SEVENTY years after Big Dipper was crowned the best two-year-old of his year, another graduate of Kilcarn Stud can lay claims to be a leading contender for the same honours.

Born in 1948, Big Dipper was bred by Major O’Kelly and was one of three yearlings he sent the following year to the First October Yearling Sale in Newmarket. The chesnut son of Signal Light (Pharos) was the first of the trio to be offered, realising 4,000gns when he sold to the Newmarket Bloodstock Agency.

The colt, later named Big Dipper, was bought for a new American patron of Captain Boyd-Rochfort’s stable, Mrs J.F.C. Bryce, and first appeared on the track in May, being backward and unfancied. However, he ran an eye-catching race to finish fourth in a large field at Newmarket. He stripped fitter and started favourite two weeks later back at the same venue and ran out a three-length winner.

Next stop was the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot, a race for which Grey Sovereign started favourite. However, this was probably the most impressive of Big Dipper’s juvenile successes and he trounced Grey Sovereign by three lengths. Then he beat fellow Ascot winner Bakshishi in the July Stakes at Newmarket, was an unextended five-length winner of the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster and finally he headed back to Newmarket for his season’s swansong, the Middle Park Stakes.

Big Dipper faced just four opponents that day over six furlongs and chief among these was Marcel Boussac’s Damtar. In a muddling race, Big Dipper was forced to make the running and he was never in any danger, running out a five-length winner and earning the accolade of the best two-year-old of 1950. Sadly an injury meant that Big Dipper’s career was badly interrupted.

He did not race at three and was sent to the USA where he made a single, unsuccessful start at the age of four. He sired 11 crops in America, a handful of which proved to be stakes winners.

Big Dipper was the first living produce of Huntress (Foxhunter), a mare who was once described as unmanageable and unable to be tamed. She was bred by Lord Rosebery and was well related, but it appeared for a long time that she had no future, being barren in the year Major O’Kelly bought her for 1,050gns, and barren subsequently too. She also slipped foal the year before Big Dipper was born.

Having produced a colt by Orestes the year after Big Dipper, and then been barren again, Major O’Kelly was approached to sell Huntress. This occurred after Big Dipper won the Champagne Stakes and, for what was understood at the time to be a five-figure sum, Huntress passed into the ownership of the Honourable J.J. Astor.

Lucky Vega

Seven decades later and Major O’Kelly’s daughter Pat, still owner of Kilcarn Stud, is credited with another Group 1 winner, and so soon after Channel won last year’s Group 1 Prix de Diane-French Oaks. Lucky Vega, a son of Lope De Vega (Shamardal), gave the Ballylinch Stud sire his 11th Group 1 winner when he was a comprehensive three and a half-length winner of the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday.

Lucky Vega is already being earmarked for a stud career, being the first Group 1 winner worldwide for Zhang Yuesheng. The owner has a passion for Ireland and Irish-breds and his enthusiasm is kept alight by Michael Donohue of BBA Ireland. It was Michael who bought Lucky Vega as a yearling at Goffs for €175,000, though not from his breeder.

Miss O’Kelly sold the colt as a foal for €110,000 to Michael Roy and when he reappeared for sale it was under the banner of David Cox’s Baroda Stud. The pinhooking exercise was profitable, but now Mr Zhang looks to have secured a bargain.

He is not the only person smiling broadly after the first juvenile Group 1 of the season. Also happy are John and Valerie Osborne at Tipper House, the now residence of Lucky Vega’s dam Queen Of Carthage (Cape Cross) and two siblings to the Jessica Harrington-trained star. They are a yearling filly by Free Eagle (High Chaparral) which will “probably be retained” according to John Osborne, and a colt foal by Footstepsinthesand (Giant’s Causeway). Cleverly, Queen Of Carthage is in foal to a son of Lope De Vega, the classic winner Phoenix Of Spain.

Irish National Stud

Phoenix Of Spain stands at the Irish National Stud, where Osborne was chief executive for a number of years. The stud also had Pat O’Kelly as a longstanding board member.

Queen Of Carthage was bought by Osborne for a mere €24,000 at Goffs in 2018 carrying to Free Eagle. That was the same year, and at the same sale, that Lucky Vega sold for almost five times as much. Queen Of Carthage joined the broodmare band at Kilcarn Stud after she was selected for purchase by Miss O’Kelly and Johnny McKeever, costing 60,000gns when carrying her first foal.

That turned out to be the three-time winner Lady Clair who just missed out on blacktype when she was fourth in the Group 2 Lowther Stakes. A couple of placed runners followed before Queen Of Carthage’s next winner, Boston Beauties (Zoffany), who won as a juvenile last year in the USA. Lucky Vega is her third and most important winner.

Queen Of Carthage never ran and Miss O’Kelly was taking a calculated gamble when she purchased her as an in-foal three-year-old. She was the first foal out of Satwa Queen (Muhtathir) who was an exceptional racemare, winning the Group 1 Prix de l’Opera, the Group 2 (now Group 1) Prix Jean Romanet twice and a couple of Group 3 races.

At the end of her racing career Satwa Queen was consigned to the 2007 Tattersalls December Sale where she realised a new European record for a filly in training, selling for 3,400,000gns when John Ferguson saw off the challenge of Charlie Gordon-Watson and Paul Shanahan.

Outstanding racemare

After her purchase, Ferguson said: “She’s an outstanding racemare. She has a wonderful character and is a great individual, so we are delighted to have her.” At stud Satwa Queen is the dam of three winners, and while none possessed anything approaching her own ability, they include the German stakes winner Important Time (Oasis Dream).

Satwa Queen was one of a pair of Group 1 winners from Tolga (Irish River). The other was the Criterium de Saint-Cloud winner Spadoun. Their stakes-winning half-sister Anbella (Common Grounds) is the dam of a number of winners, the best of which was the stakes-placed Masaya (Dansili), and she, in turn, is responsible for Gussy Mac (Dark Angel), winner of the Listed Dragon Stakes at two this year.

Lucky Vega is from the seventh crop of Lope De Vega, the dual French classic winner whose first crop included the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes winner Belardo. One of a handful of sires standing for a six-figure sum in Ireland, he commanded €100,000 this year, Lope De Vega has three Group/Grade 1 winners in 2020 alone, Newspaperofrecord and Gytrash, in the USA and Australia, joining the list.