ANY temptation to retire Queen Of The Pride, a daughter of Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy), to stud after she won a 10-furlong maiden last year on her second start was resisted by Sheikh Fahad and his advisors, and their decision was justified when the now four-year-old improved on a runner-up finish at Goodwood in a listed race to capture the Group 3 Pinnacle Stakes at Haydock.

These performances have come from only four career stars. Maturity and a step up to a mile and a half seem to be the key to Queen Of The Pride’s improvement, and would indicate that she is very much her mother’s daughter. Her dam was Simple Verse (Duke Of Marmalade), and Queen Of The Pride is her second foal, but just her first runner.

One of the highlights of the 2019 Tattersalls December Foal Sale, a Frankel (Galileo) colt out of Simple Verse returned to Tweenhills after the dam’s part-owner Sheikh Fahad bought out his partners at 600,000gns, when John Gunther had the final say. Afterwards, David Redvers revealed the true identity of the purchaser.

Redvers explained: “Sheikh Fahad, his brother Sheikh Suhaim, and their associate Mohammed al Kubaisi owned the mare in partnership, and initially the other two wanted to sell after [Simple Verse] finished racing. Sheikh Fahad persuaded them to stay involved, but with the agreement to sell all of her progeny as foals.”

He also told the press that while the Sheikh saw the colt in the summer, he only saw him again at the sale and finalised the decision to buy his partners out.

Only crop

Named Royal Verse, the colt was subsequently gelded but never saw a racecourse. He was followed by Queen Of The Pride, a member of the only crop sired by Roaring Lion, but she didn’t take up her appointment with the Tattersalls auctioneers as a foal, instead doing so as a two-year-old in the 2022 December Sale. She was sold for 115,000gns to Spring Lodge Stud, Sheikh Fahad’s Irish farm.

It was back to the agreement drawn up by the partners in Simple Verse for the mare’s 2022 foal, a colt by Roaring Lion’s sire, Kitten’s Joy (El Prado). Qatar Bloodstock won the battle for him at 130,000gns. There was a change of mind again with the now yearling colt by Too Darn Hot (Dubawi), and he has been retained.

One of the best of her generation, Simple Verse was purchased as a yearling at the 2013 Goffs Orby Sale by David Redvers for €240,000. She was bred by David and Diane Nagle at Barronstown Stud. Unraced as a juvenile, she quickly established herself as a top-class stayer at three by winning the Group 1 St Leger, the first filly to do so since User Friendly in 1992. In fact, this was a race she won, lost, and won it back.

She followed up her win in the classic with another Group 1 win in the British Champions Fillies/Mares Stakes the following month. That year Simple Verse was named champion stayer at the 25th edition of the Cartier Awards.

A disappointing start to her four-year-old season was turned around after a lengthy summer break. Simple Verse returned to the scene of her St Leger victory when she contested the Group 2 Park Hill Stakes, and she won by a neck, with a gap of five lengths back to the third.

In October she was moved up in distance for the Group 2 British Champions Long Distance Cup over two miles at Ascot, where she stayed on strongly in the straight to finish third, with the odds-on favourite Order Of St George in fourth.

Even So

Simple Verse is the best of five winners for her unraced Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) dam, Guantanamera, though the filly that followed her, Even Song (Mastercraftsman) was certainly no slouch. She won the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot, and then came agonisingly close to breeding a Group 1 winner when her son Espionage (Galileo) was beaten a head in the Criterium International at Saint-Cloud. He did manage a stakes victory last year, on his seasonal debut taking the honours in the Listed Lenabane Stakes at Roscommon. Guantanamera is out of the stakes-placed mare Bluffing (Darshaan). This dam of six winners is also grandam of another winner of the Lenabane Stakes, Red Stars (Manduro). Simple Verse’s third dam Instinctive Move (Nijinsky) bred seven winners, led by the stakes winner Feminine Wiles (Ahonoora) and she a winning half-sister to 11 winners. The best known here would be Law Society (Alleged), a champion at two and three who won the Irish Derby and was runner-up at Epsom.

What of Roaring Lion and his legacy? His best runner has been Dubai Mile, and he has just stood his first season at Manton Park for £7,500. Bred by the late Lady O’Reilly’s Skymarc Farm, Dubai Mile won the 2022 Group 1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud, but he was forced to stud sooner than expected following a career ending injury at home in his routine exercise. He won three of his eight career starts for Ahmad Al Shaikh’s Green Team Racing, and provided his owner with a breakthrough success at the highest level as a two-year-old when seeing off a strong challenge from Arrest to win the 10-furlong contest.

After that, Roaring Line’s runners have done well up to about Group 3 level. In fact, he has three winners at that grade, Queen Of The Pride, Middle Earth and Embesto, while the duo of Lion’s Pride and Running Lion have won listed races. Running Lion was runner-up in the Group 2 Dahlia Stakes at Newmarket.

Though he hasn’t won a stakes race, Saint George placed second in the Group 2 Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot last summer, while others to place at group level are Valiant King and Kingswood. All in all, a solid performance.

Roaring Lion

Bred in Kentucky and sold at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale for a modest $160,000, Roaring Lion carried Qatar Racing’s silks to victory in eight of his 13 starts, and he started a winning streak of four Group 1 wins at three with victory over Saxon Warrior in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown.

Poet’s Word chased him home at York in the Juddmonte International, he beat Saxon Warrior by a neck in the Irish Champion Stakes, and then he hung on to land the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot.

Roaring Lion had previously annexed the Group 2 Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes at two after making a winning debut in the same race won by Motivator and Frankel. Unbeaten in his first three starts as a juvenile, he ended his first season with a highly creditable runner-up position behind Saxon Warrior in the Group 1 Racing Post Trophy. At three he also won the Group 2 Dante Stakes and was third at Epsom behind Masar in the Derby.

Roaring Lion is the best performer in his female family and the first Group or Grade 1 winner in the first four generations at least. That said, his dam Vionnet, a daughter of Street Sense (Street Cry), was a three-time winner and her stakes placings included running third in the Grade 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita. Her second offspring, Fran The Man (Medaglia D’Oro), sold for $550,000 as a yearling to Spendthrift Farm, and they are the only living offspring of Vionnet.

Vionnet’s dam Cambiocorsa (Avenue Of Flags) had six winners, four of them stakes winners. They include Grade 2 winners Moulin De Mougin (Curlin) and Schiaparelli (Ghostzapper). Cambiocorsa won half of her 18 starts and her most notable success was in the Grade 2 Las Cienegas Handicap at Santa Anita.