COOLMORE know a thing or two about the family of the Navan listed winner Carmers. Trained by Paddy Twomey, Fiona Carmichael’s three-year-old son of Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj) is out of three-time winner Signe (Sea The Stars), whom she bought with the assistance of Amanda Skiffington for $1.1 million at Goffs 11 years ago.
Carmers has gone from winning a Ballinrobe main to earning a tilt at the Queen’s Vase in Royal Ascot after he landed the Listed Irish Stallion Farms EBF Yeats Stakes. Named after the great Ballydoyle runner and successful Coolmore sire, the Navan race is a sound pointer to future success, and it would be no surprise if one day the Tipperary behemoth came calling with an offer for Carmers.
Signe is a half-sister to two Ballydoyle Group 1 winners in Together Forever and Forever Together, both by Sea The Stars’ half-brother Galileo (Sadler’s Wells). The first of those fillies is the dam of City Of Troy (Justify), Coolmore’s great sire hope for the future. Carmichael’s major investment in Signe took some time to pay off, and it is perhaps a wonder that she didn’t go to stud unraced. Instead, Fiona showed patience and sent Signe to the racecourse at four, where she won her first three starts.
After two fillies at stud, Signe’s first colt is Carmers, and he is followed by the two-year-old American Cup (Toronado) and a yearling filly by New Bay (Dubawi). This is an outstanding female line, and one that never stops yielding Group 1 winners, Carmers, the 61st stakes winner for Wootton Bassett, could well develop into another winner at racing’s top table.
Signe was bred by ITBA award winners Gillian and Vimal Khosla out of their wonderful broodmare Green Room (Theatrical). That dam of three Group 1 winners was also a big hit with the team at Goffs, as she regularly supplied the Co Kildare auction house with big-priced yearlings.
City Of Troy is well into his first season at Coolmore where he had a first fee of €75,000. Four of his six wins carried Group 1 status, the Dewhurst Stakes at two, followed the next season by the Derby, Eclipse Stakes and the Juddmonte International. He is the best winner so far out of Together Forever. A €680,000 Goffs Orby Sale purchase by M.V. Magnier, she won the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at two, and a couple of years later her full-sister Forever Together sold to Magnier for €900,000 at Goffs and broke her maiden in the Group 1 Oaks at Epsom.
Both mares were born after their Theatrical (Nureyev) dam Green Room’s other winner of note. Lord Shanakill (Speightstown), her first foal, failed by a nose to land the Group 1 Darley Dewhurst Stakes, but gained a top-flight success in his second season when he beat all-comers in the Prix Jean Prat. Green Room, who never ran, sold as a three-year-old for 20,000gns, was covered by Speightstown (Gone West) who stood for $40,000 at the time, and was then traded at Keeneland for $240,000.
Green Room is also dam of the stakes-placed maiden Do You Love Me (Galileo) who realised €3.2 million as a yearling. A year after that massive sale result, another daughter, Espania (Galileo) passed through the Goffs ring, acquired for €3 million by M.V. Magnier. She did not race. Green Room is a half-sister to the Grade 1 Yellow Ribbon Stakes winner Spanish Fern (El Gran Senor). Their unraced sibling Rusty Back (Defensive Play) bred Heatseeker (Giant’s Causeway) who blossomed in the USA to become a Grade 1 winner of the Santa Anita Handicap.
JUSTIN O’Hanlon has expanded his involvement in racing, and one of his new roles is race planning for trainer Michael O’Callaghan.
That partnership has come up trumps early, thanks to Copacabana Sands (Sands Of Mali) winning the Listed Owenstown Stud Stakes at Naas, a race that is dedicated to the memory of two great breeders of the past, Captain Bill Whitehead and his wife Averil Tuthill.
The win was a first for the filly who only joined O’Callaghan in February, and this was her eighth start, while winning rider Jamie Powell was gaining his first stakes success. 
Given her strong pedigree, and with the addition of a stakes win, perhaps connections will aim higher now with Copacabana Sands. Bred by Peter and Hugh McCutcheon, the three-year-old filly has shown that her €7,000 yearling sale price at Tattersalls Ireland two years ago was an insult.
Copacabana Sands’ dam Buttonhole (Montjeu) was purchased a decade ago at Tattersalls as a seven-year-old for 7,000gns, a big discount from her three-year-old sale value of 65,000gns. Three of her four winners have appeared since. Her other trio of winners all seemed to need time, and perhaps her latest, and best, can improve too with age. In any case, this listed win will enhance the value of Buttonhole’s yearling filly by Nando Parrado (Kodiac).
Buttonhole made just a single start for her breeders, Cheveley Park Stud, and she was trained by Sir Michael Stoute. This is a family that the Newmarket farm knew well, and the choice of Stoute as trainer was no surprise.
A few years earlier he saddled the well-named Buttonhole’s half-sister Red Bloom (Selkirk) to win the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at two, and she later placed a number of times at that level. Red Bloom twice was in the frame at the Curragh in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes.
Continuing the flower and botany themes, Red Bloom, who later bred the Group 3 winner and Group 1-placed Senator (Frankel), was the best of six winners out of the French classic-placed mare Red Camellia (Polar Falcon). Also trained by a knight, Sir Mark Prescott, Red Camellia was a Group 3 winner at two and beaten only a length when third in the French 1000 Guineas.
Sands Of Mali
Copacabana Sands is the third stakes winner, and one of six stakes performers, from the first crop by Ballyhane Stud’s Sands Of Mali, the Group 1 sprint-winning son of Panis (Miswaki). What a start he made to his career last year with 22 winners, and his second crop of juveniles has already got off the mark this year.
Last year he sired the first and third in the Listed Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot, while the Group 2 Lowther Stakes runner-up Time For Sandals is surely odds-on to be a stakes winner soon, only denied a Group 3 victory last week at Chantilly by a head.
Joe Foley was inundated with requests to use Sands Of Mali after his fine debut year with runners in 2024, and the sire is typical of the type of stallion the Carlow-man does well with. Ballyhane is a byword for speed, precocity and soundness, and Sands Of Mali is all about speed. He is easy to mate with, being free of Danehill (Danzig), Green Desert (Danzig), Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) and Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) blood. This is a real outcross pedigree.
Sands Of Mali was Timeform-rated 116 at two after he beat Invincible Army easily in the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes, and that figure rose to 125 at three. He won a Group 3 sprint in France, the Group 2 Sandy Lane Stakes, was a half-length runner-up to Eqtidaar in the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup, and crowned a great season when he defeated the brilliant Harry Angel by a length in the Group 1 Sprint Cup at Haydock. He was described by his trainer as “a brilliant sprinter, a true Group 1 horse”.