The Weekly Wrap: Ireland’s Roaring Success

[Wandering Eyes]

The retirement of two of this season’s Classic winners on Sunday took a little gloss off what was otherwise a stellar week of action culminating in Ireland with strong supporting cards from Doncaster’s St Leger meeting and the Arc trials in Paris.

Ireland’s Champions Weekend may still be something of a newcomer to the star-packed ‘festival’ line-up but it has quickly found its feet and has been given solid support since its inception in 2014.

The G1 QIPCO Irish Champion S. is a race which rarely disappoints and while it would be hard to improve upon the battle royal between Fantastic Light and Galileo (Ire) back in 2001, the tussle this year between the 3-year-olds Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy) and Saxon Warrior (Ire) (Deep Impact {JPN}) was a sight to behold. Only four different stables were represented in the race but quality shone through and ultimately neither the 2,000 Guineas winner nor the Prix du Jockey Club winner Study Of Man (Ire)—both sons of Deep Impact—could match the upwardly mobile Roaring Lion, who has now notched three consecutive Group 1 victories and is almost single-handedly upholding the Derby form.

Saxon Warrior went unbeaten in his first four outings of his life, the last of those being the Guineas triumph which led to short-term talk of a potential Triple Crown challenge. When a horse has carried such high hopes it’s easy to view five subsequent defeats as disappointing but it is not the case here. To go down by just a neck twice to the horse who has lit up the second half of the season is far from a disgrace, particularly when his tendon injury became apparent after Saturday’s valiant final effort in a race which so nearly went his way.

Roaring Lion didn’t quite capture the imagination at two in the same way as Saxon Warrior, despite the fact that the latter was the only horse to get one over on him last year, the neck verdict going the other way when Roaring Lion had to settle for second in the G1 Racing Post Trophy. But he’s demanding our attention now, and given the sponsorship of British Champions Day on Oct. 20, one imagines we’ll next see Roaring Lion aiming to give the QIPCO team another hurrah on their biggest day of the year.

Roaring Lion wasn’t the only grey to make last weekend particularly memorable for Qatar Racing. Though Havana Grey (GB) is not in their ownership, he is the flagbearer for the young Tweenhills stallion Havana Gold (Ire), and became his first Group 1 winner in the Derrinstown Stud Flying Five.

Havana Grey, bred at Mickley Stud by Richard Kent and Lady Caroline Lonsdale, continued a good recent run for British-breds in the sprint division, following The Tin Man (GB) (Equiano {Fr}) and Alpha Delphini (GB) (Captain Gerrard {Ire}), and he also completed a memorable weekend for Karl Burke.

Like Roaring Lion, the Burke-trained G1 Coolmore Matron S. winner Laurens (Fr) (Siyouni {FR}) also recorded her third Group 1 win of the year and she took the scalp of a fearsome rival in Alpha Centauri (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}), who took her bow with an honourable second and a career-ending fetlock chip.

The remainder of the season will be poorer for her absence, but with Sea Of Class (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) to look forward to in the Arc, as well as St Leger runner-up Lah Ti Dar in the Fillies & Mares S. on Champions Day, there are still some fabulous fillies to support, not to mention a potential reappearance for Laurens in the Sun Chariot at Newmarket on Oct. 6.

All About The Joy
Talking of fabulous fillies, John O’Connor was beaming like the Cheshire Cat while presenting the prize for the Ballylinch Stud Ingabelle S. at Leopardstown, surrounded as he was by a podium full of female owners of the well named Sparkle’n’joy (Ire) (Sepoy {Aus}).

The listed victory which opened Irish Champions Weekend was another feather in the cap for Legs Lawlor, Jessica Harrington and the team behind the Irish version of the It’s All About The Girls syndicate, which has also been successful this year with listed-placed dual winner Chicas Amigas (Ire) (Dragon Pulse {Ire}), who was sold recently to Qatar Racing.

Bloodstock agent Patrick Cooper will have increased his female fan base significantly after buying Sparkle’n’joy and Chicas Amigas for the syndicate for the reasonable sums of €40,000 and €25,000 at last year’s Orby Sale. He’ll doubtless be back on the hunt at Goffs in a fortnight’s time.

Lanwades Sitting Pretty With Kitten
Kirsten Rausing may well have stolen a march on her fellow stallion operations in her determined pursuit of Bobby’s Kitten to stand at Lanwades Stud in Newmarket. He thus became the first son of Ken and Sarah Ramsey’s Kitten’s Joy to stand in Europe and the fact that Hawkbill and Roaring Lion have boosted their sire’s profile significantly outside the U.S. will have done the speedy Bobby’s Kitten no harm at all. Kitten’s Joy is currently top of the list of sires standing in North America—not bad for a horse whose reputation has been hewn on the turf. It will be fascinating to see how well the first foals of Bobby’s Kitten are received at the sales later this year.

Rausing will also have been bolstered by the tremendous start made by the first juvenile runners for Sea The Moon (Ger). The son of Sea The Stars (Ire) has now had 10 winners from his 25 runners, including German Group 3 winner Quest The Moon (Ger). No Nay Never and Bungle Inthejungle (GB) have for a long time led the freshman table by prize-money and individual winners respectively and they each have impressive strike-rates. No Nay Never is currently on 49% and Bungle Inthejungle on 44%, while Sea The Moon is next on 40%. We can expect to see plenty more from the outstanding German Derby winner as his runners turn three and are asked to step up in trip.

Street Cry Much Missed
Street Cry (Ire) died exactly four years ago, on Sept. 17, 2014, at the age of just 16. It was a blow for Darley even then, the son of Machiavellian having already been represented by the brilliant Zenyatta, Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense and Melbourne Cup hero Shocking (Aus) among a raft of stakes winners.

Posthumously, his record has been enhanced by the seemingly unstoppable Winx (Aus), who posted her 27^th consecutive win on Saturday and set a new record of 20 Group 1 wins. Street Cry’s prowess as a broodmare sire was also advertised this weekend via Anthony and Sonia Rogers’s G1 Moyglare Stud S. victrix Skitter Scatter (Scat Daddy), a daughter of Dane Street, who was twice a winner in Ireland for Jessica Harrington. The half-sister to G1 Darley Dewhurst S. winner Intense Focus (Giant’s Causeway) has already produced the Grade 3-placed Data Dependent (More Than Ready).

Another former Darley stallion to have enjoyed a good week via the offspring of his daughters is Dubai Destination. God Given (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) got the ball rolling with victory in the G2 Park Hill S. for her breeder Andrew Stone of St Albans Bloodstock. The Luca Cumani-trained 4-year-old is a daughter of Ever Rigg, who is also the dam of the high-class Postponed (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}).

The Aga Khan’s Eziyra (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}), winner of the G2 Blandford S., is out of the Dubai Destination mare Eytarna from the family of Gold Cup winners Enzeli (Ire) and Estimate (Ire), while the aforementioned Sparkle’n’joy, bred by Ronald Alder, is a daughter of Silent Secret from a family which also features Group 1 winners Barney Roy (Ire) and Gordon Lord Byron (Ire).

Honours Even
By his own extraordinarily high standards, 2018 may have so far been a slightly quieter year for Galileo (Ire) but a Group 1 double courtesy of Kew Gardens (GB) and Flag Of Honour (Ire) in the St Legers of England and Ireland, in partnership with Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore, was enough to bring him level with his own great sire Sadler’s Wells by number of top-flight victories.

The successful experiment of sending faster mares to Galileo will no doubt continue and the numbers increase in that regard, but his natural stamina when combined with comparable mates means he has equally impressive results at the farther end of the distance spectrum. Three of the last four St Legers have gone to his offspring, with Kew Gardens joining Capri (Ire) and Simple Verse (GB) on the roll of honour. Galileo also struck with his first crop when the regally bred Sixties Icon (GB)—a son of the Oaks winner Love Divine (GB) (Diesis)—led home a trifecta for the stallion, with The Last Drop (Ire) and Red Rocks (Ire) filling the minor places.

Dandy Girls
Dandy Man’s fillies have been doing him proud this season and the Ballyhane Stud stallion was represented by a second Group/Grade 1 winner with the victory of Godolphin’s La Pelosa (Ire) in the Natalma S. on Sunday, while Lady Kaya (Ire) chased home Skitter Scatter in the G1 Moyglare Stud S. The former, bred by Elton Lodge Stud, was an expensive breezer cold at the Craven Sale in April by Tally-Ho Stud for 280,000gns, but Lady Kaya was bought for just €15,000 from breeder John O’Connor as a foal.

Another relatively inexpensive purchase, the €21,000 yearling Comedy (Ire), won three in a row for Barbara Keller, David Redvers, and Alastair Donald this season, including the G3 Darley Prix de Cabourg, and has subsequently been sold privately.

 

 

 

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