BY the time you read this, Whytemount Stud’s Debbie O’Neill will hopefully have sold her three-year-old Affinisea (Sea The Stars) gelding well in Part 2 of the Goffs Arkle Sale, and don’t be surprised if the name of Harold Kirk and Willie Mullins is listed as the purchaser.
Should that happen, it will be down to the fact that Mullins trains the gelding’s full-sister Just For Love, and that five-year-old races for Niall Glynn. Last September in Galway, Just For Love ran on well for Patrick Mullins to win the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Mares’ INH Flat Race on her debut, beating 13 others, and her starting odds of 4/9 would suggest that her ability was well known.
Just For Love was due to run for the second time at Limerick last month, but her return to the track was delayed by 10 days, and instead she made her return a winning one at Punchestown’s two-day meeting at the weekend, taking the Lily & Wild Mares Maiden Hurdle with some comfort.
She looked a little inexperienced still, and time and a trip may bring out the best in her.
By one of the most exciting young horses at stud, Whytemount Stud’s Affinisea, and from his second crop, Just For Love is out of Medicine Woman, an unraced mare by one of that stud’s past, and hugely successful, sires, Stowaway (Slip Anchor). Medicine Woman has no fewer than eight siblings that won, and all are by the same Stowaway.
Such is the success of this cross that Medicine Woman’s unraced half-sister Western Starlight (Shahanndeh) is the dam of a dual-winning hurdler by the stallion.
Not only did the eight siblings win, but four are blacktype winners, while a fifth, Now McGinty (Stowaway), was runner-up in a Grade 2 chase at Ascot.
The outstanding runner in the family is triple Grade 1 winner Outlander (Stowaway), and this winner of the Grade 1 Lexus Chase and Champion Chase at Down Royal finished in the first three in 11 Grade 1 races during his career.
He was sold at the age of 11 for £165,000, and two days later finished ninth in the Grand National.
The other blacktype winners out of Western Whisper (Supreme Leader) were the Grade 2 hurdle winner and Grade 1 Sefton Novices’ Hurdle runner-up Western Leader (Stowaway), Grade B Leopardstown handicap hurdle winner Ice Cold Soul (Stowaway), and the listed chase winner Mart Lane (Stowaway).
A half-brother to Soldier Of Fortune (Galileo) and out of a half-sister to Sholokhov (Sadler’s Wells), the twice-raced Affinisea, who won and was placed, has sired two listed bumper winners in his first crop, Avakate and Only By Night, while a gelding born the same year, Affordale Fury, was second in a pair of Grade 1 novice hurdles, at Cheltenham and Punchestown.
Savante
The two bumper winners at Punchestown over the weekend are worthy of mention. The five-year-old mare Savante (Workforce), making her debut and facing a number of experienced rivals, won the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Mares (Pro/Am) INH Flat Race with ease, and her trainer Colm Murphy’s immediate reaction was to put her away for a winter campaign. She looks to be a mare with promise.
Bred by Michael Martin, Savante was sold as a foal at Goffs, in a private transaction, for the minimum €1,000.
She was resold at three, this time in the Tattersalls Ireland July Sale, to Colm Murphy for €6,000, still a small sum. Savante is one of four winners from the Luso (Salse) mare Keys Hope, and the best of that mare’s six runs was to finish fourth in a bumper, beaten more than 30 lengths. That lack of racing ability however has not hindered her as a broodmare.
She Is Electric (Jeremy) is the best of Keys Hope’s winners, and she took until the age of seven to put in her best effort, winning a listed mares’ hurdle race at Gowran Park. Her year-older own-brother, Hold That Note (Jeremy), got close to landing a Grade 2 novices’ chase at Warwick, denied by half a length.
You have to skip back to Savante’s third dam Ballinamona Lady (Le Bavard) to find the next good horse.
She bred In Contrast (Be My Native), and he won the Grade 2 Scottish Champion Hurdle, and was placed behind Like A Butterfly and Westender in the Grade 1 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.
Fatal Flaw
Savante’s sire Workforce (King’s Best) won the 2010 Group 1 Derby at Epsom, a year before Pour Moi (Montjeu) landed the classic. Pour Moi sired the other Punchestown bumper winner, Fatal Flow. This six-year-old, trained by Jonathan Sweeney, is a horse that has improved with each run, and winning a 20-runner bumper would indicate that he is above average.
Jackie O’Flynn bred Fatal Flow who is the sixth racecourse winner, along with a point-to-point scorer, out of the unplaced Glory Days (Tiger Hill). This is a family that would equally be at home producing flat winners. After all, Fatal Flaw’s grandam, the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile winner Gloriosa (Bering), once sold at Tattersalls for 650,000gns.
Gloriosa bred four winners, two of whom were full-brothers to Glory Days. Gentle Tiger (Tiger Hill) was a listed winner on the flat in Germany, and placed second in a Group 2.
Gentle Tiger was born three years before Ghizao (Tiger Hill), and what a racing career he had. He won two bumpers, one of them a listed contest at Cheltenham, and he was successful over hurdles. Later he went on to win a Grade 2 chase at Cheltenham, place twice at Grade 1 level, and ended up scoring three times in point-to-points at the age of 11.