MERRY Fox Stud is the trading and racing name for Craig Bennett, recently featured by my colleague Olivia Hamilton in this paper.

This followed the Down Royal maiden success for the Paddy Twomey-trained Treasure Trove, a homebred daughter of Siyouni (Pivotal), and the only horse Bennett currently has in training in Ireland. I would venture to suggest that this will grow now after Treasure Trove’s recent stakes win at York.

In the interview Bennett conducted with Olivia, he revealed that he had time and money following the sale of a business he previously owned to pursue other interests.

That was in 2006, and at the following year’s Book 1 Yearling Sale in Newmarket a filly by Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) out of Brigid (Irish River), later named Liffey Dancer, sold for the sale-topping price of 2,500,000gns, a million more than the next best lot.

What made Liffey Dancer so special? Well, she was sold in the immediate aftermath of her full-sister, Listen (Sadler’s Wells), winning the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at Ascot, and prior to that the Aiden O’Brien-trained filly had been runner-up in the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes. Listen was the third stakes winner out of Brigid, and the second Group 1 winner.

Born seven years before Listen, her own-sister Sequoyah (Sadler’s Wells) won the Moyglare Stud Stakes, and in 2007 that mare’s son Henrythenavigator (Kingmambo) had been successful in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes and second in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes. We know now that he went on to win four Group 1 races, two classics, the St James’s Palace Stakes and the Sussex Stakes, and to be a Group 1 sire.

Most coveted

In fact, the family, which was already one of the best around, has become one of the most coveted in the stud book, but for some time it looked as if the Klondike given for Liffey Dancer was not going to have a payback. She never raced, has eight living foals of racing age, and these include just three winners. However, one of these, a Distorted Humor (Forty Niner) filly, is Pichola Dance, and she won twice for Bennett and was placed in a listed race.

Pichola Dance is the dam of Treasure Trove, her second foal and first winner, and the two-year-old’s recent stakes win has boosted this branch of the family – with more likely to come. The quality of the Irish racing programme, and current crop of juveniles, meant that Treasure Trove was coming up against the likes of Group 1 winner Blackbeard and Group 2 winner Meditate as she tried to land a stakes win here.

Thankfully Paddy Twomey spotted the opportunity to win a blacktype race in Britain, and now the team can try to go better and win a pattern race. Meanwhile, the family got another 2022 boost when Pichola Dance’s placed half-sister Paper Faces (Lemon Drop Kid) bred the Listed Diana Trial winner in Germany, a classic test, and this was Peshmerga (Counterattack).