TWEENHILLS Farm’s stallion recruit for 2026, King Of Change (Farhh), was well supported by breeders according to David Redvers.
He covered just 38 mares last year, his final season in Ireland, down from a book of more than 130 in 2024. King Of Change will be well represented by two-year-olds next year, and there is much to look forward to, especially when you consider how well he has done with limited opportunities.
Winner of a high-class Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot after running second in the Group 1 2000 Guineas to Magna Grecia, King Of Change won or placed second in all six of his career outings and it is a shame that he did not attract larger books of mares in his first seasons at stud. He is another stallion who is proving himself the hard way, and his strike-rate of stakes winners to runners is up there with the best sires around.
King Of Change’s first crop of 48 foals has yielded a very respectable three stakes winners, among them Lady With The Lamp who landed three listed races, while Shayem gave King Of Change his third stakes winner of 2025 when he became the first member of the second crop (numbering just over 30) to win at listed level. He added yet another such success recently when he won the Henry Cecil Stakes over a mile at Newmarket for his owner and breeder, Abdulrazaq Mohamdi.
Classic-placed
The three-year-old colt Shayem finished second in the Group 2 Mehl-Mulhens-Rennen (German 2000 Guineas) to Title Role, who has since won the Grade 1 Belmont Derby. Last month the King Of Change filly Coedana won a listed race and she has been group-placed. Shayem showed great versatility to gain his stakes wins on diverse ground, ranging from heavy to good/firm.
While I am including Shayem as a bargain of the week, it should really be a case of the bargain missed. He was sent for sale from Acorn Stud at Tattersalls Ireland as a yearling, but returned home unsold at just €12,000. Only twice out of the first four in nine starts, all but two of them in stakes races, he is a four-time winner and has winnings of more than €125,000.
Trained by Karl Burke, Shayem is the second winner from the unraced Exceed And Excel (Danehill) mare Sounds Of April. It is worth noting that two of King Of Change’s three juvenile winners this year – his sole runners so far from his third crop of 39 foals - are out of Exceed And Excel mares. Sounds Of April’s yearling is a full-sister to Shayem.
REMEMBER the name Primetime Emmy. Born in Australia towards the end of January in 2024, she has her official birthday down under on August 1st.
Primetime Emmy is the result of an unusual experiment by Kingstar Stud’s Matthew Sandblom. He bred two of his mares in northern hemisphere time to Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt), the most expensive standing in Australia who is based at Newgate Stud.
Extreme Choice is sub-fertile, yet he is the sire of six Group 1 winners, and is statistically the world’s best sire of such winners based on the number of runners. Among them is Melbourne Cup winner Knight’s Choice, Golden Slipper Stakes winner and young sire Stay Inside, dual Group 1 winner She’s Extreme, and the Blue Diamond Stakes winner Devil Night.
Yearlings by Extreme Choice consistently make headlines at the sales, selling for up to A$3 million, while his stock at this year’s Inglis Easter Sale averaged A$1,561,111. Little wonder that Extreme Choice’s fee for the upcoming season is set at a phenomenal A$385,000.
Explosive start
Primetime Emmy made an explosive start to her racing career when she won a newcomers’ race at Deauville at the weekend, in a time that was a second faster than that recorded in the colt’s race, both over six furlongs. Trainer Francis Graffard is clearly enamoured by his Australian-bred filly (he also trains the other filly resulting from Sandblom’s experiment), and this could be the beginning of a new phenomenon on the global breeding front.
This is the first European success for a son or daughter of Extreme Choice, a world-class racehorse and now among the world’s elite stallions. Primetime Emmy is from a solid, though not exceptional, female line. She is the ninth winner from 10 foals out of the New Zealand stakes winner Princess Emmy, a daughter of King’s Chapel (King Of Kings).
Those nine winners – the other has been placed – include two stakes winners, Group 3 winner Thurlow (Sebring) and her listed two-year-old winning full-brother Three Kings. The only other blacktype winner in the first four generations is the Australian Group 3 winner Dream Machine (Nothin’ Leica Dane).
CLASSIC winner Homeless Songs, stakes winner Thornbrook, Grade 2 winner and Grade 1-placed Bellezza, Group 3 winner and Group 1 runner-up Exactly, and pattern-placed Phenomenal Filly all won the two-year-old maiden at Leopardstown which was recently captured by the Juddmonte homebred Maire Rua.
Ger Lyons trains Maire Rua, and he was responsible too for Bellezza before she travelled stateside. As you might expect, Maire Rua is from a deep Juddmonte family. She is a daughter of Banstead Manor Stud’s exceptional Frankel (Galileo), and his third 2026 juvenile winner. Maire Rua is the third foal, runner and winner for her stakes-placed dam Red Impression (Dark Angel).
Winner of her first two starts at two and placed in a listed contest on her third, Red Impression’s first three progeny have all joined Lyons, and all are by Frankel. The four-year-old Red Letter was runner-up to Estrange in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes on her last run, and is a Group 3 winner. She would not be out of place winning at the highest level before the season is over.
Bright future
Res Ipsa, her three-year-old full-brother, won last month at the third time of asking, and he will surely now try to earn some blacktype. Maire Rua’s future looks bright, with a Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes entry, while on the ground out of Red Impression are a yearling colt by Blue Point (Shamardal), and a filly foal by Frankel.
Red Impression was the only one of the five winners out of two-year-old winner Purissima (Fusaichi Pegasus) to earn any blacktype. That said, Juddmonte continued to cultivate this branch of a very good family. The outstanding runner among Purissima’s siblings was Group 1 Prix de la Foret winner Etoile Montante (Miswaki), later a smart broodmare.
Another of Red Impression’s siblings, the stakes winner Uno Duo (Macho Uno), bred Grade 1 winner Obligatory (Curlin). A more recent Grade 1 winner in the family’s third generation is Dubai World Cup hero Country Grammer (Tonalist). He stands at WinStar Farm and his first yearlings will be sold this autumn.