THERE are few breeders who can boast of having a record as good as that of John Tuthill at his Owenstown Stud in Maynooth, Co Kildare.

In 15 years since Excelebration (Exceed And Excel) won the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp in September 2011, the first of three top-flight successes he enjoyed, Tuthill has gone on to produce two Group 1 winners out of Choose Me (Choisir), both successful on British Champions Day. They are Persuasive (Dark Angel) and Creative Force (Dubawi).

Three years ago, Art Power (Dark Angel) was yet another Owenstown Stud-bred winner on British Champions Day when he beat Kinross a neck in the Group 1 Sprint, and now Sun Goddess (Sioux Nation) is his fifth individual winner at the top level in that 15-year period. What an achievement for Tuthill and his family, one that will surely see him honoured in the months ahead.

John, with his wife Clare and their family, has revitalised Owenstown Stud, which itself has a long and storied history. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of his taking over the farm, which he had run for a few years with his aunt Averil Whitehead. Founded in the 1930s by his grandfather Frank Tuthill, many great runners had emerged from the land, the most famous being the dual classic winner Musidora (Nasrullah). She won the 1000 Guineas and Oaks in 1949, and is commemorated with a group race run in her honour.

Over the moon

“She was magnificent. I am over the moon, as you can imagine.” With just these few words, John Tuthill summed up what victory for Sun Goddess in the Group 1 Keeneland Phoenix Stakes meant to him. It might have been the breeders first winner of the race, but it was trainer Aidan O’Brien’s 18th, though the first occasion on which he did so with a filly. That is significant.

In the aftermath of the weekend win, Sun Goddess is Timeform’s joint top-rated juvenile in Europe. She improved her rating from 103p to 108p, and is now level with Ballydoyle stablemates Barrier Reef and Victorious at the top of the juvenile rankings. Timeform’s Andrew Asquith said: “Sun Goddess took another step forward to land her first Group 1 success up against the boys for the first time since her debut.”

Sun Goddess is a Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale graduate, and she is Aidan O’Brien’s first two-year-old Group 1 winner with a graduate of the sale. Her success also secured back-to-back wins in the Phoenix Stakes for a Premier Yearling Sale graduate, with Power Blue winning last year. Avenue Bloodstock’s Mark McStay signed for Sun Goddess at £120,000 on behalf of MV Magnier, and the filly races for the quartet of Derrick Smith, Sue Magnier, Michael Tabor and Westerberg.

Tim Kent will be over the moon that Sun Goddess has advertised the quality of the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale just before this year’s edition (August 25th and 26th), and how prescient it was that he chose to put the Phoenix Stakes winner on the catalogue’s front cover after she won the Group 2 Airlie Stud Stakes. Owenstown Stud has three yearlings in the sale this time, fillies by Native Trail and Showcasing and a colt by Earthlight. Eight of the 10 yearlings by Sioux Nation catalogued are fillies.

Goffs boss

Kent is not the only happy Goffs boss, and Henry Beeby was beaming at the Curragh, as all five Group 1 winners bred by Owenstown were sold at Goffs. Sun Goddess follows Premier Yearling Sale graduate Excelebration, who was sold for just £20,000 in 2009, while Art Power (€110,000), Creative Force (€400,000) and Persuasive (€180,000) were all sold at Goffs Orby Book 1. John Tuthill spent 60,000gns to acquire the dam of Sun Goddess in 2022.

She is the unraced Etoile Bleu, a daughter of Starspangledbanner (Choisir), and this is the first Group 1 winner produced from a mare by the Castlehyde-based sire. He stands alongside Sioux Nation (Scat Daddy). Etoile Bleu was carrying the recently-placed Meritocratic (Churchill) when Tuthill bought her, but he failed to sell at €50,000 when offered in Orby Book 1.

This followed from his year-older half-sister trading as a yearling for just €3,000. She is Isperantzia Bella (Highland Reel) who raced twice at two in Italy, and she has likely been tracked down by someone for breeding purposes. Owenstown consigns a Blue Point (Shamardal) half-sister to Sun Goddess in Book 1 as Lot 464, and Etoile Bleu is in foal to No Nay Never (Scat Daddy), Tuthill using what is now a successful cross.

Thesecretadversary

Sun Goddess is the second Group 1 winner in this immediate family in recent weeks. Etoile Bleu’s Group 3-winning half-sister Scream Blue Murder (Oratorio) is the grandam of Prix Jean Prat winner Thesecretadversary (St Mark’s Basilica). Scream Blue Murder is one of a pair of stakes winners among the seven successful progeny of Holly Blue (Bluebird). That mare was a homebred listed winner at Royal Ascot in 1999 for the late Queen Elizabeth.

The other blacktype winner out of Holly Blue was Gibraltar Blue (Rock Of Gibraltar), and she won for Tommy Stack on her two-year-old debut at Fairyhouse before being sent to South Africa to race. There she became a multiple Group 2 winner and was placed in Group 1 company. She has bred four stakes-placed winners.

It was always odds-on that Sioux Nation would attract a considerable amount of support at stud. While his fee fell slightly to €10,000 for seasons three and four, his runners have advertised his ability and made him one of the most popular sires with trainers, and his 2026 fee of €37,500 will almost certainly not remain so for next year.

When Sioux Nation retired to stud in 2019, his sire’s profile was at an all-time high following a huge international season that featured Justify’s undefeated US Triple Crown achievement. The record of Scat Daddy as a sire is remarkable, given how young he was when he died. The son of international juvenile champion Johannesburg (Hennessy) got 136 stakes winners, of whom 31 won at the highest level. He covered his last mares at the age of 11.

Sensational season

Sioux Nation’s first runners hit the track in 2022 and contributed to a sensational season that ended with 45 individual winners, three stakes winners and eight others who were stakes placed. Now he has 25 blacktype winners, 19 at pattern level, and Sun Goddess joins Socks Nation as his second Group 1 winner. The latter won the Queensland Oaks, but let’s not forget Shes Perfect who passed the post first in the 2025 Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas, only to be placed second. Bred by Fethard Bloodstock, Sioux Nation won his maiden at Cork a month before landing the Group 2 Norfolk Stakes at Royal Ascot.

He followed that with victory in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes. At three he added the Group 3 Lacken Stakes at Naas, and was later beaten less than a length when third to Havana Grey in the Group 1 Flying Five Stakes.

The Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes and Cheveley Park Stakes are both on the ‘possible’ list for Sun Goddess, while Aidan O’Brien is also thinking about the Breeders’ Cup. If she stays a mile, she could also be a leading classic contender, and another success story for the Group 1 breeder John Tuthill.