MARE OF THE MONTH

Pacemaker

To call Hasili ‘mare of the month’ seems an extraordinary understatement – ‘mare of the millennium’ might be a more appropriate accolade. The latest high-class runner out of the 17-year-old Kahyasi mare – whose other offspring include the young sire sensation DANSILI, his younger brother and fellow Juddmonte stallion CACIQUE and the multiple Group/Grade 1 – winning mares Banks Hill, Heat Haze and Intercontiental – is Champs Elysees, an impressive winner of the San Marcos Stakes (G2) at Santa Anita in January.

In the autumn of 2005 Hasili crossed the Atlantic in a switch from Britain to Juddmonte Farms in Lexington. The move represented a homecoming for the distaff side of the mare’s pedigree: her female antecedents had been based in America more or less exclusively since 1858, when her 15th dam Emilia was exported there with her weanling son – who later became six-time US champion sire Australian, founder of the American sire line that leads to Man O’War, War Admiral and Tiznow – until 1976, when her second dam Sookera was bought as a yearling by Robert Sangster to race in Europe, where she won the Cheveley Park Stakes (G1) and produced the Nunthorpe (G1) winner So Factual and the July Stakes (G3) winner Bold Fact at stud.

Between Emilia and Sookera came plenty of other outstanding broodmares, including Hasili’s fifth dam Itsabet, ancestress of numerous stakes winners and also the fifth dam of Giant’s Causeway; Itsabet’s fourth dam Scramble, who produced the Kentucky Derby second Naishapur; and Scramble’s third dam Spinaway, the US champion two-year-old of 1855, after whom Saratoga’s Grade 1 race for juvenile fillies is named, and who produced the Suburban Handicap winner Lazzarone.

The burden of expectation placed on Banks Hill, Heat Haze and Intercontinental to extend this formidable female line will be great; but Hasili also has another daughter, a yearling filly by Storm Cat, who can hopefully one day emulate her dam’s achievements in the paddock.

Hasili is currently in-foal to EMPIRE MAKER on a late May cover, so she may be rested for the current breeding season.

Date:  6 March 2008