NAAS Racecourse is quite the ‘breeding ground’ for champions, and the latest to emerge is last weekend’s Group 1 Qipco 1000 Guineas winner Mother Earth.
The daughter of Zoffany (Dansili) was previously successful in the Group 3 EBF Juvenile Sprint Stakes at the Co Kildare venue last year.
After that important first stakes win she went on to run third in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket, before traversing the Atlantic to run second in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Keeneland.
She has not been wrapped in cotton wool by trainer Aidan O’Brien and she raced on eight occasions last year. Her weekend success could be the first of many at Group 1 level.
This was quite a result for Mark and Adrian Wallace’s Grenane House Stud, and the former is a name that many will be familiar with in a previous life as a Group 1 winning trainer. Now his attention has turned to running the family’s farm as a producer of top-class runners on the flat.
Shortly Mark will have to decide what stallion to mate Mother Earth’s dam Many Colours (Green Desert) with. Recent reports suggest that it is down to a choice between No Nay Never (Scat Daddy) and Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj).
This would represent quite a recent step up for the mare, though she did visit Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) a number of times before.
Previously owned by Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley, Many Colours won for the ruler of Dubai when trained by Jim Bolger, landing the Listed Dance Design Stakes at the Curragh. After she failed to produce a winner from her first few foals, she was culled in 2016 and bought to join the fledgling broodmare band at Grenane House for €50,000 at Goffs.
In foal to Night Of Thunder (Dubawi), who had gone to stud that year, she produced a filly who sold as a foal for €26,000. She was named Night Colours and she won a Group 2 race in Italy as a two-year-old, a member of her sire’s exceptional first crop of runners. She thus became her dam’s third winning offspring – quite a turnaround in just three years.
Better was to come, thanks to Mother Earth, while recently Many Colours produced a full-brother to the new classic winner, a year after foaling a daughter of Sioux Nation (Scat Daddy). Here is a mare on a steep upward curve.
Mother Earth’s €150,000 yearling purchase by M.V. Magnier looks like a bargain now, and she comes from a family that produces no end of stakes winners. Many Colours is one of six winners from First Of Many (Darshaan), and that mare’s siblings include Patience Alexander (Kodiac), a listed winner as a two-year-old at York just seven years ago.
Their dam was the juvenile winner Star Profile (Sadler’s Wells), a daughter of the listed-winning sprinter Sandhurst Goddess (Sandhurst Prince). The latter mare’s best runner was Lady Alexander (Night Shift), a Group 3 winner in Ireland and England at two. At stud Lady Alexander has made her mark thanks to her daughter Anthem Alexander (Starspangledbanner) and her son Dandy Man (Mozart).
Anthem Alexander won the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot and was beaten less than a length when runner-up to Tiggy Wiggy in the Group 1 Connolly’s Red Mills Cheveley Park Stakes. The Group 3 winning sprinter Dandy Man is now the flagbearer for Joe Foley’s Ballyhane Stud and has sired three Group/Grade 1 winners.
AFTER seven seasons at Kildangan Stud, where he started out at a fee of €35,000, the champion European two-year-old and leading miler Dawn Approach (New Approach) moved this year to stand privately at Jim Bolger’s Redmondstown Stud.
No one knows the sire better than Jim, having trained him and his sire New Approach (Galileo). A mere 32 mares visited the winner of the Group 1 Qipco 2000 Guineas, St James’s Palace Stakes, Dewhurst Stakes and National Stakes last year at a fee of €10,000, and most of those were owned by Bolger.
His devotion to Dawn Approach was rewarded at the weekend when Poetic Flare won his fourth race, in just five outings, and reached new heights with victory in the Group 1 Qipco 2000 Guineas, eight years after his sire won the same race. Successful in the Group 3 Killavullen Stakes at two, Poetic Flare warmed up for his classic bid with another stakes win at Leopardstown.
Two days after this classic win, Bolger gave Dawn Approach his 15th stakes winner when Lunar Space triumphed in the Listed Tetrarch Stakes. While Poetic Flare is his sire’s first Group 1 winner, it was only half a length that denied another son, Madhmoon, victory in the Derby at Epsom.
Celebrating
It was not only the Bolger team that was celebrating this classic win either. The trainer’s granddaughter bought Poetic Flare’s year younger full-brother, now named Frizel (Dawn Approach), for just €12,000 as a foal, while Ballylinch Stud three years ago acquired their sibling, and close relation, Glamorous Approach (New Approach) for €280,000. That dual listed winner’s first offspring, a two-year-old by Lope De Vega (Shamardal), is now with Roger Varian.
This is a female line that has the Jim Bolger’s fingerprints embedded on it. He actually sold the dam of Poetic Flare to Clarecastle Stud for €65,000 in November 2018 and she now has a yearling filly by U S Navy Flag (War Front). Another to be thrilled with this classic win is Michael Crean. Through Barry Lynch Bloodstock he acquired a now half-sister to Poetic Flare for just €5,000.
Maria Lee (Rock Of Gibraltar) is the dam of Poetic Flare, and the best of her siblings was Fiscal Focus (Intense Focus), a Grade 3 juvenile hurdle winner. Their dam Elida (Royal Academy) was a winning own-sister to the listed winner Graduated, and a half-sister to the classic trial winner Speirbhean (Danehill).
Speirbhean has made an impact as a broodmare, her three stakes winners being headed by the Bolger-bred and trained Teofilo (Galileo), the undefeated champion juvenile in Europe who, in 2020 alone, sired no fewer than six Group 1 winners.