COLORSPIN DIES AGE 29

Colorspin (GB)
(Images : Meon Valley Stud)

COLORSPIN (GB)
High Top (IRE) - Reprocolor (GB)

The Bloodhorse.com reports that Colorspin, a major producer for Meon Valley Stud in England, has died mid-August at age 29. The KwaZulu-Natal connection with this great mare is in sire Mullins Bay (GB); Colorspin is a half-sister to his dam, Bella Colora.

Bred in France by Meon Valley, Colorspin (High Top - Reprocolor, by Jimmy Reppin) was a two-time stakes winner, with her biggest score coming in the 1986 Gilltown Stud Irish Oaks (Ire-I) for Helena Springfield Ltd.

Colorspin produced a remarkable number of foals, 16, of which Opera House, Kayf Tara, and Zee Zee Top were Group I winners.

“She leaves an outstanding legacy, and we have lots more to look forward to with Zee Zee Top and her daughter Izzi Top,” Meon Valley owner Mark Weinfeld told the Racing Post. “Her son Kayf Tara has established himself as a leading National Hunt sire, and Opera House has also been a success at stud.”

Opera House, by Sadler’s Wells, was a European champion as well as a champion in England, Ireland, and France. His major win came in the 1993 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes (Eng-I). Opera House contested the 1993 Breeders’ Cup Turf (Gr. IT), finishing sixth.

Kayf Tara, a long-distance specialist, also was a European champion and one in England and France. A full brother to Opera House, Kayf Tara won the Ascot Gold Cup (Eng-I) and the same race again when it was run as the Gold Cup.

Zee Zee Top, by Zafonic, scored her major win in the Prix de l’Opera Casino Barriere d’Enghien Les Bains (Fr-I). Izzi Top, by Pivotal, also was group I winner, capturing the Barclays Bank Ireland Pretty Polly Stakes in Ireland July 1.

Mullins Bay was the best racing son of sire of sires Machiavellian in the world in 2006, and earned a Timeform Rating of 121. A 525,000 guineas yearling, he raced in the UK and UAE, achieving 3 wins over distances of 1800-2000m from 3 to 4 years old. He had 14 starts and took home 12 cheques, including a Gr 3 win at 3 years old, and placing in Group and Listed races seven times. He is a half-brother to three Bold Black Type horses, Alkaadhem, Stage Craft and Hyabella.

Mullins Bay stands at Champion breeders’ Summerhill Stud, he is by Machiavellian out of Bella Colora by Bellypha. He has had two winners and 10 places coming from his first crop to race at the track - his two winners being Croke Park (bred by Somerset Stud) and Gitiano (bred by Valjub CC).

Stage Craft (by Sadler’s Wells) was the highest weighted older Horse in Europe and is now a sire.

Another of Colorspin’s daughters, Spinning The Yarn, is the dam of Irish champion Necklace.

Extract from KZN Breeders

MULLINS BAY CELEBRATES EARLY WINNERS!

Mullins Bay
(Photo: Greig Muir)

“ROCK OF THE BAY”
Extract from Sporting Post

The Mullins Bay youngsters are off to a flying start. Champion South African breeders Summerhill Stud’s son of Machiavellian sired his second juvenile winner last week, when the very smart looking Gitiano paralysed his opposition to win going away over 1200m.

The extraordinarily handsome Mullins Bay has turned all the clever heads since his arrival in South Africa.

And for a horse who never raced at two and won from 1800m to 2100m, he is producing the goods where it matters most. And refreshingly early too!

Two juvenile winners in five weeks speak of great things to come from a stallion whom one would reasonably expect to get them to stay on. And this precocious ability, coupled with the core potential to go on to greater things, is surely the essence sought by anybody who has ever raised a catalogue in anticipation in the vicinity of a sales arena?

The Tyrone Zackey-trained Croke Park won an excellent race on debut when streaking clear late to win a Maiden Juvenile Plate over a mile at Turffontein in early June. The Somerset Stud product out of the Gallic League mare, Streisand, was backed from an opening call of 25-1 all the way into 15-2. His trainer thinks highly of him, we hear.

Then the Alec Laird-trained Gitiano was an equally impressive winner at his second start over the Scottsville 1200m last Tuesday, when he showed eye-catching acceleration to win going away. Out of the Jet Master mare, Poppy Elizabeth, he had run a very good third to the promising The Hangman on debut.

Mullins Bay was the best racing son of sire of sires Machiavellian in 2006 and achieved a Timeform rating of 121lbs at 3 years old. From just 14 racecourse starts, he earned 12 times and won 3 races, including the Gr3 Grand Prix Strensall Stakes beating Andean and the TFR 126 rated Maraahel.

He hails from an outstanding family and is out of Broodmare of the Year, Bella Colora (by Bellypha) who won 4 races in the UK and France. These included victories in the Gr2 Prix de l’Opera and the Gr3 Candelabra Stakes. She produced champion Stagecraft (by Sadler’s Wells) who won 6 races, including the Gr2 Prince Of Wales Stakes, the Gr1 Canadian Turf Handicap and the Gr2 Breeder’s Cup Handicap. Mullins Bay is a brother to two other Group winners.

Champion South African trainer Mike de Kock, who had the honour of training the handsome fellow for a stretch of his racing career including a great third placed finish in the 2007 Godolphin Mile at the Dubai World Cup meeting, may have put his finger on it, when he went on record as observing that ‘Mullins Bay was surprisingly fast.’

Mullins Bay produced 50 foals from his first crop of 2009. Only thirteen have run. Two have won. That’s good going.

His 6 lots on the 2011 National Yearling Sale averaged R107,500, with his top seller going for R160,000.

Mullins Bay stands at Summerhill for a fee of R15,000. Make a note of this one.

www.sportingpost.co.za

IZZI HE ON TOP?

Click above to watch Izzi Top winning the Pretty Polly Stakes (Gr1)…
(Image : Irish Times - Footage : At The Races UK)

IZZI TOP
“A daughter of Pivotal from
the immediate family of Mullins Bay”

Greig Muir has been the head stallion man at Summerhill for just over a quarter of a century. He got there because he’s an exceptional horseman and stallion handler. Through his hands have passed some of the nation’s leading sires over the generations, and he knows what he is talking about.

We mention all of this in the context of the outcome of the Pretty Polly Stakes (Gr.1) at The Curragh on Sunday, which was taken by Izzi Top, a daughter of Pivotal from the immediate family of Mullins Bay. She’s not the only top class performer from this family in the past year, as the winner of last month’s German 2000 Guineas, Caspar Netscher, is out of a sister to Mullins Bay.

Getting back to Greig Muir, he will hear nothing about Mullins Bay other than that he is “the next big horse”, and he’s quick to back up his claims by quoting Alec Laird, Charles Laird, Gavin van Zyl and Tyrone Zackey. In fact, he says he “loves this horse so much, he’d drink his bathwater”. Now that’s believing!

The European Bloodstock News provided a short commentary on Izzi Top’s first Gr.1 success in overpowering another classy four-year-old filly, Sapphire and giving trainer John Gosden a second win in the race in the last four years following Dar Re Mi  for Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2009. Izzi Top’s dam Zee Zee Top finished third in this race before going on to win the Gr.1 Prix de l’Opera and the Longchamp race is on the agenda for Izzi Top, with the trainer also mentioning the Breeder’s Cup as a possibility. From a branch of one of the most successful recent families in the stud book, Izzi Top is a half sister to the four times eight-to-ten furlong winner Rock N Roll Ransom and is a grand-daughter of the Gr.1 Irish Oaks winner, Colorspin. Besides Zee Zee Top, she has also produced the top-class Group One winners and sires, Opera House and Kayf Tara (both by Sadler’s Wells) and is the granddam of the Group One Moyglare Stud Stakes winner, Necklace. Third dam Reprocolor also produced Group One winner Cezanne and Group Two winner Bela Colora (dam of 121 Timeform-rated Mullins Bay (by Machiavellian). This is also the family of last year’s dual Group 2 winning juvenile and this season’s Classic winner, Caspar Netscher.

John Gosden, who trains Izzi Top, does so from his Clairehaven Stables, which is where Pretty Polly herself was trained.

Click here to read more about
Mullins Bay

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.

KAHAL DELIVERS THE K.O.

Kahal
(Photo : Greig Muir)

KAHAL
Machiavellian - Just A Mirage

The August Stakes (Grade 3) is the traditional precursor to South Africa’s richest race on the sand, the R600,000 Emerald Cup (Grade 2). Summerhill has had an enduring record of success with its sand runners, particularly at the top end, the 2009 hero of the big one being Roy Magner and Wally Brits’s, Phunyuka, who took both these events in breathtaking style.

Saturday it was the Kahal gelding, The Mouseketeer’s turn as he picked up the running early in the Vaal’s punishing straight, and plugged on manfully to hold his foes at bay by ¾ length. Bred by our neighbours, Bush Hill Stud, The Mouseketeer is yet another fine advert for the Kahal/Northern Dancer cross, and for those students of pedigrees who like the practice of line breeding, it’s another advertisement for the Machiavellian influence with mares of Northern Dancer parentage, given that both Northern Dancer and Machiavellian, (who carries two strains through Halo and his tail female line) share the same maternal lineage.

Think about it though, and the chemistry is immediately apparent. Kahal is a big, strong, raw-boned individual, the perfect physical foil for the high quality, feminine mares of Northern Dancer and his tribe.

For more information please visit :
www.summerhill.co.za