A COUPLE of weeks ago I suggested that Lezoo might well become the first northern hemisphere Group 1 winner for Zoustar (Northern Meteor). That prediction has come to pass very quickly.

Zoustar has completed four seasons at Tweenhills Farm and Stud, and for three of those he stood for a fee of £25,000. It rose to £30,000 in 2020. He is an established Group 1 stallion, with three winners at that grade in Australia, among his some 30 stakes winners down under.

He is having something of a purple patch in recent times with his first crop racing in this part of the world, and Zoustar has, at the time of writing, had 11 individual two-year-old winners. Leading the way among his European juveniles is Lezoo, a filly who patently thrives on racing.

Lezoo was purchased for €110,000 by Atlas Bloodstock in May at the Arqana Breeze-Up Sale, and has won four of her five starts, a novice, a listed race, the Group 3 Princess Margaret Keeneland Stakes at Ascot, and now the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket. She was beaten half a length in the Group 2 Duchess of Cambridge Stakes on her only other run.

Her sale in May, from the Tally-Ho Stud consignment, was Lezoo’s second time to trade at public auction. She sold last year for 77,000gns from Chasemore Stud in Book 3 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale to Hamish Macauley.

Lezoo is owned in partnership by Marc Chan, who has also teamed up with Ralph Beckett to win three Group 2 races with Kinross, and Andrew Rosen.

Saturday’s win continues a great season for her breeders, Andrew and Jane Black, and their Surrey-based Chasemore Farm. Lezoo is their first Group 1 winner and comes just 11 years after they established the venture.

They also bred and raced the Group 2 Greenlands Stakes winner Brad The Brief, and bred the juvenile colt Noble Style who stretched his unbeaten sequence to three when landing the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes at York last month.

The Blacks sold Lezoo’s dam Roger Sez, a daughter of Red Clubs (Red Ransom), the year the Group 1 winner was foaled. Roger Sez cost Rabbah Bloodstock 45,000gns, carrying a Territories (Invincible Spirit) filly who is catalogued as Lot 169 in next week’s Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.

Incredibly, she was sold again last year, to Jerome and Lisa Hulin’s Melchior Bloodstock, for 28,000gns, and this year she produced a colt for them by Invincible Army (Invincible Spirit) who is pencilled in for the Tattersalls December Foal Sale.

Sensational start

Zoustar was a dual Group 1 scorer in Australia before enjoying a sensational start to his stallion career, producing two champions in his initial crop and becoming the highest earning first season sire in Australian history.

David Redvers, owner and managing director of Tweenhills, said: “Chasemore Farm have been exceptionally good clients of Tweenhills over the years, so we are tremendously pleased to have been part of their first ever Group 1 victory thanks to Lezoo.

“Sending her dam to Zoustar was an ingenious mating, based on the success that he had been having with Red Ransom mares in Australia. For such a comparatively young breeding operation to break through at the top level so quickly is a magnificent achievement.

“We bought into Zoustar soon after he won the Australian equivalent of the Commonwealth Cup, the [Group 1] Coolmore Stud Stakes, and then brought him over to run at Royal Ascot in 2014. He was the ante-post favourite for the Diamond Jubilee Stakes before a knock just a few days before the race meant that he couldn’t run.

Given his lack of profile in this country, we felt that we had to start his stallion career in Australia, but since 2019 he has been reverse shuttling back to Tweenhills.

Shuttler

“He arrives each year in the last week of December and returns to Australia in the first week in July to continue covering at Widden Stud in New South Wales. He has a much lower covering fee over here, roughly a quarter of what we charge in Australia, so breeders can see what value they are getting.

“We have been limiting him to 125 mares here and he has had a full book every season.

“His progeny are not terribly precocious; in Australia they tend to improve dramatically from two to three as they fill out their big frames. However, as we come to the tail-end of the season, he has been getting lots of winners.

“Lezoo looks like being very similar to [three-time Group 1 winner] Sunlight, who was champion two-year-old filly from his first crop in Australia, and to get a Group 1 with his first crop here too really takes the pressure off. He has always produced good-looking horses who sell well. He had the sale topper at the Tattersalls Somerville Sale a couple of weeks ago, and we have so much to look forward to at the big yearling sales in the coming days.”

Sale yearling

It is amazing to think that Roger Sez was sold twice, and for so little, but Chasemore remains home to her first foal, the winning mare Brogan (Pivotal). Her Showcasing (Oasis Dream) yearling colt is in Book 2 of the upcoming Tattersalls October Sale. Brogan is off the mark as a winner producer.

Roger Sez was bred by the late Brian Kennedy at his Meadowlands Stud in Co Down and sold as a foal for 5,000gns to bloodstock agent John Walsh. Resold as a yearling to Tim Easterby for £13,000 at Doncaster, she was a precocious juvenile, winning four of her nine starts that year, one of these being the Group 3 Firth of Clyde Stakes at Ayr. She is the dam of four winners with her first five foals.