AIDAN O’Brien has dominated the Group 2 Juddmonte Beresford Stakes and last year won it with Capri, the subsequent Group 1 Irish Derby and English St Leger winner. Nine years ago John Oxx sent out Sea The Stars to win and he went on the following year to conquer the racing world.
This year’s winner Saxon Warrior has the potential, and the pedigree, to go on and become an equine superstar. He is by one of the world’s most successful stallions in Deep Impact, is out of a champion and Group 1 winning daughter of the world’s best sire in Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), and his stakes winning grandam is a Danehill (Danzig) three-parts sister to the dual classic winner Dancing Rain (Danehill Dancer).
Let’s start with the fact that Saxon Warrior carries the suffix of his country of birth, Japan. Following her racing career, which saw her win the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes, earn champion status among her sex in Europe and go on to run third in the Group 1 1000 Guineas, Maybe was sent to Japan to be covered by their multiple champion sire Deep Impact.
A son of Sunday Silence (Halo) and the Group 1 winner and Oaks runner-up Wind In Her Hair (Alzao), Deep Impact went from winning a 10-furlong newcomers race on his only start at two to being champion in Japan for the next two years. He won 12 of his 14 starts, including the Japanese Derby, the Group 1 Japan Cup (with Ouija Board third) and retired to stud with earnings of some £7.3 million.
His sire Sunday Silence was a sensation at stud, following a racing career that saw him win the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic, Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. His offspring have excelled in Japan, but many of them are as well known outside the country as they are at home. In addition to Deep Impact, he is sire of Daiwa Major. Heart’s Cry (Group 1 Sheema Classic), Hat Trick (Group 1 Hong Kong Mile), Zenno Rob Roy (Japan Cup), Stay Gold (Group 1 Hong Kong Vase and Sheema Classic), Special Week (Japan Cup) and Sunday Joy (Group 1 Australian Oaks).
As successful as Sunday Silence was, Deep Impact has done even better. This year alone he is responsible for three Group 1 winners including Al Ain who won the Japanese 2000 Guineas, and Vivlos who landed the Dubai Turf at Meydan in March.
His biggest winner by earnings is the mare Gentildonna and she won in excess of €14 million in a career that saw her capture two versions of the Japan Cup, the Arima Kinen, the Sheema Classic, the Japanese 1000 Guineas and the Oaks.
According to Global Stallions, at the time of writing Deep Impact’s eight crops of racing age have yielded 13 champions, 81 group winners and 99 blacktype winners. His blacktype winners to foals of racing age ratio measures 9%. He covered this year at Shadai Stallions Station for a fee of €225,000.
Saxon Warrior is the second offspring of Maybe, following on from his full-sister Pavlenko who won this year and was placed in the Listed Platinum Stakes over a mile at Cork. Like her brother she is trained at Ballydoyle. The third offspring from Maybe is a colt foal by American Pharoah (Pioneerof The Nile) and this year she was covered by War Front (Danzig).
In the year that Maybe landed the Moyglare Stud Stakes, her dam Sumora was sold by Denis Brosnan’s Croom House Stud to M V Magnier for 2,400,000gns. Since then she has produced two more winners by Galileo, the better of the pair being the filly Promise To Be True who was a Group 3 winner in Ireland last year and then placed in both the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac and Criterium International in France. Sumora has a yearling colt and filly foal, both by Galileo.
Sumora raced for the Sangster family and was trained by Ger Butler. She earned blacktype on her second outing, winning the Listed St Hugh’s Stakes over the minimum trip at Newbury. She is one of a pair of stakes winners from the unraced Indian Ridge (Ahonoora) mare Rain Flower and the other is the 2011 Oaks and German Oaks winner Dancing Rain. She cost John Ferguson 4,000,000gns in 2013 carrying to Frankel (Galileo), and she is dam of her first winner this year, her juvenile daughter Magic Lily (New Approach) running out a wide-margin winner of a mile maiden at Newmarket last weekend and going into many notebooks as a future star. Dancing Rain has a yearling colt by New Approach (Galileo) and a filly foal by Dubawi (Dubai Millennium).
lucky 13th
Rain Flower is 20 years old and this year she had her 13th produce, a colt foal by Zoffany (Dansili), while her unraced two-year-old son Sharg (Invincible Spirit) was sold as a yearling for 500,000gns. Though she was unraced, Rain Flower was fully deserving of her place at stud, her siblings being headed by the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes, Epsom Derby and Irish Champion Stakes winner Dr Devious (Ahonoora), her three-parts brother.
Other stakes winning siblings to Rain Flower were the sprinter Archway (Thatching) who was champion at three in Ireland, the Group 3 Ormonde Stakes winner Royal Court (Sadler’s Wells) and the major Japanese stakes winner and Group 2 Hong Kong International Bowl placed Shinko King (Fairy King). The Japanese connection is maintained by Shinko King’s unraced own-sister Rose Of Suzuka and she is dam of the Group 1 winner Suzuka Phoenix (Sunday Silence).
Final mention goes to Band Of Angels (Alzao) and this half-sister to Rain Flower is the grandam of Awesome Planet (Giant’s Causeway). The latter Group 3 winner and Group 1 New Zealand 1000 Guineas placed mare is in turn the dam of Awesome Rock (Fastnet Rock) who won the 2016 Group 1 Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington, Melbourne.