Masar

Newmarket's Craven meeting could just as well be called Anticipation Week. Anticipation is climbing the steps of a venerated football stadium for a night game to find the floodlights blazing and the grass slick and lush. It's the bounce of the England cricket team down the pavilion steps to start an Ashes series. It's checking your tickets the day before Wimbledon tennis starts or standing just after dawn beside the first tee at an Open Championship or Masters. It's not about what you know. It's about all the things you...

2nd-Keeneland, $64,160, Msw, 4-27, 2yo, 5 1/2fT, 1:03.21, fm, 6 3/4 lengths. FANDOM (GB) (c, 2, Showcasing {GB}--Brogan {GB}, by Pivotal {GB}) took all the money at 3-5 and looked a winner every step of the way, breaking on top from the outside gate and easily clearing the field to keep his face clean up front. Rated through fractions of :22.24 and :46.11, the English-bred colt let room on the rail open up as he drifted out around the turn but no one was close enough to threaten. With only...

As we move into the third tier of our examination of stallions by yearling profitability, the name at the top of the list for those standing between the equivalent of £10,000 and £19,999 perhaps provides an example of how rarity drives demand. On paper, the Dalham Hall Stud-based Farhh (GB) has an awful lot going for him. A son of Pivotal (GB) out of a dual Group 1 winner over a mile and a half, he was lightly raced, with just one winning appearance in each of his two- and...

NEWMARKET, UK--A pair of colts by the young Darley and Shadwell stallions Masar (Ire) and Mohaather (GB) shared the top spot on the final day of foal trade at Park Paddocks which brought the curtain down, not just on a record week for weanlings but also a record year for Tattersalls--and that's before the Mares Sale even begins. The average and median for the fourth session were both up on last year, with a total of 2,267,750gns added to the overall tally from the sale of 150 foals. For the...

Charlie Appleby has hinted at supplementing Nations Pride (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}) for the Cazoo Derby on Saturday week and suggested that the decision hinges on how the colt performs in a key piece of work on Wednesday morning. Nations Pride has won his last four starts and, while he did not take part in the gallops morning at Epsom on Monday, he dominated conversation with Appleby revealing that he was leaning towards stumping up the £75,000 supplementation fee to run in the Derby.  A general 10-1 chance for Derby glory,...

As he prepares his runners for the upcoming flat season, Jim Bolger is also keeping a watchful eye on his breeding stock. The master trainer may be juggling the education of his runners with the oversight of his broodmares and youngstock, but Bolger has proven mighty adept at this kind of multi-tasking in the past: as has been well-documented, Bolger breeds many of his own runners, often going back two or three generations on both the top and bottom of the pedigree. His 2021 G1 2000 Guineas and G1 St...

In the latest edition of our Value Sires Series, we arrive at stallions with their first yearlings in 2022. The Darley duo of Too Darn Hot (GB) and Blue Point (Ire) retired as the two breakout horses of this group on fees, and that is how they wound up their first sales season. Too Darn Hot, the beautifully bred son of Dubawi who was a champion at two and three, retired at £50,000 at Dalham Hall Stud, and his 11 foals sold last year averaged €131,148/£111,964-the best foal sale average...

For any breeder of Thoroughbreds, the opportunity to watch one's carefully cultivated lines thrive across generations must be one of the greatest rewards that can be derived. The team at Darley can take pride, then, in fact that it has three Group 1-winning stallions by its own sires with their first crops to sell at the upcoming foals sales. Masar (Ire) will be remembered as a true game-changer for Godolphin on the racecourse. By emulating his sire New Approach (Ire) in winning the G1 Derby, Masar became the first blue...

Observations on the European Racing Scene turns the spotlight on the best European races of the day, highlighting well-pedigreed horses early in their careers, horses of note returning to action and young runners that achieved notable results in the sales ring. Today's Observations features a close relative to a Derby winner. 12.45 Newmarket, Nov, £10,000, 2yo, c/g, 7fT Godolphin's homebred YANTARNI (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) is kin to G1 Jebel Hatta second Vancouverite (GB) (Dansili {GB}) and G2 UAE Derby and G3 UAE Oaks victrix Khawlah (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}), herself...

There are stallions with far bigger reputations who will never achieve what New Approach (Ire) has in his stud career. Yet somehow the horse who was champion 2-year-old, became the first Derby winner for Galileo (Ire), and was the joint-highest rated horse in the world in 2008 remains somewhat under-appreciated. It is all the more remarkable--and disappointing--given the hugely promising start made by New Approach early in his tenure at Dalham Hall Stud.  Sit through any breeze-up sale and you will regularly hear the auctioneer espousing the Royal Ascot potential...

We kicked off our annual Value Sires series earlier this week with a look at the new class of sires entering stud in 2021, and today we move on to the group with their first foals set to hit the ground in the coming months. While it is not always a straightforward task to pinpoint value in unproven sires, the ripple effects of the global pandemic make the exercise a little more interesting this year. While it has become the norm for some young sires to get fee cuts in...