THE boys reigned at Royal Ascot’s opening day, taking all seven races, Frost At Dawn coming closest to giving the fillies a win, beaten a neck in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes. Three Group 1 races, a Group 2 juvenile contest and a listed 10-furlong race were highlights of the day’s programme.
For almost everyone present, and those watching, the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes was the most eagerly anticipated race of the week, with the winners of the Irish, British and French 2000 Guineas lining up against each other. They occupied the first three places on the line, but in a finish that established Field Of Gold as the best three-year-old colt about. What he can yet achieve is anyone’s guess, but first he will have a break and plans will then be made.
Field Of Gold has been well reviewed on these pages, thanks to his success in the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 2000 Guineas. He had a score to settle with Ruling Court who beat him at Newmarket, and he had that colt more than seven lengths back in third. Henri Matisse was a fine second. While not especially relevant in a breeding column, mention must go to winning rider Colin Keane – what a start to his association with Juddmonte.
One important update to the piece I penned after he won the Irish classic, and a very important one. His dam, Princesse De Lune (Shamardal), is back in foal to Field Of Gold’s sire, Kingman (Invincible Spirit). What excitement that has caused in Round Hill Stud, where Bobby and Honora Donworth watched the race, their nerves jangling at home rather than on course. There was a small bit of later excitement on the day too, when another Round Hill-bred, King’s Gambit (Saxon Warrior), and from Field Of Gold’s family, ran a stormer to finish third in the Listed Wolferton Stakes.
A €530,000 Goffs Foal Sale purchase by Juddmonte, Field Of Gold is one of 14 Group 1 winners for their European champion Kingman. He is the latest star in a female family that has been good to the Donworth clan since they bought his grandam, Princess Serena (Unbridled’s Song) for $150,000 in 2003. She is the dam of nine winners, a Group 1 winner and Group 1 second, three stakes winners, and is grandam of two Group 1 winners and a dual Grade 1 runner-up.
Group 1 winners give hope to small breeders
ROYAL Ascot 2025 opened with a Group 1 victory for Docklands in the Queen Anne Stakes, a race in which he was placed a year ago. This was the five-year-old entire’s second win at the meeting, and this was what I wrote in 2023.
“Don’t be surprised if Docklands goes on to become a group winner. This progressive sort is following in the hoofprints of Teleprompter and Fly To The Stars, winners of the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and Lockinge Stakes respectively, by landing the Britannia Handicap. He is a great advertisement for his sire, Mickley Stud’s Massaat (Teofilo). He is from the first crop of the Group 2 Hungerford Stakes winner.”
The Queen Anne Stakes was a first stakes win for Docklands, his fourth success in all, and he has winnings of £900,000.
A Tattersalls and Tattersalls Ireland sale graduate, he is one of five winners from the unraced Icky Woo (Mark Of Esteem), a mare Richard Kent gave 9,000gns for 18 years ago. She has produced for the Mickley Stud owner Docklands, US Grade 3 winner Ickymasho (Multiplex), and the Australian listed winner Harbour View (Le Havre).
Massaat has done well with the opportunities he has been presented, and canny breeders could have used him this year for £3,500. In addition to Docklands, he has sired a pair of fillies who won at Group 3 level.
Goldie family affair
Jim Goldie trains the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes winner American Affair (Washington DC), and what a fairytale result this was. This win was the first piece of blacktype earned by any horse in four generations of the family.
It is also a female family that Goldie has been associated with for nearly 30 years. Bred by John McGrandles, American Affair has now won £650,000, with about two-thirds of that coming with his win on Tuesday.
Washington DC (Zoffany) won the 27-runner Listed Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot in 2015, later won a Group 3, and was beaten less than a length when runner-up in the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye to Marsha, and a head behind Battaash in the Group 2 Temple Stakes. He is another who stood this year at £3,500, and has been at Bearstone Stud since 2019.
Both of Washington DC’s stakes horses are five-year-old geldings, the other being Group 3 Abernant Stakes winner Washington Heights.
Goldie bought American Affair’s grandam Classy Wan (Safawan) for 8,200gns at Doncaster as a yearling in 1997. She won twice, bred four winners, and the most successful was the Group 1 winner’s dam Classy Anne, a six-time successful daughter of Orientor (Inchinor), also a Goldie-trained runner.
Thomas at the double
WHAT an achievement for Welsh breeder Kelly Thomas and her Maywood Stud. She shot to prominence when breeding Vandeek (Havana Grey), one of the best European two-year-olds in 2023 who has just completed his first season at Cheveley Park Stakes.
Now that champion’s juvenile half-brother Gstaad (Starspangledbanner) is the unbeaten winner of the Group 2 Coventry Stakes, and the second pattern winner from Mosa Mine (Exceed And Excel). This was trainer Aidan O’Brien’s 11th Coventry Stakes winner.
Vandeek is the sole Group 1 winner for Whitsbury Manor Stud’s Havana Grey (Havana Gold). He sold at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze Up Sale for 625,000gns from Roderick Kavanagh’s Glending Stables, and he had given 42,000gns for the colt as a yearling. This is part of the fairytale story of his dam Mosa Mine, a placed daughter of Exceed And Excel (Danehill).
Mosa Mine was bred by the then Kelly Strong, who founded Maywood Stud in 2003. Mosa Mine sold as a four-year-old to Jill Lamb for £800, the agent repurchasing her for Thomas. In an 11-race career, the £9,000 yearling purchase was in the care of four trainers, and came agonisingly close to winning for Jane Chapple-Hyam, beaten a head in a five-furlong maiden at three.
Mosa Mine is proving a revelation in the breeding shed. A half-sister to five winners, Mosa Mine is herself the dam of six winners with her first six foals. Her own dam Baldemosa (Lead On Time) is a winning half-sister to the Group 1 Prix Robert Papin winner Balbonella (Gay Mescene), and she went on to become a most prolific breeder of high-class runners.
That list included champion European sprinter and successful sire, Anabaa (Danzig), Group 3 winner and Group 1 sire Key Of Luck (Chief’s Crown), and the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas winner Always Royal (Zilzal). The last-named is grandam of the Japanese champion juvenile filly Shonan Adela (Deep Impact).
Haatem on the way back to his best
PHOENIX Of Spain (Lope De Vega) went to the Irish National Stud after winning the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 2000 Guineas.
He stood for €10,000 this year, and came close to a Royal Ascot double on the opening day, his classic-placed son Haatem winning for the second time at the meeting, after his win last year in the Group 3 Jersey Stakes.
Victory this time was in the Listed Wolferton Stakes, while Phoenix Of Spain’s son Caballo De Mar was runner-up in the day’s concluding race, the Copper Horse Stakes.
Haatem was bred by John Bourke’s Hyde Park Stud, but sold as a yearling from Ger and Yvonne Kennedy’s Sherbourne Lodge to Peter and Ross Doyle Bloodstock for 27,000gns.
His dam, the Cape Cross (Green Desert) mare Hard Walnut, is one of four winners out of Yaria (Danehill), two of whom earned blacktype.
Yaria’s dam Yara (Sri Pekan) failed to win, but was placed 15 times, notably running second in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes.
We cannot ignore the two winners on day one who were successful in non-blacktype races, especially as both were foaled in Ireland. What a joy it was to see Chris Jones’ Ascending win the Ascot Stakes for Billy Lee and Henry de Bromhead.
Bred by Karis Bloodstock and Rathbarry Stud, this son of Awtaad (Cape Cross) was a 75,000gns yearling, and later a 100,000gns purchase by Jones’s cousin Anna Moore as a three-year-old. He is one of five winning offspring from the good juvenile Midnight Martini (Night Shift).
Normandie Stud bred the Copper House Stakes winner French Master (Frankel), and his older full-brother Mohaafeth (Frankel) was a previous winner at the Royal meeting, landing the 2021 Group 3 Hampton Court Stakes.
Their dam, French Dressing (Sea The Stars), sold three years ago for 925,000gns and she was an unbeaten stakes winner.