IT has been a good couple of days for juveniles by No Nay Never (Scat Daddy). Whistlejacket won the Group 2 July Stakes at Newmarket, following on from the Juddmonte homebred Apollo Fountain’s first success in the Listed Prix Yacowlef in Deauville on just her second outing.

They join Group 2 Airlie Stud Stakes winner Truly Enchanting, and take to three the number of stakes-winning juveniles this year sired by the Group 1 Morny Stakes winner. Apollo Fountain is the second foal and first runner for the stakes winner Fount (Frankel) and she is preceded by the unraced three-year-old Earthman (Kingman), and followed by a yearling daughter of Dubawi (Dubai Millennium).

Fount won a Group 3 in France and she is the only stakes performer among four winning produce of the four-time Grade 1 winner Ventura (Chester House). That mare won 10 races in all, and another of her successes was in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint when it was a listed race, and she then ran second in the same race as a Grade 1 contest. Ventura, through her twice-raced daughter Venturini (Bernardini) is the grandam of the Group 1 Saudi Cup winner Emblem Road (Quality Road).

This is a family that has made an impact throughout the world. Ventura’s unraced half-sister Call Later (Gone West) bred Queen Supreme (Exceed And Excel), and that filly, bred by Tom and Clodagh Hassett, twice won the Group 1 Cartier Paddock Stakes in South Africa. She is now at stud in Australia after she sold for $900,000 at Fasig-Tipton in 2021, four years after she was a €130,000 Goffs yearling purchase.

Doyle’s purchase

Peter and Ross Doyle Bloodstock joined with Meridian Bloodstock to sign for a yearling last year by Blue Point (Shamardal) at the Arqana October Yearling Sale. They paid €170,000 for the colt from Haras des Capucines, the fourth produce of the stakes-placed Kotama (Siyouni). Named Tiego The First, he won for the second time when landing the Listed Prix Roland de Chambure at Deauville with a scintillating run.

Kotama was twice a winner at two and placed second in the Listed Prix Yacowlef for her owner/breeder His Highness the Aga Khan. She was sold, carrying Tiego The First, for €80,000. None of her previous foals were winners at the time of the yearling sale last year. Now Kotama is responsible for two winners in 2024, though Haras des Capucines sold her on again last December for €43,000 to Turquoise Bloodstock.

All is not lost however, as Capucines offer Kotama’s yearling colt, Kotimaa (Victor Ludorum), at next month’s Arqana Yearling Sale. Now he is a half-brother to a stakes-winning juvenile, and to Kotari (Nathaniel) who has finally found winning ways, and has been successful three times this year as a five-year-old. Kotama’s three-year-old Kotgar (Wootton Bassett) was recently sold by the Aga Khan Studs to Evan Williams after being placed a few times.

Tiego The First is the sole stakes winner in three generations of his family, but if you go back to his fourth dam, there is a plethora of blacktype winners.

That fourth dam is Kozana (Kris) and she was a Group 2 winner. Even so, she was the joint-best three-year-old filly of her generation in France and she was runner-up in the Group 1 Prix du Moulin and placed in the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. That was in 1985 and the winner was Rainbow Quest. Sagace finished first by a neck from Rainbow Quest, with Kozana two lengths away in third. After a steward’s inquiry and an objection from the rider of the runner-up, the places of the first two horses were reversed.

Blue Point made a sensational start with his first runners in 2023, siring the now triple Group/Grade 1 winner Rosallion and Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup winner Big Evs in that initial Crop. Tiego The First is his first stakes winner in crop number two, and is his sire’s seventh stakes winner.

Wathnan winner

Wathnan Racing is enjoying a good year with their juveniles, winning Group 2 races at Royal Ascot with Leovanni and Shareholder. The latter was successful in the Norfolk Stakes, a race in which Wathnan also had the fifth, Aesterius, who was just a length and a half behind the winner. Archie Watson turned Aesterius out again to land the Listed Dragon Stakes at Sandown.

The two-year-old son of Mehmas (Acclamation), who was purchased for £380,000 at the Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale, made an eye-catching debut when winning at Bath in May. This was shortly after he was the top-priced colt at Doncaster, sold by Willie Browne’s Mocklershill. The first produce of the unraced Jane Doe (Hallowed Crown), a half-sister to the Group 3 Horris Hill Stakes winner Tawhid, Aesterius was a 60,000gns yearling at Tattersalls Book 2, having been a 52,000gns foal buy from his breeder Sean Maguire.

“He’s by one of the best sires of two-year-olds around, a gorgeous horse, and from one of the doyens of the breeze up sales,” said Blandford Bloodstock’s Richard Brown after he bought the colt.

“Willie was very high on him then, and he did a seriously good breeze yesterday. He looks forward-going, but no trainer has been decided on yet. He’ll get a short break now and then we’ll try and point him towards Ascot.”

Rubbing their hands in glee after this listed win must be the team at Ballinafad Stud in Tipperary. Last December they spent 12,000gns on the second offspring of Jane Doe, and that now yearling filly by Cotai Glory (Exceed And Excel) has a most valuable update to her pedigree if she is reoffered in the autumn.