IN the first four generations of the family of the Group 1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp winner Sauterne, a daughter of Kingman (Invincible Spirit), there are five Group 1 winners.

All five are fillies, and all of their Group and Grade 1 victories have come in the last 14 years. This is a pedigree that truly established itself in the last three decades in Germany, but has now spread its wings to enjoy victories at the highest levels also in France, the USA and especially in Japan in the last few years. More of that anon.

Back in the early nineties, just after the reunification of Germany, the French-bred filly Suivez (Fioravanti) won a couple of races and she showed that she was above average when finishing second in a pair of listed races.

In the breeding shed she proved to be a great asset, and four of her six winning offspring won either listed races or, in the case of Simoun (Monsun), was successful a couple of times at Group 2 level. Rather ignominiously, he later went on to win over hurdles for Martin Pipe, sell for 2,600gns as a seven-year-old, win a point-to-point as a nine year-year-old, and met with a fatal accident on his second start between the flags.

In addition to producing these four stakes winners, of which I will be writing more about a couple of them, Suivez had three other daughters who produced stakes winners. The unraced Suisun (Monsun) bred a pair of stakes winners, the best of which is Group 3 winner and Group 1-placed Silvaner (Lomitas).

Songerie (Shirocco), a winner herself, is the dam of this year’s US stakes winner Freydis The Red (Saxon Warrior), while the four-time winner Suivi (Darshaan) can trump those two as she bred the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Bayern winner Sunny Queen (Camelot).

Let’s return to two of those listed winners out of Suivez. Soudaine (Monsun) was also group-placed and she is making her mark at stud. She has two blacktype winners, one of which, Savoir Vivre (Adlerflug), won the Group 2 Grand Prix de Deauville and was runner-up in the Group 1 Deutsches (German) Derby. In addition, Soudaine is the grandam of the Flaming Rib (Ribchester), a juvenile listed winner who was second in last year’s Group 1 Commonwealth Cup.

Real focus

However, our real focus is on yet another daughter of Suivez, Soignee (Dashing Blade). She went one better than her dam when, at two, she landed the Listed Kronimus Rennen at Baden-Baden, and that year she was second in a Group 3 in France. She may not have matched her dam in terms of number of winners or stakes horses at stud, but she bettered Suivez’s record by getting a Group 1 winner, and with her first foal. That was the international star runner Stacelita (Monsun).

Trained by Jean-Claude Rouget, Stacelita was unbeaten when she lined up against Sea The Stars and more in the 2009 Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, but she was beaten a total of five lengths by that champion, finishing seventh in the 19-runner field.

Prior to that she was successful three times in Group 1 races, the Prix Saint-Alary, Prix de Diane-French Oaks, and the Prix Vermeille. Stacelita was bought by Martin Schwartz after the first of those wins, added the Group 1 Prix Jean Romanet at four, and then headed to race in the USA.

Stateside she added two more wins at the top table, capturing both the Grade 1 Flower Bowl Invitational Stakes and the Beverly D. Stakes. At the end of her racing career , Stacelita was sold to Terry Yoshida and visited sires in the USA, England and Japan. She is the dam of two stakes winners by Deep Impact (Sunday Silence), but her best runner is Soul Stirring, and she was the first Group 1 winner by Frankel (Galileo). Soul Stirring also won the Group 1 Yushun Himba-Japanese Oaks at three.

Japanese champion

Not to be outdone, Stacelita’s first foal, Southern Stars (Smart Strike), produced last year’s Japanese champion three-year-old filly, Stars On Earth (Duramente). That filly won two classics, the Oka Sho (1000 Guineas) and the Yushun Himba (Oaks).

Which brings us to the unraced Salicorne, a daughter of Aragorn (Giant’s Causeway). Born three years after Stacelita, her record at stud was solid until now. Four of her first five foals raced, all of them winning. Only one of them was successful on more than a single occasion, Santi Del Mare (Lope De Vega) having won eight times to date. Incredibly, Salicorne’s first foal, Sally For Me (Pour Moi), was unsold last December in Arqana for €2,000!

Now this branch of the family has been sent into orbit, all due to Sauterne’s win at the weekend. This was her fifth win, and she has been a model of consistency until now. Retained as a yearling by her breeder Jean-Pierre Dubois, Sauterne was offered at the Goffs London Sale in June, and again was retained when bidding hit £1.2 million. If there was some surprise that she didn’t sell, subsequent events have proved connections right.

At sale time, Sauterne was ‘only’ a listed winner, having won or been placed in seven of her eight starts. Runner-up in the Group 2 Prix de Sandringham, she was most notably classic-placed when third in the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas. Since June she has been runner-up in the Group 1 Prix Jean Prat, run third in the Group 1 Prix Rothschild, and now gained what could be the first of a number of Group 1 triumphs.

Kingman

Sauterne is the ninth Group 1 winner for Kingman, who stands alongside Frankel and others at Banstead Manor Stud. Eight of these are from his first five European crops, and those born in 2020 also include the Grand Prix de Paris winner, Feed The Flame, and last year’s Fillies’ Mile heroine, Commissioning. Also born in 2020, but to southern hemisphere time, is the Group 1 J.J. Atkins Stakes winner King Colorado.

Kingman will be well represented at both Goffs and Tattersalls in the coming weeks. In the Goffs Orby Book 1 he has a pair of colts and a pair of fillies, including a daughter of the Group 2 winner and Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes runner-up Bocca Baciata (Big Bad Bob), while the two colts are half-brothers to both Skitter Scatter (Scat Daddy) and Saxon Warrior (Deep Impact).

Some 29 yearlings in Book 1 and another 10 in Book 2 represent Kingman at Newmarket.

Where does one start to narrow that list down to just a handful? The standout fillies include daughters of the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Uni (More Than Ready) and the first foal of the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Intricately (Fastnet Rock).

The list of colts is harder to shorten. Own-brothers to Persian King and this year’s Group 3 Jersey Stakes winner Age Of Kings are examples of a cross that has already worked. Two other colts have stallion prospects written all over them, the half-brother to Without Parole (Frankel) and Tamarkuz (Speightstown), and a half-brother to two Coolmore stallions, St Mark’s Basilica (Siyouni) and Magna Grecia (Invincible Spirit).

Queen’s Trust

Finally, how could you overlook sons of high-class racemares, the likes of Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf winner Queen’s Trust (Dansili), as well as two colts out of Group 1 Irish Oaks winners, Seventh Heaven and Great Heavens, both of whom are by Galileo (Sadler’s Wells).

If my maths is correct, Kingman sired his 70th stakes winner at the weekend when his four-year-old son Naranco showed plenty of improvement to win the Group 3 La Coupe de Maisons-Laffitte, run at ParisLongchamp. A 300,000gns foal, Naranco has a long way to go to repay that investment, but this was his fourth win, two each in Spain and France.

From a female line that was cultivated by the Aga Khan Studs for a long time, Naranco is from a branch that developed after Kasora (Darshaan), the grandam of the weekend’s pattern winner, was sold in 1996 to Tim Vigors Bloodstock for 270,000gns, the third-highest price at that year’s December Sale for a filly in or out of training.

Good investment

The investment proved to be a good one and Kasora bred nine winners, two of whom were standouts. Black Bear Island (Sadler’s Wells) won the Group 2 Dante Stakes and ran second in the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes. As good as these performances were, they could not match those of his own-brother High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells).

The dual Derby winner amassed earnings of almost £3.5 million and won four Group 1 races in Ireland and England, in addition to the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf on two occasions. A winning full-sister to High Chaparral, Chenchikova (Sadler’s Wells) bred Fancy Blue (Deep Impact), winner of the Group 1 Nassau Stakes and Prix de Diane-French Oaks.

Naranco was bred by Eric Chen from Patsy Boyne (Galileo), but that mare did not match the race record of her siblings, managing to be placed at two in the USA. As a four-year-old she sold for $480,000 to the Don Alberto Corporation, and three years later John Berry purchased her carrying Naranco. She cost 300,000gns, the same amount that her colt brought as a foal.

Put back in foal to Kingman, this time to a southern hemisphere covering, Patsy Boyne headed to Australia where the colt she was carrying, Koning, has been placed on his first start at three this year.