DUBAWI sired his 28th individual Group 1 winner at the weekend when Sobetsu landed the Prix Saint-Alary. She joins the likes of four-time Group 1 hero Postponed, recently retired due to injury, the 2000 Guineas winners Night Of Thunder and Makfi, French Derby winner New Bay and the Dubai World Cup winners Monterosso and Prince Bishop on the sire’s roll of honour.
Dubawi has mated relatively little with Darshaan mares and from just five runners to date the cross has been responsible for the four-time Group 1 winner and now sire Al Kazeem, as well as Coronet who was third behind Sobetsu on Sunday.
Sobetsu is from a family that is synonymous with producing top-class performers. Home-bred by Darley and racing for Godolphin, Sobetsu is the second and the best winner from her Darshaan dam Lake Toya, a listed winner in France for Andre Fabre and in England for Saeed bin Suroor.
Last year Sobetsu’s unraced Shamardal half-sister Lake Hamana was sold for 210,000gns by Godolphin at the Tattersalls July Sale to Yulong Investments, reports at the time suggesting she would be covered to Southern Hemisphere time by a leading European-based sire.
PERILOUS TASK
Predicting winners is a perilous task and few within the Godolphin organisation can have imagined when they sold each of Sobetsu’s three female siblings that they were parting with half-sisters to a future Group 1 winner. In addition to Lake Hamana, they sold the winning Street Cry mare Naruko for 74,000gns and her unraced full-sister Hokkaido for 1,000gns more. The former is already off the mark with her first foal, the Exceed And Excel colt In The Spotlight, winning this year.
Lake Toya is bred on the classic Darshaan/Sadler’s Well’s cross. Her dam Shinko Hermes was placed in Japan and she is the grandam in that country of Dee Majesty, a son of Deep Impact who won the Satsuki Sho (2000 Guineas) last year. Brought back to Europe Shinko Hermes is dam of the smart 2015 stakes-winning juvenile Sixth Sense (by Shamardal) and the Musidora Stakes runner-up Glen Innes (by Selkirk).
Go one more generation back and the pedigree becomes very familiar indeed. Shinko Hermes is an own-sister to Imagine and Strawberry Roan and a half-sister to Generous and Wedding Bouquet. Generous is very well known to all as one of those rarities, a dual Derby winner. That was back in 1991 when he won the Epsom and Curragh features, as well as the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, and they followed a two-year-old season that culminated with victory in the Dewhurst Stakes.
Imagine was also a dual classic winner, she triumphing in the Irish 1000 Guineas and the Oaks at Epsom and she has gone on to a fine career as a broodmare, breeding the ill-fated Group 1 winning juvenile Horatio Nelson, the Group 2 winners Viscount Nelson and Kitty Matcham and the Grade 3 winner Point Piper.
Wedding Bouquet was runner-up in the Group 1 National Stakes as well as being a winner at Group and Grade 3 level in Ireland at two and later in the USA. Through her stakes-placed daughter Ventura she is grandam of the brilliant Moonlight Cloud, winner of the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest three times and a host of other Group 1 races and who gave Black Caviar the fright of her racing career at Royal Ascot.
Finally, Strawberry Roan was a dual listed winner by Sadler’s Wells who ran second to Classic Park in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas.
Breeders, stallion masters and readers are invited to contact Leo Powell at leopowell@theirishfield.ie with news and updates for the column, and to visit our website www.theirishfield.ie for daily breeding news