FATHER and son, Havana Gold and Havana Grey, have both been in the news in the last eight days thanks to the exploits of juvenile progeny.
Let’s start with Tweenhills’ Havana Gold (Teofilo). His son Chateau showed that he is a colt on the upgrade with victory in the Listed Rose Bowl Stakes at Newbury. This was the second win in four starts for the colt, bred by Paul Fretwell’s Select Bloodstock after he purchased the dam, Petit Trianon (Dansili), for 48,000gns from the Lloyd-Webber’s Kiltinan Castle Stud. At the time she was in foal for the first time to Australia (Galileo) and had been purchased a year earlier for 70,000gns from Juddmonte.
Already a bargain buy, the colt she produced, named King Carney, got most of Fretwell’s purchase price back when he sold as a foal for 40,000gns, and then turned out to be a two-year-old listed winner in England for Charlie Fellowes. Next up was another profitable colt, Dusky Lord (Twilight Son), now a three-time winner for Roger Varian and one who is very likely to win a lot more races.
Foal number three from Petit Trianon is Chateau and he sold as a yearling in Arqana for €47,000, and then more than doubled his value at this year’s Tattersalls Craven Breeze Up Sale when trading for 90,000gns. Andrew Balding trains him. No doubt Select Bloodstock will be looking forward to Petit Trianon’s yearling colt by Gleneagles (Galileo) if they offer him for sale.
This is the sixth crop of racing age for Havana Gold and Chateau has given him his 14th stakes winner. The most important of that group is a horse he sired in is first crop, Whitsbury Manor Stud’s Havana Grey. He is having an outstanding season, and all that was missing until this week was a stakes winner. Now he has one, and a good one too.
Breeders’ Cup
Trainer Alice Haynes is dreaming of the Breeders’ Cup for Wednesday’s Listed Arqana Irish EBF Marwell Stakes winner Lady Hollywood, now unbeaten in her last three runs. She looks very speedy and beat some highly-regarded Irish fillies on her way to this win. Imagine how happy one Justin Adrian Byrne is now, as he paid 10,000gns for the filly’s dam this month at the Tattersalls July Sale, shortly after Lady Hollywood won her first race, and she is carrying a full-sibling to Lady Hollywood.
That mare is Dubai Legend, a daughter of Cadeaux Genereux (Young Generation), and she won at three for David Simcock after her 34,000gns yearling purchase. Incredibly she plummeted to an £800 valuation as a winner and after her form petered out, and yet has since bred five winners from seven runners.
Now that he has that monkey off his back, getting an all-important stakes winner, Havana Grey’s next target is a group winner. He is sire of the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes runner-up Maylandsea, the group-placed Havana Angel, the stakes-placed Eddie’s Boy who won the Weatherbys Super Sprint at the weekend, and four other stakes-placed horses.