ANOTHER FEATHER IN THE MULLINS BAY CAP

Mullins Bay
(Photo : Summerhill Stud)

Please click photo to enlarge… 

“MULLINS BAY”

There’s been a lot said in recent weeks about Mullins Bay’s first foals, and the handstands we’re seeing from our midwives and those that care for them henceforward. A chat with Mike de Kock earlier last week and the revelation that he had one of the best foals of the lot, scarcely raised any surprise. Mike’s now-famous statement that “Mullins Bay could’ve won a Group One any day of the week, anywhere” is the strongest endorsement of a horse whose class was enhanced not only by his ability, but also the speed his erstwhile trainer expects to see in his progeny.

We know too, that it was the combination of Mullins Bay’s drop-dead looks and his prince’s pedigree that made him one of the top three English sales yearlings of 2002, and we’re regularly reminded of the exploits of a family that’s twice been proclaimed “Family Of The Year”, in the ongoing achievements of its descendants. Last weekend, Poet (by Pivotal out of a Stakes-winning sister to Mullins Bay) came home lonely in a Graded stakes in Ireland just six days after a “cracking” effort in the Irish Cambridgeshire off top weight, providing Europe’s number one trainer, Aidan O’Brien, to comment “we just don’t know where he’s going to stop”.