BRIAN Walsh welcomed Silver Birch into the winners’ enclosure after the Aintree Grand National in 2007, and the gelding was Gordon Elliott’s first runner in the race. He had yet to saddle a winner on the track in Ireland. How that picture has changed in the subsequent years.

Walsh had reason to celebrate last weekend at Fairyhouse when his homebred Belladaball, a five-year-old daughter of Elusive Pimpernel (Elusive Quality), gained her maiden success in a listed mares bumper on the opening day of the Fairyhouse Festival meeting, beating five previous winners. This win has turned her into a valuable mare, given that she is now the second blacktype winner for her bumper-winning dam Maisy Daisy (Luso).

Significantly, the other blacktype winner is Meetingofthewaters (Court Cave), a horse who we haven’t seen since he finished fifth in the Aintree Grand National last year. He was a listed chase winner at Leopardstown, and in 2024 was third in the Grade 3 Ultima Chase at Cheltenham. Belladaball is the fifteenth blacktype winner in four generations of her family, and the standout among them is none other than the great Dawn Run (Deep Run).

Belladaball brings to 12 the number of blacktype winners sired by Group 3 winner and Group 1 runner-up Elusive Pimpernel, a former Irish National Stud stallion.

Al Qareem

Karl Burke has turned the 27,000gns unraced two-year-old purchase Al Qareem (Awtaad) into the winner of €964,715 – and surely the seven-year-old will make it to a million this season. He is the third-highest earner by his Derrinstown Stud sire, after Group/Grade 1 winners Ethical Diamond and Anmaat, and is a further example of the sound stock Awtaad (Cape Cross) gets. What amazing value he is at €8,500 this season.

Al Qareem’s 13 career wins and 25 top-three finishes in 36 starts shows what a tough and durable performer he is, and his versatility shines through in the fact that he has won from seven to 15 furlongs. The Group 2 Prix Chaudenay over the longer trip is his biggest win, while he has made the Group 3 Cumberland Lodge Stakes at Ascot his own, capturing the three most recent editions. At Group 1 standard he ran a creditable third to Al Riffa in last year’s Irish St Leger.

The dam of Al Qareem, also responsible for two other winners, is the unraced Moqla (Teofilo), and she was sold the year after Al Qareem was born for just 5,000gns to Primera Bloodstock. This is remarkable, as since then the colt she was carrying made €52,000 as a yearling, her son Mocking (Tamayuz) sold for 68,000gns as a yearling and is a winner, while her three-year-old daughter Triss Marigold (Ghaiyyath) became her best-priced offspring when selling as a yearling for 110,000gns.

Last year, Moqla’s colt foal by Mehmas (Acclamation) sold at Goffs for €60,000, while the mare was back again to visit Ghaiyyath (Dubawi).

Now in his second season standing in Japan, the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, French Derby and Prix Ganay winner Sottsass (Siyouni), is finally producing some of the quality winners that he should be capable of getting. After all, he got some of the best mares around when he went to stud at Coolmore, but after four seasons the decision to sell him was an easy one.

His oldest runners are four-year-olds, and up to the end of last year Sottsass had sired two stakes-winning fillies in France and Germany. One of his better runners from his first crop was another filly, Sena Style, and she was placed in a Group 2 race in Japan.

Stakes winners

Today, Sottsass is responsible for five stakes winners, and yet another has come from that first crop. Asmarani, an Aga Khan Studs homebred, looks like he could rise through the ranks of stayers after his win over Group 1 winner Double Major in the recent Listed Prix Right Royal at Saint-Cloud. That win came just days after Arkansas, a three-year-old daughter of Sottsass, won a 10-furlong listed race at Saint-Cloud, her first since moving to Jerome Reynier.

Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm bred Arkansas, and also the three-year-old colt Segall (Sottsass), the latter in partnership. Sold as a yearling for €90,000, Segall at the weekend won the Group 3 Prix la Force and is trained by André Fabre. It looks as though time is something that the progeny of Sottsass need, a quality that the marketplace seems not to want.

The fickleness of the bloodstock market can also be shown by the fact that Segall’s dam, Spain Burg (Sageburg), sold as a two-year-old for €1.5 million after she won Newmarket’s Group 2 Rockfel Stakes. She failed to train on, at which point her connections put her back up for auction in the December Sale at Tattersalls, and White Birch acquired her for 750,000gns. Six years later, Spain Burg was heading to Japan after her sale for €110,000 in Arqana

The Japanese connection to this family grows, and at last year’s December Sale, Tatsuhiko Kawashita gave 55,000gns for the now unraced four-year-old Siyou In Spain (Siyouni), Segall’s year-older sibling with a nice early covering by Auguste Rodin (Deep Impact). She should have foaled by now. This family could be enhanced further this year. Watch out for Spain Burg’s half-brother Ray Mon Dough (Lope Y Fernandez). He won his only start in November in fine style for Valmont and Oliver Cole, and is a bright prospect.