WHAT a job Archie Watson has done since he took over the training of Outbox in late 2020. The Godolphin-consigned then five-year-old was sent to the Tattersalls October Horses-In-Training Sale and sold, from the Crisford’s Gainsborough Stables, for just 16,000gns to Watson and Blandford Bloodstock.

At sale time Outbox had been off the track for more than a year. The son of Frankel (Galileo) won his only three starts at three, and headed into his four-year-old season unbeaten. While he failed to win in five starts that year, he showed a good level of form and was placed in listed races in Chantilly and Chester and in a couple of class two handicaps.

Watson had Outbox back on the track in January 2021 and, in the 13 months since, has sent him to the races on no less than 17 occasions. This has yielded four more victories, a number of placings, and more than £500,000 extra in prize money. What a bargain that 16,000gns looks now. The majority of those winnings were earned at the weekend when the seven-year-old Outbox captured the H.H. The Amir Trophy at Al Rayyan in Qatar. This listed victory was appropriate for the well-bred gelding, given that he is by the 2021 champion sire and unbeaten racehorse Frankel, and the first foal of a Group 2 winner who can claim Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) as a sibling.

Immediate impact

Emirates Queen, the Street Cry (Machiavellian) dam of Outbox, won the Lancashire Oaks, and she is making an immediate impact at stud, her second foal being the juvenile winner and listed-placed Royal Champion (Shamardal). He has only started three times. The unraced Emirates Express (Dark Angel) is next, followed by a yearling colt by Kingman (Invincible Spirit).

We all know what a good racehorse and even better sire Dubawi is, and he and Emirates Queen, along with the listed winner Princess Nada (Barathea), are the three stakes-winning produce of Zomaradah (Deploy). That Luca Cumani-trained mare was a group/graded winner in Italy, Ireland and Canada, landing the Group 1 Oaks d’Italia and the E.P. Taylor Stakes at Woodbine, then a Grade 2 but now upgraded.

Zomaradah is a granddaughter of the winning mare High Tern (High Line), and she is the dam of two stakes winners, High-Rise (High Estate) and Supremacy (Vettori). The latter is not to be confused with the new sire at Yeomanstown Stud, this version being a Royal Ascot winner two decades ago, while High-Rise won the 1998 Derby at Epsom.