offer at Overbury, one of the busiest members of the crew last year was Ardad (Ire), whose similarity to his sire Kodiac (GB) mixed with his commercial market appeal of speed and precocity had the owners of 132 mares beating a path to his door during his debut season. In looks and background, he is almost a polar opposite to the 16.3-hand Schiaparelli (Ger) (Monsun {Ger}), whose 12 victories–including five Group 1s–from 21 starts across four seasons tell their own tale of his particular brand of reliable German engineering. And as if this line-up wasn’t enough, a late entry announced just last week is the well-bred Frontiersman (GB), a son of Dubawi (Ire) and Ouija Board (GB), no less, who didn’t quite scale the heights of his Derby-winning half-brother Australia (GB) (Galileo {Ire}) on the track but on pedigree alone deserves a chance at stud.

From the newest arrival to the farm’s lynchpin, eagle-eyed observers will have spotted a link with Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation. It is an association which has helped Simon Sweeting, who leases the stud from the Bossom family, return Overbury to a thriving Thoroughbred breeding operation since his arrival there in late 2000.

“I was very fortunate that Sheikh Mohammed was happy to trust, on his agent’s advice, to send horses here,” says Sweeting, a former assistant to Luca Cumani and Henry Cecil who grew up on his family’s Conduit Farm Stud in Oxfordshire. “They were horses that [Darley] wanted to retire, but didn’t necessarily want to have at Dalham Hall Stud at that stage. An example of that was Bertolini, who came here in 2002, and was a huge success in his first year. They didn’t necessarily want to be selling all the stallions or the potential stallions as they had done in the past. So it helped us get established, particularly on the Flat side of things as well.”

He continues, “Tim Holland-Martin had finished and moved on, and Penelope Bossom, who owns the estate, didn’t want to carry on the breeding enterprise, which had obviously been hugely successful with [treble Classic winner] Grundy (GB) being the pinnacle.”

Sweeting’s arrival marked a new era for the farm as a stallion operation, with Kayf Tara, freshly retired with eight victories at Group 1 and Group 2 level to his credit, a notable first incumbent. The stallion master can be forgiven his obvious soft spot for his veteran. “He’s been an absolute superstar–a horse that you dream about but you’d never expect to get,” he says. “Really, if I’d known how difficult it is, and how tough it is to find a horse like that I probably never would have started the enterprise at all. He came and he was popular, and he’s never put a foot wrong for us. He’s been the horse that we’ve built the business on, it’s as simple as that. He’s kept going, he’s been very fertile, he’s got tremendous libido, and he’s been a success at stud. He’s done everything for us that we could have possibly dreamt that he might do.”

With a much smaller pool of National Hunt mares in Britain compared to Ireland and France, the UK has often struggled to compete when attempting to attract appealing jump stallions. To an extent, Kayf Tara can be credited with turning the tide, and the recent retirement of Telescope (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) to Shade Oak Stud, as well as some classy French imports to Yorton Farm, means that the British National Hunt stallion scene is gradually improving.

Whether Schiaparelli can follow the example set by a number of other sons of Monsun in the jumping ranks remains to be seen, and it will also take time to establish the imposing Jack Hobbs, who drew many favourable comments at this week’s TBA National Hunt Stallion Showcase at Goffs UK, and whose book of 168 in 2018 contained only four Flat mares.

Sweeting says, “He is a horse who 20 years ago would have been very popular at the start of his career as a Flat stallion. Nowadays, unless you are the Derby winner, and a highly-rated one at that, middle-distance horses don’t get the same opportunities at stud. Commercially, people want faster stallions, they want more precocious stallions. So in a way it’s good luck for us, really. We’ve had a chance to stand him as a National Hunt stallion from the start. It’s great for UK-based National Hunt breeders to have a horse like that. I think he is as good a racehorse to retire to the National Hunt ranks, or to be priced up as a National Hunt stallion straight away, that I can remember.”

With the Sharpen Up sireline hanging on by a thread, Overbury Stud is a rarity in being able provide a double dose, with Cityscape backing up Jack Hobbs in this regard. Physically reminiscent of both his sire and grandsire, the long-striding chestnut with the broad blaze made many breeders sit up and take note last season when he was responsible for the Classic trial winners Dan’s Dream (GB) and Give And Take (GB), as well as listed-winning sprinter The Broghie Man (GB). Furthermore, his son formerly known as Urban Aspect (GB) and trained by Andrew Balding, recently made an explosive debut in Hong Kong under his new moniker of Ka Ying Star and runs Sunday in the Hong Kong Classic Mile.

“Now that he’s had 3-year-old runners we know what he can do. I think that owner-breeder interest in him will be picking up now that they can see the results,” says Sweeting who bought Cityscape from Juddmonte in a partnership which includes Dan’s Dream’s breeder Steven Smith of Hunscote Stud. “Breeders know what they can expect from mares that they might use, and they can use him with confidence. The fact that he has 9.4% stakes horses to runners, which is a huge number for any stallion really, but particularly an animal that hasn’t had Group 1 mares all the way through, people know that he’s going to upgrade.”

He adds, “We’re very excited about Urban Icon (GB), who’s with Richard Hannon. He was bred by Willie Carson, who incidentally bred Jack Hobbs, and he was two-for-two last year as a juvenile.”

Hopes will be high that Dunaden, who may just have been usurped as Sheikh Fahad’s favourite horse by Roaring Lion, can post a similarly positive record with his first 3-year-old runners this season, with breeders and owners of this particular crop in the running for extra reward from the premium scheme set up by the sheikh to help Dunaden on his way at stud.

And as we work our way down the distance spectrum we arrive, eventually, at the speedball Ardad, whose first foal arrived last week and who, like Jack Hobbs, joined Overbury Stud last season from John Gosden’s Clarehaven Stables.

“He’s totally the opposite kind of animal [to Jack Hobbs],” says Sweeting of the G2 Flying Childers S. winner. “He’s a small horse, he’s well put together, a ball of muscle, really. He always looked a sharp type of horse and he is what the market wants at the moment. He’s by Kodiac, he’s a Royal Ascot-winning 2-year-old, and he made plenty of money at the breeze-up sales. So if he can produce foals that look like him, I very much hope that the breeders will make some money from him, and that we’ll have another good stallion. He’s had some shrewd support, a lot of what I would describe as the hard-nosed commercial breeders have supported him. That’s only going to help him, but it’s all in the lap of the gods. We’ll wait and see what his foals look like.”

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