OWNED and bred by Gestüt Ammerland, the three-year-old Gaidar made an impressive debut on the all-weather at Chantilly on Tuesday. He is a horse whose trainer André Fabre will surely be able to place to best effect, and he is bred to be a good one.

Sadly, he is a gelding, and that decision must have been a difficult one to make, given that he has the pedigree of a stallion prospect. He is the 30th individual winner from the first crop of Churchill (Galileo), and all but five of these won at the age of two. Half a dozen have some blacktype, three being stakes winners.

Success for Gaidar means that the first eight foals from Grey Lilas (Danehill) to have run have won. The best pair among the eight are Golden Lilac and Grey Lion, both sired by Galileo (Sadler’s Wells). The former won three Group 1 races, notably the classics Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas and Prix de Diane-French Oaks. Grey Lion is a Group 3 winner in Australia.

Grey Lilas is the best offspring from the Ascot listed winner Kenmist (Kenmare), and that mare came close to having a perfect record at stud. Seven of her eight foals ran and won. Grey Lilas was placed in both of the classics won by her daughter, but she did manage to land a big one, winning the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp.

Willow Cove

A second three-year-old debut winner to keep an eye out for is Willow Cove. She must surely come on a ton for her recent win at Wolverhampton, and trainer Charlie Appleby will have every incentive to gain valuable blacktype with this Godolphin homebred daughter of Sea The Stars (Cape Cross) and Devonshire, who is by Fast Company (Danehill Dancer).

Willow Cove is the second foal and first winner for Devonshire, bred by Patrick Burns at Newlands House Stud and trained by Willie McCreery to land a Group 2 at the Curragh and place in the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 1000 Guineas. She had been sourced by John Ferguson for €100,000 at the 2013 Goffs Sportsman Yearling Sale, by some way the best price at the sale.

At the time her year older sibling Hurryupharriet (Camacho) had won a listed race weeks before the sale, as a two-year-old, beating the subsequent Group 1 winner Mecca’s Angel. Hurryupharriet’s son Exalted Angel (Dark Angel) won a listed race at Ayr last year.

Two years after Devonshire was born, along came her full-brother Veneer Of Charm (Fast Company), and he went on to become a Cheltenham Festival winner thanks to victory in the Grade 3 Fred Winter Juvenile Hurdle.

This is a family that had a renaissance of sorts in 2021, thanks to Winter Power (Bunge Inthejungle). She appears in the third remove of Willow Cove’s family, and she too was bred by Patrick Burns. Out of a winning half-sister to Devonshire’s dam, Winter Power won the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes and this placed her among the best three-year-old fillies in Europe last year.