ZAMBEZI SUN STEPS OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Taken from the Racing Post
Pedigree Analysis by Tony Morris
At the end if June 2006, DANSILI
ranked 39th on the French sires’ list, with progeny earnings
€700,000 inferior to the leader; he wound up as champion. The rise
to the top gathered steam with Rail Link’s victory in the Grand
Prix de Paris in mid-July, and in October the same Juddmonte-bred
colt’s success in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe lifted him to the
top.
At the end of June this year, DANSILI
occupied 30th place in the table, some €600,000 below the top. Can
history be about to repeat itself? The change from the rear began
on Saturday evening with a profoundly impressive display in the
Grand Prix de Paris by another Juddmonte colt, Zambezi Sun, who now
has the Arc in his sights and is at single-digit odds to hit the
target.
Of course, there is no knowing what might have happened but for
the mishap to Eagle Mountain, second and third in his previous
Derby bids at Epsom and the Curragh. But it was impossible not to
be taken by the manner of Zambezi Sun’s victory. Never far off the
pace, he took command readily when Stephen Pasquier asked him the
question, and stormed clear in the final furlong to win by five
lengths.
Zambezi Sun, still inexperienced, with only four runs behind
him, should probably still be unbeaten. He did not make his
racecourse debut until April, but by the end of that month he had
chalked up two wins at Longchamp, and he appeared to be desperately
unlucky in the Prix du Jockey Club, when he came in from far off
the pace by the widest route and was flying at the finish, two
lengths off the cannily ridden Lawman.
As Zambezi Sun’s chief market rival was missing at the end of
the Grand Prix, it was inevitable that some would question the
value of the form. What did he beat? Well, he trounced Axxos, a
Group 2 winner who would have started favourite for the Deutsches
Derby if the Hamburg course had not turned into a quagmire and
bought about his withdrawal. And he exposed the limitations of the
highly regarded Airmail Special, a Group 3 winner over the course
and distance in the Prix du Lys. It was a performance quite on a
par with that of Rail Link a year earlier, not one to be lightly
regarded.
What have we learnt about DANSILI this
year that we did not know before? In a sense, the best news is old
hat – the fact that the results of 2006 were no flash in the pan. A
lot of horses have one good year and, in effect, go missing the
next. That has not happened in DANSILI’s
case, for at the halfway point in the season only one horse with a
comparable number of starters in Britain and Ireland can match his
winner-to-runner ratio of 40%. That horse is Galileo, who has been
treated to high quality mares in numbers, while standing at a high
fee. Dansili, by contrast, covered his first two seasons at £8,000,
and will not have a runner conceived at a higher price than £12,500
until 2010.
It is no coincidence that most of DANSILI’s
best performers have been bred by Juddmonte, which from the outset
supported him as keenly as it promoted him. Such is the strength in
depth of its broodmare band, judiciously developed and no less
judiciously culled over many years, that there are always
well-credentialed mates available for its own stallions.
No horse can hope to achieve consistent success at stud without
the help of suitable mares, and while the record to date indicates
that, by and large, commercial breeders should be happy with
DANSILI’s results in the ring, and buyers have reason
to be satisfied by his high proportion of winners, he has not had
enough top-quality mares to deliver outstanding performers in
numbers.
That is not surprising, given the relatively low fees at stud
which he stood until this year, and nor is it surprising that the
size of his books has fluctuated. Rail Link was one of 126 in his
second crop, while Zambezi Sun and three other Pattern winners to
date have come from a crop of 68. This years two-year-olds number
no more than 60. But there were three figure books again in 2005
and 2006, and this season, when he stood at £30,000, he will have
had quality and quantity, something he should enjoy in the
foreseeable future.
A glance down Zambezi Sun’s tail-female line provides a
reminder, if it were necessary, that tempus fugit. Was it really 40
years ago that I fell in love with a yearling filly in the
Tattersalls ring, and couldn’t resist giving her an enthusiastic
write-up? It was the last morning of the Houghton Sales – a few
hours before Reform floored the odds-on Royal Palace in the
Champion Stakes – and I predicted great things for the daughter of
Klairon, already named Peace, offered from what was then Sir John
Musker’s Shadwell Stud.
Jeremy Tree bought her for 16.000gns – a sizeable sum at the
time – on behalf of Jock Whitney, and when she trotted up in the
Blue Seal Stakes at Ascot on her debut 11 months later, I thought I
had found my vocation as prophet. The bookmakers promptly made her
favourite for both fillies’ Classics.
Needless to say, we were all wrong. At three she was beaten in
the Kempton Trial by Full Dress, who went on to win the 1,000, she
patently failed to stay in the Lingfield Oaks Trial, and adorned
with blinkers for her last start, ran astinker in the Coronation
Stakes.
It is a bit late now to offer the claim that what I had meant to
predict for Peace was a great career as a broodmare. This is what I
should have done, for Peace duly delivered the winners, including
Quiet Fling (Coronation Cup), Peacetime and Armistice Day (both
successful at Group 3 level), and a couple who scored in Listed
company, Peaceful and Intermission.
It was Intermission who found her way into the Juddmonte
broodmare band, and her daughter Interval, third in the 1,000
Guineas and subsequently winner of the Prix Maurice de Gheest,
continued the success story by producing such as Short Pause (Group
3) and Cheyenne Dream (Listed), along with two daughters who did
not achieve much on the racecourse, but were to deliver top-level
winners.
Krisia made her mark as the dam of Continent, the durable
sprinter who won a July Cup and a Prix de l’Abbaye, and Imbabala
has out matched her with Group 2 scorer Kalabar and now Zambezi
Sun. I knew I couldn’t be entirely wrong about
Peace.
Date:
19 July 2007