THE highs and lows of the sport of racing were experienced by the Tsui family this past week. They lost their star racemare Sea Of Class, the best they have had since the Arc winner Urban Sea, and this came just days after they would have joined in celebrating victory for the Oppenheimer owned and bred Star Catcher in the Group 1 Kerrygold Irish Oaks.

This latest classic success came exactly 12 months after Sea Of Class had announced her arrival on the international stage with a storming success in the same race. She was to go on to add the Group 1 Darley Yorkshire Oaks and to run the brilliant Enable so close in the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Star Catcher is the latest in a conveyor belt of recent stars bred at Anthony Oppenheimer’s Hascombe and Valiant Studs, joining Cracksman and Golden Horn as a Group 1 winner to be raised and raced by the owner. It was obviously not the original intention to race Star Catcher, since she was offered for sale as a foal and officially recorded as having been sold for 240,000gns to Blandford Bloodstock. She was in fact retained and that price would suggest that one more bid may well have bought her.

The dam of Star Catcher is Lynnwood Chase, a member of the first crop sired by the brilliant South African-bred Horse Chestnut, a son of Fort Wood (Sadler’s Wells). Hugo Lascelles bought Lynnwood Chase as a yearling at the 2003 yearling sale in Deauville for €140,000 and she raced in France in the colours of Antoinette Oppenheimer, managing a single placed effort when trained by Richard Gibson.

Horse Chestnut, who died just four years ago, was not as good a sire as he was a racehorse. Bred by Harry Oppenheimer at Mauritzfontein Stud, Horse Chestnut was only beaten once in a racing career of 10 starts, nine of them in South Africa. He was raced by Oppenheimer and his wife Bridget, won the Triple Crown and was named both Horse of the Year and champion three-year-old colt.

Sent to America, Horse Chestnut won the Grade 3 Broward Handicap at Gulfstream Park on his debut in the country but disaster struck during his preparation for the Grade 1 Donn Handicap when he fractured a splint bone, resulting in his early retirement from racing. The Oppenheimers sold a majority of shares to Claiborne Farm where he went to stud. He was relocated back to South Africa in 2009 and stood at Drakenstein Farm Stud until his death.

While Lynnwood Chase was not a success on the racecourse, she earned her place at stud thanks to the emergence of her year-older half-brother Lord Admiral (El Prado) as a smart runner. Raced by the late Jacqueline O’Brien and one of the best horses trained by her son Charles, Lord Admiral was partnered by Michael Kinane to victories in the Group 2 Jebel Hatta and the Group 3 Al Rashidiya at Nad Al Sheba, while in Ireland his biggest win was in the Group 3 Ballycorus Stakes at Leopardstown. He later went to stud in India.

At stud Lynnwood Chase has excelled and Star Catcher is her second winner at the highest level. Cannock Chase (Lemon Drop Kid) was first to achieve that distinction thanks to his victory in 2015 Grade 1 Canadian International Stakes at Woodbine, a race alone that was worth more than his yearling purchase price of 310,000gns.

In England he was a solid Group 3 performer, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, and he has about 40 yearlings on the ground from his first crop.

Prior to Star Catcher and Cannock Chase, Lynnwood Chase bred the latter’s Group 3 Royal Ascot winning full-brother Pisco Sour (Lemon Drop Kid) and he went a step better in France when capturing the Group 2 Prix Eugene Adam at Maisons-Laffitte.

In fact, Star Catcher is the only one of the five winners from his dam who is not by Lemon Drop Kid (Kingmambo). The five come from the mare’s first seven foals, while following on are a two-year-old filly named Maurimo (Kingman), a yearling filly by Frankel (Galileo) and a colt foal from the first crop of the English National Stud’s Time Test (Dubawi).

Lynnwood Chase had a total of seven winning siblings, and Lord Admiral was by some way the best of them. Their dam Lady Ilsley (Trempolino) was listed-placed in France and she was herself one of seven winning offspring of the unraced Sue Warner (Forli). Lady Ilsley’s own-sister Najecam (Trempolino) won six times in the USA and while she never won a stakes race, she was runner-up in a Grade 2. At stud Najecam eclipsed her full-sister when, in 2003, her son Action This Day (Kris S) won the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and was crowned champion juvenile colt, while she is also the grandam of the champion US sprinter and Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Drefong (Gio Ponti) who went to stud last year in Japan.

We are back to familiar territory with the fourth dam of Star Catcher, the brilliant filly Bitty Girl (Habitat). From the first crop by her sire, she won her first five races at two, including the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot, the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes and the Group 3 Lowther Stakes. Bitty Girl was bred at the Davison’s Killarkin Stud and raced for David Robinson, before being sold at the end of her second season to the USA where she won three times.

A full-sister to Hot Spark (Habitat), Bitty Girl bred the Group 2 Prix Maurice de Gheest winner Beaudelaire (Nijinsky) and the stakes winner Memento (Roberto), while one of the most notable of her descendants is the Grade 1 winner Bodemeister (Empire Maker), now a Grade 1 sire.

A final word for Sea The Stars (Cape Cross), the Gilltown Stud resident and the apple of the Tsui family’s eye. Six times a Group 1 winner in six months as a three-year-old, he has lived up to every expectation at stud and Star Catcher is from his sixth crop. The previous five have produced 11 other Group 1 winners, each and every one of which is a well-known performer.

His son Crystal Ocean takes on Enable at Ascot today, while the four-time Group 1 winner will attempt to win a third Goodwood Cup next week.

Four Group 1 winners in 2019, some 54 blacktype winners in all, one of four Group 1 winners for his dam, and a half-brother to Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), there is little than can be added to the description of Sea The Stars, other than to say he is one of the leading half-dozen or so stallions standing in Europe.