PROFITABLE’S popularity with breeders fell off a cliff in 2023. The Kildangan Stud-based stallion retired there in 2018 at an introductory fee of €12,000.

It dropped to €10,000 in 2021, the year in which his first runners were due to hit the track, and quickly went back up to €12,500 in 2022 on the back of a successful season when Profitable finished fourth on the table of sires with their first runners, and three of that crop recorded stakes wins.

Quick Suzy won the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes, Head Mistress was successful in the Listed Curragh Stakes, while Mr Professor was a stakes winner in Britain.

A failure to build on that initial momentum in 2022 saw Profitable’s fee drop for what transpired to be his last season at Kildangan, to €9,000, but he only attracted 35 mares. In his first five years at stud, he went from a high of 185 mares in his first year to 118 in year five, and averaged 135 mares. Little surprise then that he should find himself on a plane to Turkey, his new home, as a member of the Jockey Club’s team of stallions.

His first crop, now turned five, has yielded a further four stakes winners, while Profitable’s second crop has just two to date. Given that his three-year-olds contain just a single stakes-placed horse, many will feel that he has been a big disappointment, though his new owners will have been delighted with the weekend’s results, when Profitable was responsible for a pair of Group 2 winners, one each from his first two crops. His winners to runners ratio is 46%.

Group 2 wins

Profitable’s speedy sons Mitbaahy and Kerdos won the Group 2 Weatherbys Greenlands Stakes at the Curragh and Group 2 Temple Stakes at Haydock respectively.

For the former it was a second pattern success, while Kerdos was adding to a previous listed victory. Mitbaahy took his earnings to almost £230,000 with a sixth career win, while Kerdos was visiting the winners’ enclosure for the fourth time, and has banked more than £150,000.

Bred by Nicky Hartery, chairman of Horse Racing Ireland, Mitbaahy is one of four winners for Wrood, a dual winning daughter of Invasor (Candy Stripes). Sold to Oliver St Lawrence as a yearling for €59,000, he is now winner of four stakes races, but he is not the best runner from his dam. This honour falls to Going Global (Mehmas), and that €15,500 yearling buy turned into a $2.5 million sale in 2022 after a racing career that peaked when she won the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks.

Clive Cox trained Profitable, and he paid 100,000gns for a son of the stallion out of The Mums (Holy Roman Emperor), bred by Michael Carty’s KCS Bloodstock, as a yearling. Named Kerdos, his career best win in the Group 2 Temple Stakes came eight years after Profitable won the same contest. Plans now are for Kerdos to try to emulate his sire and win the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes on the opening day of Royal Ascot, the race formerly known as the King’s Stand Stakes.

Temple Stakes

Victory at the weekend in the Temple Stakes was a third in the race for trainer Clive Cox, and Kerdos has a close connection too with the other member of that trio.

His dam, The Mums, is out of a half-sister to Priceless (Exceed And Excel), and victory in the race in 2017 was the highlight of her racing career. There is no shortage of speed in this family, and many of the runners, like Profitable himself, improve with age. Maybe Kerdos can go and triumph at the royal meeting.

Rated higher than his very successful sire Invincible Spirit (Green Desert), Profitable won at both two and three before developing into a top-class sprinter, with a Group 1 victory at Royal Ascot to his credit. With a pedigree free of both Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer) and Danehill (Danzig), he seemed an ideal stallion for Irish breeders. Initial sale returns confirmed that people liked what they saw.

Profitable scored over five furlongs at Sandown as a two-year-old, and placed second in four of his other five starts. He improved rapidly the next year to win the Listed Westow Stakes at York over five furlongs again, his specialist distance, and pick up prize money in the Group 1 Commonwealth Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Remarkable

Going from strength to strength at four, Profitable began the season with three consecutive group wins. He started with the Group 3 Palace House Stakes at Newmarket, then added the Group 2 Temple Stakes at Haydock, holding off dual Nunthorpe Stakes heroine Mecca’s Angel by a neck.

He duly completed a remarkable hat-trick in the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot, scoring by a neck from Cotai Glory, and he was then a close fourth in the Group 1 Darley July Cup, ending the season with a Timeform rating of 125.

Just before Royal Ascot it had been announced that Godolphin had purchased Profitable as a stallion prospect, and he carried their colours on the track as a five-year-old in 2017. His best effort was again in the Group 1 King’s Stand Stakes, where he was second to the flying American filly Lady Aurelia, and he was also second to Battaash in the Group 2 King George Stakes at Goodwood and third to him in the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp.