THERE are no guarantees when it comes to breeding racehorses, but mating the best with the best certainly gives one a bit of a head start.

Sending Grade 1 winner Capla Temptress (Lope De Vega) and Group 1 Oaks runner-up Pink Dogwood (Camelot) to Frankel (Galileo) was done in the hope of producing a smart performer on the racecourse, and the results in both cases have worked out well. Capla Temptress is the dam of the Group 1 Juddmonte International winner Item, a member of Frankel’s classic crop, while Great Sequoia, a juvenile son of Pink Dogwood, will hopefully go on to become a classic contender.

Bred by Pier House Stud, Capla Temptress was among the fourth crop sired by Lope De Vega (Shamardal), and she sold for just €26,000 to Jamie Lloyd as a yearling. It is hard to imagine that figure was just less than half the median, €55,000, for the 10 yearlings by the Ballylinch sire sold at that year’s Goffs Orby Sale, a decade ago now. Capla Temptress joined Marco Botti and won three of her five juvenile starts, including the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes at Woodbine.

Top-level winners

When writing about top-level winners for Juddmonte, it largely involves highlighting a winner from an established family that has its origins going back a few generations with the organisation. This is the case with Juddmonte’s other York Group 1 winner, Kalpana (Study Of Man). The group has also had success with purchases made as foals and yearlings, Chaldean (Frankel) being a prime example. In the case of Capla Temptress, she was purchased while racing, albeit with a breeding career in mind.

In fact, Capla Temptress changed hands twice while racing, acquired after her first two wins by Team Valour, and it was in their silks that she won her Grade 1. She moved between Botti and Bill Mott in the USA, adding a Grade 3 win to her form, and then Juddmonte bought her. They have an association with the US trainer, and she raced for them from Mott’s stable and won another stakes race before heading back to England and a mating with Kingman (Invincible Spirit).

Her first foal was Cabrit who placed at two in France, and sold for 30,000gns that same year. He won a maiden last year at four in Abu Dhabi. Cabrit was followed a year later by his full-sister, Temptable (Kingman), and she too went to France and Francis Graffard. She won three times last year, the last of those coming in the Listed Prix Matchem at Saint-Cloud, and is now with Bill Mott.

Special rapport

Item is the third foal and winner for Capla Temptress, and apart from a disappointing run in the Derby, he has won his other five starts. He has established a special rapport with York, gaining three successes at the Knavesmire, in the Group 2 Dante Stakes and York Stakes, and now in the Grrou 1 Juddmonte International. The last time Juddmonte won their own race was with Frankel 14 years ago.

What of the future for Capla Temptress? She has a two-year-old filly Tympana (St Mark’s Basilica) in training with Francis-Henri Devin, a yearling filly by Dark Angel (Acclamation), and was covered this year by Frankel.

One thing that Juddmonte must have loved about Capla Temptress is that she is out of a winning daughter of Dansili (Danehill). That mare was Mrs Beeton, owned and bred by Peter Harris at Pendley Farm, and trained by his son-in-law Walter Swinburn. Harris had this family for some time, going back to the third dam of Capla Temptress, the Group 3 Lancashire Oaks winner Sing Softly (Luthier).

Henry Cecil

Sing Softly was trained by Henry Cecil and also won the Listed Pretty Polly Stakes. She raced just seven times, won three, and finished in the first four on all her other runs, and always in group company. She was runner-up in the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot to Dish Dash.

Harris dispersed his breeding stock in 2010, selling both the dam and grandam of Capla Temptress.

The best winners from Sing Softly were the US Grade 3 winner and Grade 1 runner-up Supreme Sound (Superlative), and Cesarewitch winner Top Cees (Shirley Heights). He won that race for Ian Balding, father of Item’s trainer Andrew. The latter had another connection to Top Cees, as he was assistant trainer to Lynda Ramsden who earlier trained the gelding when he won the Coral Cup at Cheltenham.

Sequoia’s quest to be a Giant

OTHER than the fact that they are both trees, there is no similarity between the dogwood and sequoia species. Dogwoods are small to medium-sized, while the giant sequoia is the largest tree on earth by volume. No doubt the two-year-old colt Giant Sequoia (Frankel) was named carefully, in the hope that he would become a racing colossus.

Giant Sequoia races for the trio of Resolute Racing, Coolmore and Westerberg, and he beat his Group 3-winning stablemate Florida Bay to land the Group 2 Coolmore Stud City Of Troy Tom Cooper Irish EBF Futurity Stakes at the Curragh, Trainer Aidan O’Brien indicated that the Group 1 National Stakes at the Curragh was the colt’s likely next outing. The Ballydoyle boss has an amazing record in the Futurity, and has won nine of the last 10 editions. Constitution River, Henri Matisse and Henry Longfellow annexed the last three.

While Item was Frankel’s 43rd Group or Grade 1 winner, Giant Sequoia became the Banstead Manor Stud sire’s 125th pattern winner. The unbeaten champion has sired another 66 stakes winners.

Recently, Maltese Cross (Sea The Stars) became the first Group 1 winner out of a Camelot (Montjeu) mare, and it will be no shock if Great Sequoia joins him on that roster. Pink Dogwood was bred by Andrew and Catherine Magnier’s Sweetmans Bloodstock, and sold by them as a foal for 115,000gns at Tattersalls. Mags O’Toole signed for her on behalf of Eddie O’Leary, and he resold her at the Goffs Orby Sale to M.V. Magnier and others for €380,000.

Pink Dogwood showed useful form at two, winning a Gowran Park maiden on her third outing. She ran once more that season, beaten a length and a half into fifth in the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac. She won a Navan listed race on her reappearance at three, was beaten a neck in the Group 1 Oaks, placed in two more Group 1s, and then her form tailed off. Giant Sequoia is her third foal and first winner.

Latrobe’s sister

Pink Dogwood is a full-sister to the Group 1 Irish Derby winner Latrobe (Camelot) and the dual winner Heather who won for Ger Lyons last year, carrying the silks of David Magnier’s wife Geraldine. Heather is the eighth foal and winner for the stakes-placed Question Time (Shamardal), and there is a third blacktype winner among them, Group 3 Gladness Stakes heroine Diamond Fields (Fastnet Rock).

The two most recent offspring of Question Times are an unraced two-year-old filly by Churchill (Galileo) and a yearling filly by Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj). What is that yearling worth? Great Sequoia is not the only, or even the best, winner this year from this family. Question Times’s half-sister Sunday Times (Holy Roman Emperor) was a Group 3 winner and Group 1 Cheveley Park runner-up. She is dam of the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup winner Newspaperofrecord (Lope De Vaga), and her son is this year’s Group 1 Irish Derby hero Benvenuto Cellini, another son of Frankel.