CAMAS Park Stud needs no introduction and the Hyde family’s nursery has been the birthplace and nurturing ground for many champions.

At last month’s Fasig-Tipton November Sale, the farm was listed for a single purchase; that of the Lemon Drop Kid (Kingmambo) mare Show Me. She cost $535,000 and was sold with a covering by Munnings (Speightstown). This was the second time she was sold by the sales company as she realised just $24,000, also in foal to Munnings, in February 2018. What caused her value to increase almost 20 times?

Well, apart from the fact that her Grade 2 winning sire, based at Ashford Stud, has enjoyed major success and seen his fee go from a low of $10,000 to next year’s high of $85,000, the foal that Show Me was carrying, named Eda, won a stakes race this year at two and was Grade 2-placed. Well, the good news for the team at Camas is that the mare has probably doubled in value since last month, Eda having now having won another pair of stakes races.

Last weekend’s fourth win, the third time in a stakes race, came in the Grade 1 Starlet Stakes. Bred by Nathan McCauley, Eda has rewarded him many times over for his original $24,000 investment.

Oh, by the way, that purchase price was $1,000 less than Munnings’ covering fee at the time! Given that Show Me is a winning daughter of a top-class broodmare sire, a $240,000 yearling, a half-sister to a pair of stakes winners, and was in foal to a Grade 1 sire, how she slipped through the net is hard to imagine.

McCauley later sold Eda as a yearling for $240,000 (she made $550,000 when resold at the Ocala breeze-up sale), has parted with Show Me for $535,000, and still has a filly foal out the mare by Karakontie (Bernstein). He certainly hit the jackpot – and may do so again!

Munnings’ bonanza

What a year 2021 has been for Munnings. Some 217 mares covered at a fee of $40,000 means that many astute breeders are rubbing their hands with glee, given that he will more than double in price for 2022. He has been responsible for 18 stakes winners this year, an incredible number, and Eda is his second Grade 1 winning juvenile of 2021, Jack Christopher having captured the Champagne Stakes at Belmont in October.

The pair are among five top-level winners now for Munnings, something he didn’t manage to do himself during his three-season, 14-start career. That said, as well as being a triple Grade 2 winner, he was placed six times in Grade 1 races, from two to four. His current crop of two-year-olds is his eighth, and his key statistics are that he has 23 group/graded stakes winners and more than 50 blacktype winners in all.