DARLEY has bought shares in the leading young sire Dark Angel and will support him with their mares from 2016.

The news was confirmed to The Irish Field in the week when the Group 1 winning juvenile son of Acclamation dominated trade at the DBS Premier Yearling Sale and after his daughter Mecca’s Angel landed the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes at York.

Dark Angel was trained by Barry Hills and raced only at two when his four victories included the Shadwell Stud Middle Park Stakes and the Group 2 Mill Reef Stakes. He retired to stud as a three-year-old and his initial fee was €10,000. That dropped two years later to €7,000 but has since risen to €27,500 for the two most recent seasons.

Bred by Gay O’Callaghan at Yeomanstown Stud, he returned to the O’Callaghan’s Morristown Lattin Stud and will continue his career at the Kildare stallion farm. Having covered 114 mares in his first year at stud, his second and third books were just 79 and 60 mares. Success for his first crop racing saw those numbers accelerate and his average books from 2011 to 2014 were 160 mares.

His first Group 1 winner was Lethal Force, crowned champion sprinter in 2013 and a record breaking winner of the July Cup. To date in 2015 he has sired 13 individual stakes winners and he sits among the top six leading sires in Ireland and Britain this year with Galileo, Dubawi, Cape Cross, Invincible Spirit and Teofilo.