GRADE 1 winner First Defence was sold at the end of the 2016 breeding season to continue his stud career at Haif Stud in Saudi Arabia. A son of Unbridled’s Song (Unbridled), he was trained by Bobby Frankel on behalf of Juddmonte Farms.

First Defence won six of 14 starts and was a top-class sprinter who was effective on both dirt and turf. He won the Grade 3 Jaipur Handicap at Belmont Park before turning in a brilliant performance to run out a near seven-length winner of the Grade 1 Forego Stakes at Saratoga. He also won the Long Branch Breeders’ Cup Stakes at Monmouth Park and ran second in the Grade 1 King’s Bishop Stakes and Grade 2 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Handicap.

At stud First Defence hit the ground running and his first crop contained multiple Grade 1 winner Close Hatches and the smart British juvenile Dundonnell, winner of the Group 3 Acomb Stakes. Close Hatches was crowned the champion older mare of 2014 after capturing the Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap, Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes and Grade 1 Personal Ensign Stakes.

Stakes winners have followed, including a second Grade 1 winner with another filly, Antonoe, but when Siskin, a home-bred of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms, extended his unbeaten record to two with a fine victory in the Listed Irish Stallion Farms EBF Marble Hill Stakes, it brought to 11 the total number of stakes winners by the sire who comes from a famed Juddmonte female line.

Siskin is closely related to two of First Defence’s best runners, the aforementioned Close Hatches and her full-sister Lockdown, a stakes winner who was placed in the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks. They are out of the French winner Rising Tornado (Storm Cat), a half-sister to Siskin’s dam Bird Flown (Oasis Dream). That mare won at two in France and Siskin, her second foal, is her first winner.

Siskin comes from an outstanding female line, his third dam being the leading race filly Monroe (Sir Ivor), later to become a successful broodmare. Her winners included the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes winner and sire Xaar (Zafonic) and her descendants have dual Grade 1 winner Senure (Nureyev), Group 1 Dubai Duty Free Stakes winner Cityscape (Selkirk), and leading sprinter and successful young sire Bated Breath (Dansili) among their number.