Underrated Zed is still making his presence felt

ZED, the sire of this week’s Group 1 Melbourne Cup winner, stands at Grangewilliam Stud in New Zealand. He covered for the first time in 2007, and he earned his place at stud due to his pedigree and physique, rather than as a result of his racecourse performances.

A son of Zabeel (Sir Tristram), Zed won a maiden over a mile as a three-year-old from four starts and over two seasons, his career ending due to an injury. He started his career at stud at a fee of $500, and for a time even covered non-thoroughbred mares.

Connected

While he was well connected to many good racehorses and sires, he was never going to attract huge books of mares. Incidentally, he is from the same family, that of Eight Carat, which has produced his best runner. Verry Elleegant is inbred 5x5 to Eight Carat. Now in his twelfth season with runners, Zed has sired 275 starters, 158 of which have won, and 14 of these have been successful at stakes level.

Bred by Don Goodwin, Verry Elleegant is one of a pair of those runners to have been successful at Group 1 level. Six crops before she was born, Zed’s son Survived arrived among those members of his second crop, and he went on to win 11 times, his highlight coming with victory in the Group 1 Hawkes Bay Makfi Challenge Stakes.

Survived’s appearance, among others, resulted in Zed covering his biggest book of mares, 168, in 2003, but he has never got close to that number again.

Fashion

Such are the vagaries of fashion winning out against hard facts. Zed’s progeny have earned in excess of $20 million, he has 21 stakes performers, a number of his stock have done well over jumps, and he gets quality stayers.

Nowadays he attracts about 60 or 70 mares a year, breeders not obviously wishing to play the long game and give his stock the time they seem to require.

Mark Corcoran of Grangewilliam Stud accepts that Zed will never be flooded with large books of mares, in spite of proving his ability time and again. He describes the world of breeding as “a funny game. He’s really done it the hard way, all by himself.”