SPACE Blues (Dubawi) made a near perfect start to his stud career when his son Power Blue was an impressive winner of the opening two-year-old race of the season in Ireland, the Castle Star at Capital Stud Irish EBF Maiden at the Curragh on Sunday. The Darley stallion is bound to be the subject of enquiries from more breeders for this season at Kildangan Stud, where his fee is €16,000 for a third consecutive season.

This is the third year in succession that an Adrian Murray-trained runner has won this race, Bucanero Fuerte doing so in 2023, and Arizona Blaze last year. The former is standing his first season at Tally-Ho Stud at a fee of €12,500, having gone on to become a Group 1 winner of the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes. Arizona Blaze became a Group 3 winner, opened his second season with a win recently at Dundalk, and went down by half a length to Magnum Force in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint in November.