GODOLPHIN had a good weekend in the USA with their two-year-olds, winning the Grade 2 Golden Road Stakes with Good Cheer (Medaglia D’Oro) and the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes with First Resort.

While he is a veteran of the breeding shed, turning 26 in a few weeks, Medaglia D’Oro is well worth his $75,000 stud fee next season, and that is just based on pure statistics for him as a stallion. He is the leading active North American sire by worldwide stakes winners, and among that group is an impressive 27 Group and Grade 1 winners. When a son of his sold as a yearling for $1.35 million this year it took his career tally to 56 million-dollar sales horses.

Advancing age is no hindrance to his ability to sire high-class runners, and his 2024 juveniles include the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity winner East Avenue, undefeated Good Cheer about whom I will be writing more, Catch A Glimpse Stakes winner Shifty, and dual Grade 1-placed Nitrogen who was third to Lake Victoria in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. The homebred Good Cheer extended his unbeaten run to four with his weekend success.

When she won her second start, an allowance at Churchill Downs, Good Cheer did so by a staggering 17 lengths. She has now followed up with two stakes wins at the same track, the Listed Rags To Riches Stakes and the weekend Grade 2.

Wedding toast

Bred in Kentucky, Good Cheer is out of the Grade 1-winning Street Sense (Street Cry) mare, Wedding Toast. During her racing career for Godolphin, Wedding Toast captured both the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Stakes and Grade 1 Beldame Stakes, in addition to winning the Grade 2 Ruffian Stakes and Grade 3 Comely Stakes. Wedding Toast is also the dam of the UAE listed-winning gelding, Ya Hayati (Dubawi). This year Wedding Toast foaled an own-sister to Good Cheer.

Wedding Toast’s grandam Mari’s Sheba (Mari’s Book) was placed in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Oaks, but never managed to win a stakes race. At stud she bred five-time Grade 1 winner Congaree (Arazi) who placed in two legs of the Triple Crown.

Medaglia D’Oro was a top-class runner, the Travers Stakes being the first of his three Grade 1 successes, and he was second six times at that level, twice in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, in the Belmont Stakes and in the Dubai World Cup. His impressive roll call of leading winners includes brilliant fillies Rachel Alexandra, Songbird, Bar Of Gold, Elate, New Money Honey, Plum Pretty and Champagne D’Oro. His son Golden Sixty won 10 Group 1 races in Hong Kong.

First Resort

Eoin Harty trains the other Godolphin Grade 2 juvenile winner of the weekend, the Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) colt First Resort. This was his second win in four starts, and the colt was second in the Grade 2 Saratoga Special Stakes and fourth, to New Century, in a Grade 1 at Woodbine.

First Resort is the first foal out of Fair Maiden, and she, like the dam of Good Cheer, is by a son of Street Cry (Machiavellian). In this case it is Street Boss. Incidentally, First Resort is Harty’s first graded stakes winner since Fair Maiden, whom he also trained, gained the biggest win of her career in the Grade 1 La Brea Stakes at Santa Anita. Fair Maiden travelled twice to Canada where she was also a stakes winner and placed in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes.

This branch of the family is coming back to life with the exploits of Fair Maiden and her son. Fair Maiden is the better of the two winners from Shieldmartin (Smart Strike), and that mare’s grandam Secret Status (A P Indy) was a leading runner in her day. She won the 2000 Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks as well as the Grade 1 Mother Goose Stakes, and her son Dunkirk (Unbridled’s Son) finished second in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes and chased home Quality Road in the Grade 1 Florida Derby.

Uncle Mo

This has been a great year at stud for Ashford’s Uncle Mo, and yet his fee for his 14th season at stud in 2025 has been trimmed a little to $125,000. Adare Manor and Kingsbarns are his two Grade 1 winners in 2024, First Resort is one of a quartet of Grade 2 winners, and his tally of stakes winners has now passed the century mark, and currently stands at 109.

What a first crop Uncle Mo sired. Nyquist’s five Grade 1 victories included the Kentucky Derby, while Outwork, Gomo and Unbridled Mo all won at the highest level. That initial crop included a record 25 stakes winners. Uncle Mo’s current tally of 15 Grade 1 winners will not stand still, and First Resort could be one to add to the number in 2025.