THE most welcome recent return of racing in Europe saw three stakes races run at Hannover last Thursday week as Germany resumed action. The first stakes scalp of the season there saw a victory for Jaber Abdullah’s Majestic Colt, a five-year-old son of Clodovil (Danehill) who stands at Rathasker Stud.

He is the third stakes winner of 2020 for his 16-year-old sire whose top runners are headed by the Group 1 winners Nahoodh and Moriarty.

Clodovil is joined on the stallion roster at Maurice Burns’ farm by his Group 2-winning son Gregorian who has made a successful start to his new career. Runner-up in the Group 1 Prix Jean Prat and placed in such as the St James’s Palace Stakes (to Most Improved), Queen Anne Stakes (to Declaration Of War) and July Cup (to Slade Power), he has sired seven stakes horses in his first two crops.

Majestic Colt was bred by Rabbah Bloodstock and is the second produce of the stakes-winning Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) mare Majestic Dubawi. In the year that her new stakes winner was born she was sold at Goffs for €260,000 to Ballylinch Stud. The foal she was carrying is Kodiqueen (Kodiac) and she won twice for Ballylinch last season when trained by Joe Murphy. She remains in training, hopefully with some stakes form to be gained.

Majestic Dubawi has a three-year-old daughter, Majestic Sea (Siyouni), in training with Dermot Weld, and a two-year-old filly, Isabella Giles (Belardo). The latter sold to Kevin Ross on behalf of the Rooneys for just €45,000 last year at Goffs and is in training with Richard Fahey. On the ground is a yearling colt by Nathaniel (Galileo), while John O’Connor and the team at Ballylinch are anticipating the birth of a foal by Fascinating Rock (Fastnet Rock), and a mating with last year’s Arc hero Waldgeist (Galileo) is planned.

From the second crop of Dubawi, it is hard to believe now that Majestic Dubawi traded twice as a yearling, once for a paltry 2,800gns in February and then for 22,000gns in October. Sent into training with Mick Channon, she won two of her first three starts as a juvenile, most importantly landing the Group 3 Firth of Clyde Stakes at Ayr over six furlongs.

The best of a pair of winners from her dam Tidal Chorus (Singspiel), Majestic Dubawi is from the immediate family of last year’s smart Ballydoyle juvenile Lope Y Fernandez (Lope De Vega), winner of the Group 3 Round Tower Stakes at the Curragh and runner-up to the champion Pinatubo in the Listed Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot. That colt is a grandson of the listed winner South Rock (Rock City), a half-sister to Tidal Chorus.

Lope Y Fernandez is not the only good winner in the family by a Ballylinch stallion. Majestic Dubawi’s third dam bred a dual Group 1 winner by Soviet Star (Nureyev). Named Soviet Line, his 16 career victories were highlighted by two successes in the Lockinge Stakes. He was a great globetrotter in the 1990s and won in England, Hong Kong (the International Bowl, now a Group 1), the USA and the UAE.