ON Friday next, just before noon, the four-year-old Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) filly Declaring Love will enter the ring at Tattersalls in Newmarket to be offered for sale.

This visit comes some five months after she last appeared in the same ring, on that occasion selling to Megan Evans for 39,000gns. This time the opening bid for the same filly is likely to be more than that, and the eventual value placed on her will be many multiples of her price at the December Sale.

What has changed? Well, Megan placed the filly with trainer John Butler. Since then that Newmarket handler has done what Charlie Appleby failed to do, and that is to win with her. Not only has Butler done that, but he has saddled Declaring Love to win three of her four starts this year, culminating in a turf victory in the Listed Lansdown Stakes at Bath most recently.

Now, instead of a filly who was placed on three of her four starts when sold by owner-breeder Godolphin last December, Megan Evans is offering a stakes winner, successful three times in all, and from a top-class female family. This blacktype winning sprinter could do more on the racecourse, and she is most certainly a very desirable broodmare prospect.

Dubawi daughters have produced Nazeef (invincible Spirit), winner of both the Group 1 Falmouth Stakes and Sun Chariot Stakes, and two winners of the Group 1 Jebel Hatta, Dream Castle (Frankel) and Blair House (Pivotal). Group 2 winners out of his daughters include Isabella Giles (Belardo).

Megan Evans and her partner, jockey Adam Kirby, have established Vicarage Stud, and their inspired choice of Declaring Love will surely be rewarded. A look at her placed form shows that she was third on her debut, and only start at two, to a pair of fillies that both won juvenile group races at Royal Ascot, and both were successful at Group 2 level.

Bob Russell

Evans is not the only person delighted with the recent form upgrade. Bob Russell owns Blythe Park Stud in Appleby Magna, Leicestershire. He went to Goffs at the end of 2020 and paid €16,000 for the Dalakhani (Darshaan) mare Wedding March. Not in foal, and rising 14 years of age, she had produced a single winner by Dubawi, and a couple of placed runners. Guess what? She is now the dam of two winners, including the listed winner Declaring Love.

When I spoke with Bob this week he was able to tell me that the mare went in foal, “first dip”, to Golden Horn (Cape Cross). At a 2021 feel of £20,000, the covering is costing more than the mare did, but Bob is delighted. Asked about whether he planned to keep Wedding March long term, he declared he was, “unless someone offers me silly money!” He also pointed out that Wedding March was once a 300,000gns yearling buy.

This may not be the end of the story either.

Wedding March, a winner at two, is one of three winning offspring from the Group 2 Prix Corrida winner Elopa, a daughter of Tiger Hill (Danehill). Elopa was a rare German-trained runner in Ireland in 2005 when she finished third to Alexander Goldrun and Red Bloom, both winners at the highest level, in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes.

Mugatoo

Wedding March is an own-sister to the listed winner and Group 2 placed Elik (Dalakhani), while their half-brother is the six-year-old Mugatoo (Henrythenavigator). He is a horse whose recent form would indicate that he is knocking on the door of a major win in Australia. Already nine times successful there, including at Group 3 level on a few occasions, he has earnings of some £1.9 million to date.

In March he beat Russian Camelot in the All Star Mile, while this month he was beaten less than two lengths on each occasion in a pair of Group 1 races, last weekend in that brilliant finish to the Queen Elizabeth Stakes won by Addeyeb.

Elopa is a half-sister to Epalo (Lando), a champion in his native Germany, a Group 1 winner of the Singapore Airlines International Cup, and placed at Group and Grade 1 level in Germany, the USA and Italy.

Muhammad Anjum

Finally, as if this story could not have any more angles, the first foal out of Wedding March, a daughter of Authorized (Montjeu) named Processional, sold at the last Tattersalls December Sale for only 5,000gns. After all, she was in foal to Ulysses (Galileo) and her price was just a third of his 2020 fee. The purchaser was Muhammed Anjum, a regular buyer at Newmarket, though his purchases are generally bound for Pakistan.

This is a heart-warming story for small- to medium sized breeders, and it is one that could yet have more to add as 2021 rumbles on.

First fliers continue to deliver

ATTENDU, a multiple Group 3 winner over seven furlongs and a mile, is the latest stallion, with their first runners in 2021, to hit the mark with a winner. His son Sam Blaster won over five furlongs at La Teste de Buch last Friday.

A Haras du Quesnay stallion son of Acclamation (Royal Applause), Attendu only has some 37 two-year-olds to race and Sam Blaster is his first runner and winner.

This €6,000 yearling buy last year was purchased by Bruno de Montzey and he owns and trains the colt who was making his second start.

While Ardad (Kodiac) is leading the numbers game with four winners, the now Ashford Stud-based Caravaggio (Scat Daddy) doubled up when his initial winner Tenebrism was joined in the winners’ circle by Elliptic, successful in the Yeomanstown Stud El Kabeir Irish EF Fillies’ Maiden at Tipperary. Owned by Annemarie O’Brien, bred by her and husband Aidan as Whisperview Trading, Elliptic is trained by their son Donnacha.