YOU get what you pay for. In the case of Sir Gerhard, a five-year-old son of Jeremy (Danehill Dancer), Cheveley Park Stud have the favourite for the Grade 1 Weatherbys Bumper at Cheltenham.

Mind you, they might expect to having paid £400,000 a year ago at the Tattersalls Cheltenham December Sale for the gelding who had won his only point-to-point start for Ellmarie Holden and with Derek O’Connor in the saddle. This was the third time in a sale ring for the Fitzpatrick’s Keatingstown Bloodstock-bred.

He was sold as a foal at Goffs to Peter Molony’s Rathmore Stud for 17,000 and returned a handsome profit when returning to the same ring at the land Rover Sale and realising €72,000. After his most recent sale he joined Gordon Elliott and could not have been more impressive when scoring on his racecourse bow at Down Royal, winning by 14 lengths.

It was a different matter when he lined up against a number of winners for the Listed Future Champions Bumper at Navan last weekend but the outcome was the same, and so impressive was he that bookmakers took no chances for Cheltenham and he is now a hot favourite to give the Richardsons in Cheveley Park a third successive win in the race, after Envoi Allen and Ferny Hollow.

What a loss Jeremy’s death has been to the industry but great to know that we have his Group 2 winning son Success Days at stud in Ireland. He completed his first season at Kilbarry Lodge Stud in 2020.

Who will ever forget the performances of some of Jeremy’s best runners under National Hunt rules, Our Conor and Jer’s Girl being especially outstanding, while Reserve Tank and Whiskey Sour were other Grade 1 winners.

Sir Gerhard is the first foal from the Authorized (Montjeu) mare Faanan Aldaar. She was trained by Paul Deegan and placed numerous times on the flat before selling to Tom Malone at the Goffs Horses In Training Sale for €17,000. Racing for Joe Fitzpatrick and trained by Philip Rothwell, Faanan Aldaar was frustratingly placed many times over hurdles before finally getting her head in front in a maiden hurdle at Roscommon.

Her second offspring, Seven Eleven Ten (Gale Force Ten), was bought last year by Kevin Ross for €10,000 and, in training with Brian Ellison, is unraced to date. Ross also purchased another of Faanan Aldaar’s offspring, her two-year-old Fulbright (Exceed And Excel) colt, while Mount Eaton Stud last year paid €18,000 for the now yearling colt by Champs Elysees (Danehill).

Rabbah Bloodstock

Fanaan Aldaar was bred by Rabbah Bloodstock and she is one of eight winners from the Group 3 winning juvenile Ya Hajar (Lycius). The best of the rest was Prince Of All (Iffraaj), winner of the Listed Patton Stakes at Dundalk six years ago. This is quite a winner-producing family, Ya Hajar being one of 10 successful progeny out of the German listed winner Shy Lady (Kaldoun).

Half of those 10 winners won stakes races but one of them stood head and shoulders above the others. Zafeen (Zafonic) was runner-up to Refuse To Bend in the 2000 Guineas before heading to Royal Ascot and capturing the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes. Trained by Mick Channon, he only enjoyed moderate success with his runners at stud.

No wonder Japan loves Frankel

JAPAN provided the great Frankel with his first Group 1 winner, Soul Stirring winning the 2016 Hanshin Juvenile Fillies Stakes. She went on to add the Yushun Himba-Oaks the following year to her tally of successes.

That first crop had six Group 1 winners among them, including Cracksman, while Mozu Ascot has twice been successful at the highest level in Japan. Now the same country has provided the Banstead Manor Stud resident with his 12th Group 1 winner in the shape of the two-year-old colt Grenadier Guards, the first from the stallion’s fifth crop to win at that level.

On his fourth start, and gaining his second success, Grenadier Guards not only won Japan’s most prestigious race for two-year-olds, but he broke the mile track raced at Hanshin into the bargain.

From a smart Canadian family on his dam side, Grenadier Guards joins his dam Wavell Avenue, a daughter of Harlington (Unbridled) as the second top-level winner in the family. He is her first foal, being followed by a yearling filly by Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) and a filly foal by Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha).

Grenadier Guards was bred by Katsumi Yoshida’s Northern Racing, the result of sending the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint heroine Wavell Avenue to Frankel. This win, on dirt, was her only Grade 1 victory among seven successes, and she was runner-up, narrowly beaten, the following year in the Grade 1 Filly & Mare Sprint.

Wavell Avenue was sold by breeder Eugene Melnyk as an unraced three-year-old after he announced his retirement from racing. She went to the Summer Horses In Training Sale at Fasig-Tipton and sold to bloodstock agent Steve Young for $70,000. It was money well spent for the best runner sired by the now Saudi Arabia-based Harlington.

Rumours of Storm’s death untrue

DELIGHTED to hear from Janet Kinsella in Knockhouse Stud this week, and more thrilled to hear that I had an incorrect piece of information in the column last weekend. I was writing about the smart Kerry Lee-trained Storm Control, the Grade 3 Unibet Chase winner at Cheltenham.

Bred by John Kidd, the seven-year-old was winning at Cheltenham for the second time in a month, but I erroneously stated, thanks to incorrect information on the pedigree-generating database, that his sire September Storm (Monsun) died in 2020.

Well, the good news is that this was fake news, and the German Derby trial winner, and sire of Mia’s Storm, Longhouse Sale and others, will stand for 2021 at a fee of €2,500. He is based at Sean Kinsella’s Knockhouse Stud in Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny which has been home to many top-class sires since its foundation in 1970.

In the past half a century since it has been home to two particularly noteworthy sires in the influential Roselier, and also Beneficial who went to stud there after he finished racing.

Today it houses five sires, and the others are Group 2 Dante Stakes winner and Group 1 Derby runner-up Libertarian (New Approach), Group 1 Preis von Baden winner Prince Flori (Lando), Tirwanako (Sin Kiang) and the Group 1 Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Workforce (King’s Best).