SUMMUS Equus Inc is not a name I am familiar with and at last year’s Goffs November Sale they invested €12,000 in a filly foal by Excelebration offered from her breeders John and Michelle Weld’s River Downs Stud. She was their sole purchase at the sale.

This price was some way behind the €75,000 paid a year earlier at the same venue for her own-brother when he was bought by the O’Callaghan’s Tally-Ho Stud. Reoffered last August at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale he sold for £62,000 to Peter and Ross Doyle, and not surprisingly ended up with Richard Hannon.

Now named Billy Dylan, he could be Royal Ascot bound this week after opening his account last Friday at Brighton, and he is a horse that connections have expressed great hope for in the future. Billy Dylan is the second foal of his Kheleyf (Green Desert) dam It’s True. Her first is a son of Canford Cliffs who was placed on his only two starts to date and remains in training. This year she bred a colt foal by Holy Roman Emperor.

It’s True was also bred at River Downs and is one of 11 foals from the Green Desert mare Just A Mirage, thus making her in-bred 2x2 to the son of Danzig. She was bought by the Welds from Shadwell at Goffs. At the time of her purchase she had bred the Group 2 winning Machiavellian colt Kahal and the foal she was carrying turned out to be the stakes-winning juvenile Sahara Princess. Just A Mirage went on to breed seven winners in total, and they included the Noverre filly Katici Princess, a Group 3 winner in South Africa.

Just A Mirage is a half-sister to seven winners and the best of these were Reprimand and Wiorno. The former, a son of Mummy’s Pet, was trained by Henry Cecil and he progressed from winning the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes at two to landing the Trusthouse Forte Mile. He enjoyed some success as a stallion. His Wassl half-brother Wiorno landed the Group 2 Prix Dollar in France for another training maestro in Andre Fabre. Both horses were Group 1 placed.

Excelebration stands at Coolmore and this year his fee was €10,000. His oldest crop are just three-year-olds and he came within a length of having a classic winner when Barney Roy was runner-up to Churchill at Newmarket in the 2000 Guineas. He had previously won the Group 3 Greenham Stakes for Richard Hannon and Godolphin. In Australia Saint Patricks Day is a stakes-winning two-year-old this year for Chris Munce.