WHEN the unraced Familiar Dreams was offered for sale at the 2022 Tattersalls July Sale, her owner and breeder, Meon Valley Stud, might well have anticipated that she would end up with a flat breeder, coming as she does from one of their outstanding female lines.

Instead, she cost trainer Anthony McCann 4,000gns, and she was given time to fully mature. Last year she raced five times in bumpers, always showing ability, but she failed to have her head in from where it matters most. That said, one of her three runners-up efforts was running second to the smart The Yellow Clay in the Listed Kevin McManus Bookmaker Champion INH Flat Race at Limerick.

Well, at Cork last weekend the five-year-old finally earned a deserved success, and she is more than rewarding her connections. While she has a very strong flat pedigree, she traces to a classic-winner whose relation remains one of the most influential sires in National Hunt history.

Familiar Dreams, a daughter of and from the first crop of the champion Postponed (Dubawi), has the 1979 Group 1 1000 Guineas winner One In A Million as her fourth dam. She has spawned a host of fine descendants, but her dam’s half-brother, Deep Run (Pampered King), was a perennial champion sire, and one of the foundation stallions for Grange Stud in Fermoy. In all, he was 14 times champion sire.

Record trade

Bred by the Lillingston’s Mount Coote Stud, One In A million sold in 1977 for 18,500gns at the Houghton Sale in Newmarket. Putting that price in context, the sale averaged 14,159gns, and this is what Tony Morris wrote about the sale. “The experts had all predicated a record trade at the Houghton Sale. When the earlier auctions all produced higher prices, the view that Newmarket’s premier auction would raise the roof off the arena in Park Paddocks was merely reinforced.

“The catalogue was better than that presented at Kill; therefore the Houghton business had to be better. All the predictions were duly fulfilled, and to an even greater extent. In five explosive sessions, over 7,000,000gns changed hands, the European record price for a yearling was crushed [250,000gns], and no fewer than six youngsters cracked the once-unthinkable six-figure barrier. Money was tossed about with such carefree abandon that you would have thought this was its last week as a form of currency.”

Richard Galpin secured One In A Million for Egon Weinfeld, racing as Helena Springfield, and after her successful racing career in the care of Henry Cecil, ridden on all her starts by Joe Mercer, she retired to Meon Valley Stud in Hampshire. She won her first five starts, a pair of listed races at two and three group races the following year, but for her last start she was dropped back from a mile to contest the six-furlong July Cup, but was down the field behind Thatching.

Milligram

From eight foals One In A Million spanned the spectrum of success and failure with her progeny. Her first foal, Black Sprout (Nonoalco) failed to win a race in 35 starts, but half of her offspring were successful. Her daughter Milligram (Mill Reef) won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, and eight years after her dam had done so, she too won the Group 2 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot. Another daughter of One In A Million, Someone Special (Habitat) gained her only blacktype when placed in the Coronation Stakes.

At stud, Someone Special outshone Milligram, four of her sons and daughters winning blacktype events. Star of this quartet was One So Wonderful (Nashwan) and she was the champion older mare in Europe thanks to her win in the Group 1 Juddmonte International. Milligram failed to breed even a stakes-placed runner, but her descendants include the Group 1 Oaks winner Anapurna (Frankel), and the dual Group 1 winner in France, Speed Boarding (Shamardal).

Yorton Stud

Postponed embarks on a new stallion path this spring, and will largely be supported by National Hunt breeders at Yorton Stud, where his fee is £4,000. This is some way from his starting fee at Dalham Hall Stud of £20,000, and Darley were more than justified for standing him at that price, given his race record. He won nine times and placed nine times in 20 starts, and this model of consistency was better with age.

At four he won the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, but he blossomed at five.

His victories in his penultimate season included the Group 1 Dubai Sheema Classic, followed by successes in the Group 1 Coronation Cup and Juddmonte International. He beat many of the world’s best horses and in that trio of top-level triumphs he had, as his immediate victims, Duramente, Found and Highland Reel.

Sadly, at stud, he quickly fell out of favour and to date has had just a single pattern-placed runner on the flat, the Group 3 Nell Gwyn Stakes runner-up Almohandesah. Given his own late development, perhaps more will emerge in time, but he has made a very promising start with his runners under National Hunt rules, and Familiar Dreams is one of three of his progeny to get some blacktype.

Tizzard’s Thunder starts to roll

FROM the time he was purchased for £165,000 by Peter and Ross Doyle Bloodstock almost a year ago, and he joined Joe Tizzard, connections have obviously held Lord Of Thunder is high esteem.

Bred in Foulksmills, Co Wexford by the Doran family at Parkville Stud, the six-year-old son of Getaway (Monsun) was sold by them as a foal for €20,000. Resold at three in the Derby Sale for €55,000, he was saddled by Sam Curling to finish second on his debut in a Belharbour point-to-point, selling days later at the Tattersalls Cheltenham Sale. He placed on his sole outing in a bumper.

This National Hunt season saw him make his hurdling bow in the Grade 2 Persian War Novices’ Hurdle, but he was pulled up that day. The race was won by Captain Teague, and though Lord Of Thunder was a complete outsider, he must have shown something at home to warrant such an introduction to hurdling.

Since then he has started three times at Wincanton, being runner-up before winning easily on his two most recent outings. He could be a smart each-way bet now for Cheltenham.

Lord Of Thunder is a welcome first winner, from three runners, for the unraced Harbour Mistress (Presenting). At Tattersalls Ireland in November Barry O’Neill paid €14,000 for his Maxios (Monsun) half-brother. Harbour Mistress has two winning siblings, with a lot of younger stock yet to race, and one of those winners is her full-sister The Caddy Rose (Presenting), successful in a bumper, over hurdles and twice over fences.

They are daughters of Las Princess (Oscar), an unraced half-sister to Grade 1 winning chaser and twice placed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Harbour Pilot (Be My Native), and to the dams of four blacktype National Hunt winners.

They include River Wylde (Oscar) and Get Me Out Of Here (Accordion), both graded winners and placed at Grade 1 level in Cheltenham in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle.

Another pair of half-sisters bred the Grade A Leopardstown Chase winner Glamorgan Duke (Flemensfirth) and the Grade B 2 Paddy Power Chase winner Living Next Door (Beneficial). In all, seven half-sisters to Las Princess bred at least one runner who got some blacktype for the pedigree.

Lord Of Thunder’s fourth dam was the smart hurdler Synarria (Guillaume Tell) who won listed handicap hurdle races at Fairyhouse and Gowran Park. She is the grandam of Monty’s Pass (Montelimar), the Aintree Grand National winner and the Kerry National, while another grandson was Eduard (Morozov), and his biggest success was in the Grade 2 Future Champion Novices’ Chase at Ayr.

Lord Of Thunder has a long way to go to match the achievements of the Grange Stud stallion Getaway’s best offspring, such as Feronily, Sporting John and Verdana Blue, and that sire’s tally of blacktype winners now stands at 24. None to date have been out of a Presenting (Mtoto) mare.