THIS week Lanwades Stud in Newmarket announced the fees for their stallions in 2023. Their most expensive is the brilliant German Derby winner Sea The Moon, and that son of Sea The Stars (Cape Cross) remains at £25,000.

He is worth every penny of his fee, being the Group 1 sire of Alpine Star and recent Caulfield Cup winner Durston, three Group 2 winners, six Group 3 winners and a further 14 stakes winners on the flat.

What is less obvious is that he is also well respected within the National Hunt community and his runners in that sphere are headed by Grade 1 winning hurdler and chaser Allmankind, a trio of blacktype hurdle winners, and the Grade 1-placed hurdler Forever William.

The latest blacktype hurdle winner by Sea The Moon was actually bred by Gestüt Görlsdorf, the breeders also of the sire. He is Medyaf, a three-year-old gelding now trained by Dan Skelton. He is unbeaten in two starts over hurdles, winning at Stratford by 35 lengths and then adding the Listed Wensleydale Juvenile Hurdle at Wetherby last weekend.

Görlsdorf’s Heike Bischoff and Niko Lafrentz sold Medyaf as a yearling through Stauffenberg Bloodstock for 110,000gns in Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Sale to Charlie Gordon-Watson and Al Shaqab Racing. Sent to John and Thady Gosden, he showed little in four starts and was sold in February, back at Tattersalls, to Craig and Laura Buckingham for just 9,000gns. His two wins alone have netted them more than £16,000.

More talented

Medyaf is the third foal, runner and winner for his dam, the unraced Questabella (Rock Of Gibraltar). All are sons of Sea The Moon and there is one that is even more talented than Medyaf. He is Quest The Moon (Sea The Moon), and his victory in June in the Listed Grand Prix de Compiegne was his fifth win and fourth blacktype success. Previously, he won at Group 2 and 3 level in Germany, and a Group 3 at ParisLongchamp, and he came within a neck of a Group 1 win, beaten that much by Barney Roy in the Bayerisches Zuchtrennen.

Questabella is a full-sister to the Jeremy Noseda-trained Your Old Pal, a smart runner at three more than a decade ago when he won the Listed Newmarket Stakes by a head from Palavicini and then was four lengths runner-up to Father Time in the Group 2 King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot. This led to his sale to Hong Kong where he was renamed Ride With The Wind, won four more races, but was not a huge success.

This year Questabella’s half-brother Quebello, also by Sea The Moon, gave the pedigree a further boost when he won the Listed Oslo Cup, the best of his six wins to date. He and his siblings are out of Questabelle (Rainbow Quest), a bargain buy when Heike Bischoff gave 28,000gns for her as a 12-year-old. She is a sibling to four stakes winners, the best being the champion Stagecraft (Sadler’s Wells), winner of the Group 2 Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot and a couple of Grade 2 races in Canada.