BREEDERS in Northern Ireland, and elsewhere for that matter, were given an opportunity last year to access one of the best-bred horses likely to have gone to stud anywhere in 2023, and this year the sire is standing his second season, while breeders have been welcoming his first foals.

Though he is unraced, Foment has all the other attributes needed to be a success as a stallion.

A Juddmonte-bred son of Frankel (Galileo), Foment is a big, strong, good-looking horse with a great walk. He has seven winning siblings, but most significantly his two full-brothers are stakes winners. Collide (Frankel) won six times, including a listed race in France, but it is their other brother that will make people sit up and take notice of Foment.

He is Logician (Frankel), winner of the Group 1 St Leger and the Group 2 Great Voltigeur Stakes. In his first year at stud in 2022 he covered 183 mares at Shade Oak Stud at a fee of £4,000, and last year he matched that number.

Such popularity is sure to rub off on Foment and he will cost only a fraction of his brother’s fee which is again set at £4,000.

Logician and Collide are joined on the stakes-winning roster by two other siblings, Group 3 Gordon Richards Stakes winner Okeechobee (Time Test), and the multiple Grade 3 winner Suffused (Champs Elysees). The latter mare won seven times and she was runner-up in the Grade 1 E P Taylor Stakes at Woodbine. Her half-sister Sleep Walk (Oasis Dream) had added further glory to the immediate family as her daughter Whitebeam (Caravaggio) won the Grade 1 Diana Stakes at Saratoga last year.

This is a real stallion family. Foment’s dam Scuffle (Daylami) is a half-sister to two successful sires in Cityscape (Selkirk) and Bated Breath (Dansili). The latter stands alongside Frankel at Banstead Manor Stud and is the sire of Grade 1 winner Viadera and a growing list of stakes winners. His half-sister Tarentaise (Oasis Dream) is the dam od the leading sprinter Equilateral (Equiano). This is the immediate family of last November’s Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Unquestionable (Wootton Bassett).

Frankel, the sire of Foment, is covering this year at Banstead Manor Stud in Newmarket for an incredible £350,000, and little wonder. He is simply one of the best sires anywhere in the world. The sire of 34 Group 1 winners, every year seems to get better for Frankel.

The fastest sire to 50 group winners in history and the 2023 champion sire in Europe, sired 11 individual Group 1 winners in 2023, with his notable runners on home soil including the classic winners Chaldean and Soul Sister, plus Gold Cup hero Courage Mon Ami and the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and Juddmonte International winner Mostahdaf.

Race record

FOMENT (GB), Bay horse, 2020. Unraced.

At stud

Retired to stud in 2023, first crop now foals.

Information:

Stands at: Universal Stud, Crieve Road, Newry, Co Down, BT34 2LN, Ireland

Contact: Bernard Havern

Telephone: +44 7592 383828

Email: bernardhavern@hotmail.co.uk

Fee: Private