JACK Cantillon, and “40 of my closest personal friends”, were on hand to celebrate a debut win for Syndicates Racing’s Some Pretender (Great Pretender) on the penultimate day of the Galway races. He and the members of the group have been patient with the five-year-old, as this win came more than two years after her purchase for €28,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale.

Cantillon’s skill in choosing horses was not licked off the ground, and his own pedigree had a lot of different influences. Son of Dermot Cantillon and Meta Osborne, his grandfather Michael Osborne ranks as one of the industry’s finest members. Jack’s professional career may have gone in a different direction, but he still takes a keen and substantial interest in racing and breeding.

When he bought Some Pretender as a store, it was as a racing prospect. However, she also had value as a broodmare prospect should Plan A not materialise. She had a Grade 1-placed half-brother, a Grade 1-placed dam, and her third dam bred a multiple Grade 1 hurdle and chase winner, and had a grandson who won at Grade 1 level in a bumper at Cheltenham, and also over hurdles.

If any member of the group that owns Some Pretender feels that waiting two years for this win was an issue, I can assure them that this is in keeping with the family history, and they have much to look forward to with the Willie Mullins-trained mare. I will go through this step by step.

Bred by the Welsh-based Rowland Crellin, who is most famously the breeder of Cue Card, Some Pretender is a daughter of the 26-year-old Great Pretender (King’s Theatre) who has stood for most his stallion career at Haras de la Hetraie. He has gone from a fee of €1,800 to commanding €8,000 since 2019, the year that Some Pretender was conceived. Given his success at stud, Great Pretender could arguably have stood for more. He may not have amassed the numbers of blacktype winners that some of his fellow French sires have, but when he gets a good horse, he gets a very good one.

Syndicates Racing

I am sure it was to the forefront of Jack Cantillon’s mind when he inspected Some Pretender at the sale that she was by the sire of Grangee, a mare who carried the colours of Syndicates Racing to four wins after her purchase for €25,000, earned more than £100,000, and sold the previous December for €120,000 from the Cantillon’s Tinnakill House. He will equally have been aware that two of the best runners by Great Pretender were also mares.

Lossiemouth is an eight-time Grade 1 winner, while Benie Des Dieux won four times at the highest level. Other multiple Grade 1 winners by the stallion were Greanateen and Ptit Zig, and his eighth appeared this year, the four-year-old Lanivtsi winning the Prix Ferdinand Dugaure Chase at Auteuil. In all, Great Pretender has 37 blacktype winners, and a most impressive 16 of these are fillies. That alone would point to Some Pretender being well-bought at €28,000.

Adding to Some Pretender’s value is the fact that she is one of just six offspring of Belle Brook, and she is a daughter of the Grade 1 Champion Hurdle winner Alderbrook (Ardross). Belle Brook was a €6,000 foal sale to Michael Cullen, an outstanding judge of a horse who died in May this year. He went on to train her to win a point-to-point at five, and while she only won once each over hurdles and fences, Michael got her valuable blacktype placings.

They included Belle Brook running second, beaten half a length, at the 2012 Punchestown Festival in the Grade A Aon Chase, but this gets Grade 1 status in a sales catalogue. A year and a half later she sold for €85,000 to Treasa O’Keeffe on behalf of her partner Rowland Crellin.

Four winners

Crellin has six offspring of Belle Brook, the youngest a yearling colt by Capri (Galileo), her first since Some Pretender. Four of the mare’s first five foals raced, the one that didn’t is at stud and will hopefully have her first foal racing next year. All four that have run won, with The Tack Room (Milan) taking until the age of nine to land a chase victory. The best of them is Mortlach (Yeats), a point-to-point winner at five, and a seven-time winner of hurdles and fences at the ages of seven and eight. His Grade 1 placed run was not his finest, and his best include finishing second in a Grade 2 chase.

Belle Brook was one of two foals out of River Lodge (Over The River), the other was not named. River Lodge never came close to being placed in 13 starts, in spite of having the assistance of Ruby and Katie Walsh, and Paul Carberry, but she went to stud with hopes of leaving that undistinguished racing career behind. River Lodge’s full-sister Belle Away (Over The River) did not survive an injury she received racing. but won a bumper and hurdle race, and placed in a Fairyhouse Grade 3 hurdle.

Willie Mullins is already familiar with this family. Some Pretender’s third dam, the unraced Bavaway (Le Bavard), bred Boston Bob (Bob Back), a Grade 1 hurdle winner whose true forte was over fences. In that code he won the Grade 1 Punchestown Gold Cup and the Grade 1 Melling Chase at Aintree. Meanwhile, Boston Bob’s unraced own-sister Backaway (Bob Back) was a prolific winner-producer, her best being another Mullins star, Briar Hill (Shantou). He won the Grade 1 Weatherbys Champion Bumper and a Grade 1 hurdle at Navan.