CROOM House Stud in Limerick is owned by Denis and Joan Brosnan and run with their son Cathal. The nursery has a long tradition of breeding top-class racehorses, going back to the likes of Candy Glen, Damson, Maybe and Zoffany, all Group 1 winning two-year-olds.

The farm has enjoyed a vintage 2016 and has featured already this year on these pages, with successes for the likes of dual Group 2 winner Mehmas, Group 3 winner California and listed winner Escobar. Those achievements were bettered when Quest For More won the Group 1 Prix du Cadran at Chantilly, the feature race on the Saturday card.

The now six-year-old son of Darley stallion Teofilo is like a good vintage, improving with age, and this year has been a revelation. His recent victory was the eighth of his career and this season has also seen him triumph in the Group 2 Lonsdale Stakes. His career earnings now top £550,000 and he has more than repaid the 58,000gns he cost bloodstock agent Charlie Gordon-Watson as a yearling.

Born when his dam was 17 years old, Quest For More is the best of seven winners for the Rainbow Quest mare No Quest, placed in France and sold as a four-year-old in foal to Turtle Island for 48,000gns. She was bought by Michael Keogh’s European Bloodstock Agency for the Brosnans.

The resulting offspring, a colt named Nakos, won a couple of times in France but his achievements were easily eclipsed by the mare’s second produce, He was Macaw, a son of Bluebird and sold at Goffs as a yearling for IR£160,000. He raced in England before transferring to the USA where he won the Grade 3 Elkhorn Stakes at Keeneland and performed well at Grade 1 level. He was runner-up to Phoenix Reach in the Canadian International Stakes at Woodbine and occupied the same position behind Whitmore’s Conn in the Sword Dancer Invitational at Saratoga.

WINNERS

No Quest has produced other winners by Galileo, Fasliyev and Entrepreneur, while all but two of her 14 living foals were colts. The two surviving fillies were both daughters of Montjeu and one of these, the unraced Sentee, is the dam of a dual stakes winner over jumps in Italy by Sakhee and a current stakes performer in Turkey.

No Quest may not have won but nine of her siblings did and five of them won blacktype races. By some way the best of these was No Pass No Sale whose three victories were all in group races. They included the classic Poule d’Essai des Poulains and he went on to become a successful sire. This is also the family of Grade 2 winner and sire Anshan.

Champion juvenile Teofilo is now sire of three Group 1 winners in 2016, the others being Australian Guineas winner Palentino and UAE winner Special Fighter.

His other winners at the highest level in Europe include Havana Gold, Loch Garman, Pleascach, Trading Leather and Voleuse De Couers.