SHE was already a bargain, having won a listed race last year at two, but it is still worthwhile highlighting the race record to date of Purciaretta. When she won a maiden at Firenze on her debut last May she became the seventh first-crop winner for her sire, Tally-Ho Stud’s Cotai Glory.

Now that son of Exceed And Excel (Danehill) is responsible for more than 40 individual winners, two of which were successful in blacktype events. Purciaretta joins the Group 2 Prix Robert Papin and Group 3 Prix du Bois winner Atomic Force in that select group, though Cotai Glory has also sired six stakes-placed performers.

Bred by Ross Morehead’s Glacken View Stud in Bunclody, Co Wexford, Purciaretta won for the fifth time in eight career starts over six furlongs in Rome last weekend, and surely she will now be aimed at group races. In November she had three lengths and more to spare as she landed the five-furlong Listed Premio Divino Amore, beating eight opponents.

Purciaretta was sold as a foal for just €3,200 at Tattersalls Ireland to Ben Clarke and John Hughes. She was one of 41 foals traded that year in her sire’s first crop, and she was one of the least expensive. Sadly for her investors, they did not profit from their pinhook, and at the 2020 Goffs Sportsman’s Sale she resold for just £3,000 from Wardstown Stud, owned by Ben’s parents Mark and Elaine Clarke.

Multiples

Not only has Purciaretta become a stakes winner, but her half-sister Abby Hatcher (Acclamation) became one too, capturing the Grade 3 Chicago Stakes last year at Arlington. She subsequently sold at the Keeneland November Sale for $185,000. That was many multiples what Greg Saveall-Green paid at the 2020 December Sale for the five-year-old winner Cape Liberty (Cape Cross).

Cape Liberty is a half-sister to Abby Hatcher and Purciaretta, and Saveall-Green gave just 1,000gns for her. With a foal on the ground by Teofilo (Galileo), Cape Liberty was not in foal and was part of the annual reduction in the broodmare band of Godolphin. This was before the emergence of Abbey Hatcher as a graded stakes winner of course.

It was almost inevitable that a good horse or two would appear in this branch of the family. After all Purciaretta’s dam Sharqawiyah is a winning daughter of Dubawi (Dubai Millennium), and she was successful over a mile and half a furlong at three. The next dam Pompey Girl (Rainbow Quest) is responsible for four winners, and she in turn is a daughter of the stakes winner Inchri (Sadler’s Wells).

The latter mare is responsible for eight winning progeny, the Group 3 South African winner Hawk’s Eye (Hawk Wing) being the best. A three-parts sister to Group 3 winner Ursa Major (Galileo), Inchri is also a half-sister to the stakes-placed, five-time winner Whirly Bird (Nashwan)., and here we find genuine Group 1 class.

Whirly Bird’s best runner was the dual Group 1 winner Poet’s Word (Poet’s Voice), and he now stands at Boardsmill Stud. His seven victories were headlined by the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes. Beckford (Bated Breath) is out of a half-sister to Poet’s Word and, after winning the Group 2 Railway Stakes, he was runner-up in both the Group 1 National Stakes and Group 1 Phoenix Stakes.