SOLDIER Hollow will be joined at Gestüt Auenquelle next year by another multiple Group 1 winner in Best Solution, it was recently announced. The incumbent son of In The Wings (Sadler’s Wells) has compiled a hugely creditable record at stud, with two of every three starters on the flat he is responsible for being winners. Not only that but an extremely impressive 16% of Soldier Hollow’s winners have won a blacktype race.

He is sire of five Group 1 winners on the level, German Derby winners Pastorius (2012) and Weltstar (2018), four-time German and Australian Group 1 winner Ivanhoe, German Oaks heroine Serienholde, and Dschingis Secret. Over jumps Arctic Fire became his first Grade 1 winner, but his record has now been surpassed by Saldier who added the Grade 1 Morgiana Hurdle at the weekend to his win at the Punchestown Festival in the Grade 1 Champion 4YO Hurdle.

Soldier Hollow won two of his three starts as a juvenile and only made it to the races twice at three, winning a Group 3 over a mile and half a furlong. He raced on for four more seasons, until the age of seven, won Group 1 races in Germany and Italy in three of those years, and as a six-year-old beat Manduro to land the Group 2 Prix Dollar.

In the frame on 27 of his 31 starts, Soldier Hollow could not be accused of lacking in terms of soundness and when he went to stud in 2008 he was priced at just €6,500. This fee dropped to €5,000 in his third season, but his immediate success as a sire has meant that the subsequent trajectory has been upwards, and in 2019 he was covering at €30,000.

Bred by the Italian Soc Agricola SS Le Ginestre, foaled in France, by a German-bred sire and now racing in Ireland, Saldier started his racing career in France and won over a mile and then over 10 furlongs. He has now won three of his six starts for Willie Mullins, and his latest success came more than a year after he broke his nose in a fall at Naas.

Saldier is in-bred 2x3 to In The Wings, being a grandson through his sire Soldier Hollow, while his grandam is a daughter of the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf, Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and Group 1 Coronation Cup winner. In The Wings sired 10 Group 1 winners, with a number of them going on to enjoy success in their second career at stud. He also sired a number of smart performers over jumps, notably Inglis Drever and Landing Light.

One thing that is very notable about the pedigree of Saldier is the ability of the sires and the females in the family to produce high-class winners under both codes.

Monsun (Konigsstuhl), sire of Saldier’s dam Salve Evita, has a list of Group 1 winners as long as your arm, and among that list are leading National Hunt sires Getaway and Shirocco, while his Group 2 winning sons include Arcadio and Ocovango.

Saldier was the first winner for his dam and he was joined this year by the Italian three-year-old scorer Airvi (Air Chief Marshal). Salve Evita was sold as a yearling for 70,000gns in Part 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale in 2005, but unusually was resold as a two-year-old, still unnamed, in the following year’s July Sale for 100,000gns and sent to Germany. She was unplaced on her only start at three and purchased, carrying Saldier, by Federico Barberini for just €26,000 in 2013.

Salve Evita is a half-sister to four winners, two of them earning blacktype. Sri Putra (Oasis Dream) was a Group 2 winner in England and France and was twice placed in the Group 1 Coral Eclipse Stakes. He went to stud in France and has sired a handful of winners in his first couple of crops.

His older half-brother Duty (Rainbow Quest) won for Sir Michael Stoute before being sold to race for trainer Kevin O’Brien, winning the Grade 3 Aramark Winning Fair Juvenile Hurdle at Fairyhouse at four.

Wendylina (In The Wings) sold as an unraced juvenile at the 2001 Tattersalls December Sale for 220,000gns and this price was mostly due to the fact that she was a half-sister to the Group 1 Prix de Diane-French Oaks winner Caerlina (Caerleon).

While she produced the classic-placed La Nuit Rose (Rainbow Quest), Caerlina’s only blacktype winner was King Of Queens (Dalakhani), a Grade 2 hurdle winner at Fairyhouse for Tom Mullins who was also placed at Grade 1 level. Caerlina’s daughter Macheera (Machiavellian) is dam of the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois winner Al Wukair (Dream Ahead) and his first foals are on the ground.

On a recent visit to Closutton Willie Mullins indicated that he was very happy with how Saldier was working and said that he would have no choice but to go down the Grade 1 route with him.

Now that he has won at that level on his first outing for 371 days, and given the style of that victory, bookmakers are taking no chances with him in the betting for the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in March.

Their caution is understandable – we could have seen one of the stars of the season ahead at Punchestown.