SUCCESS STORY
Promising Prestige winner another feather in sire’s cap
Taken from the Racing Post, by Tony Morris
AT THE end of his first season with runners, DANSILI did
not seem to be anything special as a sire. He ranked eighth on the
list of newcomers in Britain and Ireland, and although his tally of
12 individual winners from 39 runners was respectable, they had won
only one race apiece, for an average prize of under £4,000. Almost
three-quarters of the earnings had come in place money.
By the end of the second season there was healthy progress to
report, with a particularly good ratio of winners to runners, but
there were still no stakes scorers in these islands, and more might
have been expected of a horse to whom British breeders had been
looking for assurance that he was a faithful agent for his late,
sire, Danehill.
But, of course, there were two distinctive Danehill types where
aptitude was concerned: DANSILI, who
did all his winning at lm, was always less likely to get a plethora
of precocious sprinters than Danehill Dancer had, and everything
about him — including his pedigree — suggested that his stock would
be better for more time and distance.
Last year we came to learn what DANSILI was
really about. In the spring his daughter Price Tag was unluckily
disqualified after coming home first in the Poule d'Essai des
Pouliches, but by the autumn his son Rail Link had won both the
Grand Prix de Paris and the Arc de Triomphe, while his juvenile
filly Passage Of Time had recorded a Group 1 victory in the
Criterium de Saint-Cloud. Thanks to those successes, DANSILI was
France's champion sire.
At home two smart colts in Strategic Prince and Thousand Words
helped to lift him to 11th place on the British/Irish list, but
more remarkable still were his tally of wins — 98, second only to
Pivotal — and a ratio of winners to runners that seemed positively
outlandish at close on 50 per cent. This year DANSILI has
hardly ever been out of the news. Five of his products have won
Pattern events, including Zambezi Sun in the Grand Prix de Paris,
and six others have been placed at Group 3 level, three from his
second crop and three from his third. A couple from that first crop
who did not initially excite — Dansili Dancer (at middle distances)
and Grantley Adams (in sprints) — have been enhancing their
reputations.
Among the juveniles he has an apparently outstanding male prospect
in Ireland in Famous Name, a seven- length debut winner at Naas for
Dermot Weld, while in France he is represented by one of the
leaders of the distaff group, Proviso, successful in the Group 3
Prix du Calvados at Deauville. And on Saturday he registered a
notable treble, when home-bred filly Sense Of Joy took the Group 3
Prestige Stakes at Goodwood, 20,000gns Newmarket buy Dan Tucket
landed the valuable nursery at Newmarket, and Manipura, bought for
€55,000 at the BBAG yearling sale, ran away with the race for
graduates of that auction by seven lengths at Baden-Baden.
Again among the leading British- based sires for progeny wins and
earnings, and easily best in terms of that all-important
winners-to-runners ratio, DANSILI clearly continues on the rise. And he
has still had no runners conceived for a higher fee than £12,500.
It was only this spring, when he covered at £30,000, that he was
able to attract the sort of quality in his book that his results
deserve.
There were mixed reactions to the victory of Sense Of Joy, with one
bookmaker convinced that it made her less of a 1,000 Guineas
contender than she had been considered after her maiden success at
Newmarket. It. is true that she did not have it all her own way at
Goodwood, but the company was undoubtedly stronger, the pace and
the peculiar nature of the track clearly did not suit her, and in
spite of her greenness she prevailed handily enough in the end.
I would be reluctant to find fault with a filly who is still
learning her trade, really needs further than 7f now, and who is
bred to show to greater advantage as a three-year-old. All being
well, the Fillies' Mile will provide us with a better opportunity
to gauge her status among the younger generation.
SENSE OF JOY is a half-sister to Day Flight, who won three times at
Group 3 level up to the 1m5f of the Ormonde Stakes. Sadler's Wells
may well have been a contributory factor in respect of his stamina,
but we already have proof of DANSILI's
capacity to sire Group 1 performers at middle distances, and the
distaff pedigree allows plenty of confidence that Sense Of Joy will
not be lacking in that department.
Bonash was good at two, successful in the lm Group 3 Prix d'Aumale,
but she was better in her second season, collecting two more
Pattern victories, one of them at 1m4f in the Group 2 Prix de
Malleret. She went into the Oaks still unbeaten, came out of it
hardly discredited with a respectable fifth place, but then gave
her only disappointing display when ninth of ten in the Irish
Oaks.
By the recently deceased Rainbow Quest, whose influence as a
broodmare sire will long survive him Bonash is a half-sister to
Media Nox, who won a Grade 2 in California and acquired fresh fame
as the dam of Admiral's Voyage Nebraska Tornado, successful in both
Petitioner the Prix de Diane and Prix du Moulin four years ago.
Bonash and Media Nox were both significantly better athletes than
their dam, Sky Love, one of the lesser daughters of Nijinsky,
successful only in minor races over 1m2f at Newmarket and Ripon.
Sky Love was a half-sister to Raft, bought for Khalid Abdullah at
Saratoga for $140,000 a month after the acquisition of his
contemporary, Rainbow Quest, for $950,000 at Newtown Paddocks in
Lexington. Raft did not rise to the same heights as Rainbow
Quest, but he did win the Group 2 Prix de la Cote Normande and
finish third in Palace Music's Champion Stakes, and his early
promise was presumably the reason for the addition of his dam,
Gangster Of Love, to the Juddmonte broodmare band.
Though a runner of no special merit herself, Gangster Of Love was a
daughter of the outstanding runner and sire Round Table out of
Woozem, a highly rated juvenile in the States in 1966 and
half-sister to multiple stakes winners in Run For Nurse and Gallant
Romeo. What was once a family noted for speedy runners on dirt is
now well established as a fruitful source of high-class
middle-distance turf performers. Sense Of Joy promises to prove a
typical worthy representative.
Date:
30 August 2007