Pedigree Insights: Hello Youmzain

[Wandering Eyes]

The sponsor’s name may have changed quite regularly over the years but one thing remains constant about Haydock Park’s Sprint Cup–this six-furlong Group 1 contest continues to highlight the huge impact that the Green Desert and Danehill branches of the Danzig male line have had on the European sprint scene.

It was back in 1986 that Green Desert scraped a neck victory and three years later it was the turn of Danehill to win comfortably. Dayjur, another son of Danzig, was to win in 1990 but it has been Green Desert and Danehill who have extended Danzig’s legacy. Green Desert managed to better Danzig’s tally of three winners, thanks to Sheikh Albadou, Tamarisk, Invincible Spirit and Markab. Another son, Byron, was responsible for the remarkable Gordon Lord Byron, winner in 2013, and one of Green Desert’s grandsons, Showcasing, also got into the act, thanks to his daughter Quiet Reflection in 2016.

Danehill’s contribution hasn’t been nearly as extensive but his son Rock of Gibraltar supplied the 2012 winner in the shape of Society Rock. Now another of Danehill’s sons, Invincible Spirit’s three-parts-brother Kodiac, has added his name to the list, thanks to the dominant all-the-way victory of Hello Youmzain three days ago.

There are few more popular stallions than Kodiac, who covered 215 mares this year at a fee of €65,000. Yet, as recently as 2011, he was plying his trade at one 10th that fee and it was only in 2014, in his eighth season, that his fee finally reached five figures. The cheapness of his fee reflected the fact that most of his four wins had been gained in handicap company, with his only first-three finish in a black-type race being his close second in the G3 Hackwood S. as a 5-year-old. He started at 28-1 for the 2006 Sprint Cup and managed to beat only two of his 10 opponents.

Needless to say, it isn’t easy for a cheap sprint stallion to start siring Group 1 winners, but his 2012 crop, sired at €6,500, produced a filly who was ultimately to be sold to Coolmore for 2,100,000gns. Of course that filly was the extremely speedy Tiggy Wiggy, who numbered the G2 Lowther S. and G1 Cheveley Park S. among her six juvenile victories.

Two crops later–this one sired at €7,500–Kodiac hit the jackpot again, this time with a very different type of performer in Best Solution. Although Best Solution also enjoyed group success at two years, in the G3 Autumn S. over a mile, it was as a 5-year-old over a mile and a half that Best Solution hit a rich vein of form. After a success in the G2 Princess of Wales’s S., the Godolphin colour-bearer reeled off Group 1 victories in the Grosser Preis von Berlin, the Grosser Preis von Baden and the Caulfield Cup, to push his earnings well past £2.5 million.

Following Tiggy Wiggy’s eye-catching exploits in 2014, Kodiac’s fee jumped to a new high of €25,000 in 2015, up from only €10,000 the previous year, so it was fair to have much higher expectations of Kodiac’s 2016 crop. He hasn’t let us down. Hello Youmzain wasn’t his only representative in the Sprint Cup, the other being that valuable filly Fairyland. Bought for 925,000gns as a yearling, Fairyland won four of her five juvenile starts, emulating Tiggy Wiggy’s successes in the G2 Lowther S. and G1 Cheveley Park S.  This year she has finished third behind Ten Sovereigns and Advertise in the G1 July Cup and she again ran creditably when sixth at Haydock.

Hello Youmzain is therefore Kodiac’s fourth Group 1 winner and there is good reason to believe that there will be more to come from his most recent crops, as his current 2-year-olds were sired at €45,000 and his yearlings and foals at €50,000.

With Kodiac’s 2016 crop numbering nearly 200, there have been plenty of group and listed performers. In addition to his two Group 1 winners, they include Fox Champion, winner of the G2 German 2000 Guineas, and Kessaar, who joined his sire at Tally-Ho Stud after racing only as a 2-year-old, when he landed the G3 Sirenia S. and the G2 Mill Reef S.  Another son, Jash, also ranked among 2018’s best 2-year-olds, after he had followed up a pair of impressive victories with his second, beaten only half a length, behind Ten Sovereigns in the G1 Middle Park S.

Hello Youmzain has now won four of his seven starts, establishing his potential with decisive victories in the G2 Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte at two and in the G2 Sandy Lane S. on a previous visit to Haydock. He arguably didn’t receive full credit for his Sandy Lane performance, as much of the attention went to the runner-up Calyx, who was considered a certainty at odds of 2-13. Third place in the Sandy Lane went to that very speedy filly Royal Intervention, who went on to win the G2 Goldene Peitsche by a length and a half from Waldpfad, who took third place in the Sprint Cup.

As Kodiac has sired some talented middle-distance performers, such as Best Solution and the G3 Cumberland Lodge S. winner Danehill Kodiac, Hello Youmzain’s connections could have been forgiven for thinking that he would stay a mile and a quarter. Although neither of his first two dams raced, both of them should theoretically have stayed at least a mile and a quarter. However, his dam, the Shamardal mare Spasha, seems to throw to the stallion. Mated to the three-time Arc runner-up Youmzain, she produced Royal Youmzain, a smart performer at up to a mile and a half in Germany, where he has been third in the Derby and the Grosser Preis von Berlin. Mated to the July Cup winner Elnadim, the outcome was the five-furlong listed winner Zuhoor Baynoona.

Second dam Spa would surely have stayed well. Bred to the productive Sadler’s Wells/Mill Reef cross, she is out of the G3 Lancashire Oaks winner Sandy Island. Closely related to the Derby winner Slip Anchor, Sandy Island produced Sandmason, a winner of the G2 Hardwicke S. who sired those smart jumpers Summerville Boy and Black Op.

Coincidentally, Hello Youmzain’s second dam is by Sadler’s Wells, and so is the second dam of Best Solution, but these two Group 1 winners could hardly be more different. Hello Youmzain conforms much more to the Kodiac norm, with the stallion’s progeny having an average winning distance of 7.1 furlongs.

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