Ardad

Even at this early stage of the season, we can be forgiven for mentally fast-forwarding to the first weekend of June at Epsom. It is after all the best weekend of the year, featuring the best race of the year.  There are plans afoot in Newmarket - plans being mooted by the Jockey Club, no less - to dig up one of the best turf gallops on the Heath to install a new all-weather racecourse and training facility. At a time when there's concern as to having enough horses to...

It is a question that has long fixated the bloodstock industry: which stallion can be caught as he rises to the top? As we know, those good stallions can be hard to find. Opportunity is naturally a key element to early success, but a stallion still needs to make the most of the chances afforded to him and for every one that lives up to expectations, there will be also be plenty who flop. As often said, horses are a great leveller and with that in mind, there is also...

Goffs UK has sold six Royal Ascot winners in the past six years at its Breeze-Up Sale, and the firm released the catalogue for its latest edition of that sale with 186 juveniles set to go under the hammer on Apr. 21. The breeze will take place at Doncaster on Apr. 19 from noon, with an inspection day on Apr. 20. Perfect Power (Ire), whose own sire Ardad (Ire) was also a Goffs UK Breeze-Up graduate, proved the star of last year's sale. A £110,000 purchase by Sheikh Rashid Dalmook...

Frankel (GB) and Dubawi (Ire) have taken top honours in the Thoroughbred Breeders' Association's annual flat statistical based awards. The awards take into account British and Irish statistics for British-based stallions for 2021. Frankel ended Dubawi's eight-year reign by taking the BBA Silver Cigar Box as Britain's leading sire by earnings in 2021 with £5,209,199. Frankel, who was champion sire in Britain and Ireland, sired eight new Group 1 winners in 2021, four of which were in Britain and Ireland, including the Derby and Irish Derby winners Adayar (GB) and...

It could be said that there's a stallion to suit all types of breeder at Overbury Stud, and the farm that was for so long synonymous with Britain's perennial leading National Hunt sire Kayf Tara (GB) now has a budding star of a very different type. Ardad (Ire) finished 2021 as the leading first-season sire in Britain and was second overall to Cotai Glory (GB), who stands at Tally-Ho Stud, where Ardad was himself bred and where his sire Kodiac (GB) has long been king of the hill.  Now eight,...

The European breeze-up sector prides itself as a source of quality, a notion that held particular weight in 2021 as graduates Native Trail (Fr) (Oasis Dream {GB}) and Perfect Power (Ire) (Ardad {Ire}) signed off their juvenile campaigns with victories in the G1 Dewhurst S. and G1 Middle Park S. Added to that, various graduates are currently more than holding their own at stud. This isn't a new development--older representatives such as Society Rock (Ire) (Rock Of Gibraltar {Ire}) and Paco Boy (Ire) (Desert Style {Ire}) each sired Group 1...

In this penultimate edition of the Value Sires Series, we look at stallions that had their first runners last year, and will therefore have their first 3-year-olds in 2022. With the numbers for 2021 tallied, this group actually appears to be a deep one, with plenty of them having done enough to go into their second years with a legitimate shot to still make it as a sire. While the last two cohorts produced runaway leaders in Mehmas (Ire) and Night Of Thunder (Ire), this year the riches were much...

It was extremely unlikely that any first-season sire this year would even get close to the record-breaking 56 winners for Mehmas (Ire) in 2020. That feat was made all the more remarkable by the fact that the start of the Flat season was delayed for several months by the pandemic-induced shutdown of racing. Leaving this huge tally aside, in any other year 35 first-crop winners at a strike-rate of 40% would be more than respectable, and it is this number, and £788,531 in progeny earnings in 2021, that sees Mehmas's...

NEWMARKET, UK--As the prices dipped from Friday's bumper session to a more modest level, so did Newmarket's weather, which settled into relentless icy rain for almost the entire concluding session of foals at Park Paddocks. Such gloomy exterior conditions could not dim the demand for bloodstock in the ring, however. We're not even into December yet, but Tattersalls can be satisfied with heartening levels of trade at the halfway house of its lengthy December Sale, with just four days of fillies and mares to come from Monday. On Friday, Genesis...

Breeding rights to British-based first-season sires Ardad (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) and Time Test (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) will be offered via Tattersalls' online platform on Nov. 5. The bidding will open at 10am for two hours. Ardad, the sire of 21 individual winners from a first crop that includes the dual Group 1 winner Perfect Power (Ire) and Group 3 winner Eve Lodge (GB), covered 150 mares at Overbury Stud this season.  Time Test, who stands at the National Stud, has also made a promising start to his stud career and...

A fortnight of selling at Park Paddocks came to a close on Saturday with an abbreviated, single-session Book 4 bringing the curtain down on the 2021 edition of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale. From 98 yearlings catalogued, 74 went through the ring, with the 46 sold adding 184,200gns to the coffers. Topping trade was Throckmorton Stud's Ardad (GB) filly (lot 2004) who was the choice of Con Marnane at 18,000gns. While Book 4 featured a much more modest level of trade than that seen over the past two weeks, it...

NEWMARKET, UK--The trickledown effect can perhaps be viewed as more of a flood this past fortnight at Tattersalls with unusually strong trade for each book of yearlings helping its successor to similarly eye-catching gains.  And so it was with Book 3, which just about equalled last year's figures in one single day following a bullish session on Thursday. Trade dropped another notch during the graded second session but its own returns were still way in advance of the corresponding day last year and helped to create record figures for Book...