STARMAN is the hottest of the sires around who have their first runners this year, while Supremacy has his first stakes winner. When it comes to numbers of winners, and with an impressive one-third of all his runners being so, Nando Parrado (Kodiac) is making his mark throughout Europe.

The Irish National Stud-based leading two-year-old runner is passing on his own precocity to his sons and daughters, and Nando Parrado’s €6,000 fee has remained unchanged during his first four seasons standing at Tully.

He is now sire of 10 individual winners, at the time of writing, and his best to date is the Michael McGlynn-bred Howd’yadoit who won Monday’s hugely valuable Irish EBF Ballyhane Stakes at Naas. This was his second consecutive win after his first three starts saw him placed each time.

Trained by Ger Lyons for Sean Jones, Howd’yadoit has won more than €130,000, and with group horses behind him at Naas it would be no surprise at all if this improving colt was up to that standard himself.

Described as an honest horse by Lyons, Howd’yadoit is the fifth winner among the first six foals from the Bertolini (Danzig) mare Madam Macie. Her other runner was placed. Michael McGlynn must have liked what the mare produced in the shape of Howd’yadoit, and this year she had another colt by Nando Parrado.

A winner on her debut at two, Madam Macie raced until she was five, and visited the winners’ circle four times in all. Even so, she sold for just 14,000gns at the end of her 19-race career. Two of her winners have been prolific, El Sokhna (Dragon Pulse) and Tynamite (Elnadim) winning eight and six times respectively, while Gadea (Dandy Man) posted three wins. Madam Macie’s four successful siblings included just one stakes winner, Tatoosh (Xaar), and she was well-known in Scandinavia.

In fact, Tatoosh was the champion older mare in Scandinavia at the age of seven, following a racing career that saw her win a total of 13 races in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Three of those victories were in listed races, notably the Lanwades Stud Stakes at Ovrevoll in Norway twice. She is now the dam of a number of Danish-bred multiple winners.

No surprise

Given his juvenile record, and how sons of Kodiac (Danehill) are doing as sires, it is no real surprise that Nando Parrado should be off to such a fine start. He made history at two, racing in pandemic times, but went on to prove that his long-priced win at Royal Ascot was anything but a fluke. He was fifth in a Newmarket maiden 16 days before Ascot and his record 150/1 victory in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes.

Nando Parrado was a two-length runner-up to the champion Campanelle in the Group 1 Prix Morny on soft ground at Deauville next time out, and when chasing home Sealiway (Group 1 Champion Stakes winner) in the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on heavy at ParisLongchamp. Third on the latter occasion was the subsequent Group 1 Prix Jean Prat winner Laws Of Indices.

A third of Nando Parrado’s first crop of some 95 foals have already made a start, and this is a good omen for his future as a sire, and for the popularity of his stock at the sales among trainers who want early sorts. With catalogues arriving in the post this week for the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale and the Tattersalls Somerville Sale, buyers will have opportunities to purchase eight of his yearlings between the two venues.

TADEJ took three starts to make it to the winners’ enclosure, gamely winning a six-furlong novice at York less than three weeks before Royal Ascot. Not surprisingly, he was sent to post at 100/1 for the Group 2 Coventry Stakes, but finished less than five lengths behind the winner, Gstaad, who was three lengths clear of the rest.

Tadej (Ardad) was a length and a half off the third that day, the subsequent Group 2 Richmond Stakes winner Coppull. Next time out, at Chantilly, the Archie Watson-trained Tadej was favourite for the Group 2 Goffs Prix Robert Pain, but was beaten two necks by Green Sense. Another run in France, this time at Deauville, gave Tadej the win he wanted, landing the Group 3 Prix de Cabourg.

Tadej was bred by Matt Camacho in the name of Star Cottage Stud, in partnership with Niall O’Keeffe, and sold as a foal in Newmarket for 38,000gns to Tom Brickley’s Ard Erin Stud, and resold for £65,000 at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale last year to Blandford Bloodstock and Archie Watson. Oliver St Lawrence bought Tadej’s dam Tilly Frankl (Frankel) for just 58,000gns carrying the Group 3 winner, not bad business considering that she had been unsold as a yearling for 300,000gns.

James Fanshawe

Tilly Frankl was put in training with James Fanshawe after she failed to trade as a yearling, and little wonder. She is the first foal of the Group 1 winner Ribbons (Manduro), who was trained by Fanshawe to win half of her 14 races, notably capturing the Group 1 Prix Jean Romanet at four, and the following year adding the Group 2 Blandford Stakes at the Curragh.

Fanshawe sent Tilly Frankl to the races on three occasions, at Yarmouth, Lingfield and Newcastle, and she placed each time, beaten into second place on her final start by the subsequent Group 2 winner Lights On.

Tilly Frankl’s first foal, Broadstone (New Bay), placed twice at three this year, for Jessica Harrington and John Norton. He looks more than capable of winning, while his dam’s third offspring is a yearling colt by Havana Grey (Havana Gold). Will he pop up for sale this autumn? While Tilly Frankl didn’t get Ribbons off to a winning start at stud, better was to come.

Ribbons foaled a full-brother to Tilly Frankl two years after the filly, and he was named Soulcombe (Frankel). He was trained by William Haggas, and three nondescript runs resulted in him being gelded. This transformed him, and Soulcombe proceeded to win three of his next four starts, rising from a rating of 55 to 99. His final run and win for Haggas was at York in the valuable Melrose Handicap, after which he joined Chris Waller. His wins in Australia included a Group 3 at Flemington, and it was there that, a year and two days later, he was runner-up in the Group 1 Melbourne Cup.

Ribbons’ winners

Soulcombe is one of three winners out of Ribbons, being joined by Solomon (Siyouni) and Scoville (Too Darn Hot). A €130,000 Arqana breezer, Solomon was twice a winner from Haggas’s Somerville Lodge Stables before he sold last October for 8,000gns, and added a win in a claimer at Limerick in June for Denis Hogan. The three-year-old Scoville is a different proposition, and is another trained by Haggas.

Sold as a yearling to the trainer for 200,000gns, Scoville made a winning debut at Windsor in May, and his only run since was at Newmarket last month when he put 14 lengths between himself and eight opponents in a novice stakes. He looks, on what we have seen so far, to be up to taking on group company.

Ribbons’ grandam Kalinka (Soviet Star) made a mark at stud, her five winners including five-time Group 1 winner Soviet Song (Marju), and Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle winner Penzance (Pennekamp). She is also the third dam of another champion racemare in Marsha (Acclamation), sold for six million guineas after winning the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes and Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp.