KYLLACHY, the champion sprinter and leading sire, was recently retired from covering after suffering fertility problems. The 19-year-old son of Pivotal, who himself is still going strong, was a mainstay at Cheveley Park Stud since he joined the stallion ranks there in 2003.

A winner on his debut at two, and stakes-placed at three, it was in his third season racing that we saw the best of him. He won the Group 3 Palace House Stakes, before going on to take the Group 2 Temple Stakes by four lengths. The best was yet to come and he earned his championship honours in the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes. From what seemed to be an impossible draw, he displayed breath-taking acceleration to cut down his rivals inside the final furlong, leading Jamie Spencer to describe the experience as “like driving a Ferrari against Minis”.

At stud his best progeny was the multiple Group 1 winner Sole Power who followed in his father’s hoof-prints and won the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes – though he did it twice. Kyllachy also sired the Group 1 winners Twilight Son (a Cheveley Park stallion) and Krypton Factor, as well as the Group 2 winners Penitent, Arabian Gleam, Tariq, Dragon Pulse and the recently retired Stepper Point.

This year has been no different and his daughter Heartache ran away with the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot before adding a second success at that level at the weekend when she won the Flying Childers Stakes at Doncaster. Now winner of three of her four starts, she was also third to the subsequent Group 1 winner and future Cheveley Park stallion Unfortunately in the Group 2 Prix Robert Papin.

Heartache was bred by Chris Harper at Whitsbury Manor Stud and is the first foal of that farm’s homebred Place In My Heart (Compton Place), an appropriate winner of the Listed Whitsbury Manor Stud Lansdown Fillies Stakes and Group 3 placed in France. She is followed by a Showcasing (Oasis Dream) yearling filly in Book 2 at Tattersalls next month, and an Iffraaj (Zafonic) filly foal.

Place In My Heart is the third generation of the direct female family to be bred and raced by the Harpers. Heartache’s grandam Lonely Heart (Midyan) was stakes-placed and her six winners also include the Group 3 Tetrarch Stakes winner Leitrim House (Cadeaux Genereux). The next dam, Heartache’s third, was the four-time winner Take Heart (Electric) and her six successful progeny included the two-year-old winner Sacre Coeur, a daughter of Compton Place (Indian Ridge). Sacre Coeur’s best offspring was Stepper Point, a son of Kyllachy, and bred on the same cross as Heartache.

Stepper Point was a regular visitor to Ireland and his best wins were in the Group 2 Sapphire Stakes at the Curragh and the Group 3 Flying Five Stakes at the same venue. He twice came close to landing a Group 1, finishing second in the King’s Stand Stakes and the Nunthorpe Stakes – on both occasions to Kyllachy’s Sole Power!

The first five dams of Heartache won and have enjoyed great success at stud. Place In My Heart has made an outstanding start to her breeding career and she is well placed to become the best of them.