FASTNET ROCK BUSIEST SHUTTLE STALLION IN 2011

Fastnet Rock (AUS)
(Photo : Stallions)

FASTNET ROCK (AUS)
Danehill (USA) - Piccadilly Circus (AUS)

Coolmore shuttler Fastnet Rock was officially the busiest shuttle stallion in 2011, covering no fewer than 364 mares throughout the year.

Fastnet Rock covered 214 mares at a fee of A$132,000 during the Southern Hemisphere season at Coolmore’s Australian base in the Hunter Valley, on top of the 150 mares he covered during his second shuttle trip to Ireland.

Fastnet Rock’s popularity stems from his status as one of Australia’sleading sires. Although still only ten-years-old, the son of Danehill is the sire of 24 stakes winners including eight at Group 1 level. His first European crop are yearlings and he is set to stand his third Irish season at Coolmore at a private fee.

Fellow Coolmore shuttler, So You Think’s sire High Chaparral, was also in demand down under, covering 180 mares at a fee of A$99,000. That figure, however, was a drop from the 2010 Southern Hemisphere season when the son of Sadler’s Wells covered 235 mares, the most served by any stallion in Australia that year.

Excellent Art covered 147 mares while Choisir was the recipient of 157. Darley’s American shuttlers Lonhro and Bernardini were also popular in Australia, with books of 149 and 126 mares.

King’s Stand and Golden Jubilee Stakes runner-up Star Witness had a busy first season, covering 143 mares at a fee of A$33,000 at Widden Stud.

Extract from Racing Post

BANKING ON DUTCH ART

Dutch Art
(Photo : Cheveley Park Stud)

“His runners are making a meal of things…”

Investors in renaissance art are aware of the fortunes some have made in their pursuits of the works of the Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Caspar Netscher and Floris van Dijck. Their works are priceless, and we know of at least one friend who made a personal fortune through her inheritance of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, so much so that in her lifetime at least, there was no longer a need to get up with the sparrows in the morning to attend a day job like the rest of us.

No doubt, the connections of the most precocious English two-year-old of the 2006 season, were hopeful that this miracle might be repeated for them when they named him Dutch Art, whose appeal to Blanford Bloodstock’s Tom Goff was such that he put his hands on him for 16,000 guineas at the Doncaster Yearling sale. The son of Medicean was a very smart juvenile, and included among his victories the stallion-making Middle Park Stakes (Gr1), contested since 1866 at October’s Champion Stakes meeting at Newmarket. As a three-year-old, he claimed the Greenham Stakes (Gr3) on his way to a third in the English Guineas, and looked like the real deal.

Retired with a Timeform rating of 124 to Cheveley Park Stud, home of his own sire, Medicean, Dutch Art has his first runners at the races this year, and to say that he is making a meal of things is an understatement. He already has 21 individual juvenile winners, including the aptly-named, Caspar Netscher (Gimcrack Stakes, Gr2), and several other Stakes performers. He’s not only a shoe-in for the title of Champion Freshman Sire, (from some formidable opposition, mind you, including the similarly named Excellent Art, who stands at Coolmore), but he could well turn out Europe’s overall champion sire of juveniles.

From a Summerhill perspective, the news is encouraging. Like our own Kahal and Darley’s American-based Street Cry, Medicean is another successful son of Machiavellian (also sire of Summerhill resident, Mullins Bay), and just arrived at the farm, is another equally well-performed son of Medicean, Bankable, a much-loved racehorse among the South African public for his exploits at the Dubai Racing Carnival over the past couple of years. Bankable proved his mettle against world champion Raven’s Pass, as well as Eagle Mountain and Passage Of Time in England, and while the rush for services to Bankable is probably due more to local fans appreciation of what we knew of him in Dubai, the news of Dutch Art’s early success is bound to rub off on his bookings. We don’t know Dutch Art in the flesh, but he’d have to be a helluva horse to match the physical attributes of our man, who weighed in at a hefty 560kgs in training with Herman Brown Jnr.

Trackwork commences in Hong Kong

                                                                                                                            Sha Tin (nbc)

Trackwork for the international challengers for the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Races 2007 commenced in earnest at Sha Tin on Monday morning and Dylan Thomas, the highest-rated active horse in the world, looked in powerful form as he put in a strong canter on the all-weather under his regular world rider, Pat Lillis.

Trainer Aidan O’Brien’s travelling head lad, Pat Keating, later confirmed the wellbeing of Europe’s Horse of the Year ahead of his swansong in the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Vase this Sunday, 9 December.

“He’s thriving in this good weather and he seems in good order. We just kept him ticking over in Japan as well as we could, and I’ve been very happy with him since he’s been here,” Keating said.

“This track will suit him much better than Monmouth Park where he was never travelling on the very soft ground. He’s had a long season, true enough, but he seems to be holding his form - he’s a tough horse. You only have to look at his record for proof of that.”

Ballydoyle’s other international runner, Excellent Art, runner-up last time out in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, also looked well as he put in a regulation canter on the all weather under his work rider Keith Dalton.

Trainer Aidan O’Brien will be at Sha Tin on Wednesday morning to oversee his runners’ final preparation.

Several other major chances for the Turf World Championships were on show on Monday morning.

The likely second favourite for the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint, Miss Andretti, last week voted Australia’s Horse of the Year, pleased Lee Freedman with a light jog on the sand under her regular partner Scott Magee.

“I’m very happy with what I saw this morning. She’s relaxed, her weight is good, and she’s raring to go,” enthused Hall of Fame trainer Freedman.

“Tomorrow we will look to give her a decent gallop on the course proper and that should bring her to her peak. The new facilities here are great and my foreman Scotty tells me she’s settled in really well.”

Extract from sahorseracing.com

Breeder's Cup Update (this Sturday, Monmouth Park, USA)

The story may be apocryphal, but that’s no reason to keep it out of the public eye, for it’s a good one – especially if it’s true.

Excellent Art (Julian Herbert-Getty)Excellent Art, the likely favourite for the Oct.27 NetJets Breeders’ Cup Mile (Gr. 1T), is well–established now as an inmate of the Ballydoyle yard from where Aidan O’Brien has sent out three Breeders’ Cup winners since 2001. But he is an unusual inmate in that he came not from the blue-blooded ranks of the affiliate Coolmore Stud or the sales ring, but was bought out of another stable, the Newmarket yard of Neville Callaghan.

Michael Tabor (Julian Herbert/Allsport)Callaghan trains for Ballydoyle patron Michael Tabor, so it was not unusual to find agent Demi O’Byrne looking at horses there. But in this case, it seems O’Byrne’s skills really do allow him to spot a champion out of the corner of his eye. Callaghan, knowing the ability of both O’Byrne and Excellent Art, is rumoured to have instructed that the latter stayed firmly in his box, out of sight of the former.

The plan, unfortunately, didn’t work out, and O’Byrne is said to have been so taken with Excellent Art that he recommended a bid from the Coolmore clan.

Solario (Sir Alfred Munnings)Owner Matthew Green had little hesitation in selling, though he has kept a share in the St James’ Palace Stakes (Eng-1) winner, “I believe that if you are to be a successful owner, you have got to be willing to trade,” Green said. “With prize money so poor, you have got to approach ownership as a business.”

In which case Green is certainly a successful owner, having earlier sold Art Trader, a $130,000 foal, to Hong Kong for $800,000.

Molly Long Legs (George Stubbs)The family name is even better known in the art world than it is in racing. Richard Green, the company, has three galleries in swanky parts of central London, specialising in early 17^th century works through to the modern day.

Perhaps inevitably, father and sons deal extensively in the great equine art painters such as George Stubbs, John Frederick Herring, and Sir Alfred Munnings, for whom Mathew Green’s grandfather acted as agent.

Extract by Richard Griffiths from BloodHorseNOW.com

Royal Ascot : Let The Games Begin

The Aussies have a saying that the Melbourne Cup is the race that stops a nation (for a day), but the greatest racing show on earth, must surely be Royal Ascot, which stops the world for a week. Today was the day.

Proceedings got under way with a staggering performance from Ballydoyle’s Kingmambo colt, Henrythenavigator, who grabbed the cash (and remained unbeaten) in the Coventry Stakes (Gr. 2) for Juvenile colts.

“Henry’s” exertions reminded Team Summerhill of resident sire, Malhub’s big day at Royal Ascot, when he got to meet Her Majesty courtesy of a blockbuster that saw him knock out the World Champion, Johannesburg in the Golden Jubilee Sprint (Gr.1) three years back. We have another parallel to Henrythenavigator in the maiden mare, Deceptive Charm, who was bred on an identical cross (Kingmambo on a Sadler’s Wells mare) the filly having been purchased at Tattersalls December Sales last year. She visits Muhtafal in 2007.

The Three Year Old Colts Championship was thrown into disarray when the dual Guineas winner, Cockney Rebel, failed to make the frame in the St James Palace Stakes (Gr.1), being forced into oblivion with a crunching finish from Coolmore’s Pivotal colt, Excellent Art, who claimed the exacta for Ballydoyle, as he was chased home by Duke of Marmalade (by Danehill).

Gaynor RupertOne local breeder who’ll be looking like a Cheshire cat this morning is Gaynor Rupert, who has three Pivotal home-breds about to go into training from their Franschoek farm, L’Ormarins.