WHILE the world’s major breeders, with access to the world’s greatest stallions, have regular classic success, occasionally there is a bit of magic when a fairy-tale result emerges, giving hope to breeders at lower levels of the market.

Cachet is a perfect example. The daughter of Aclaim (Acclamation) and the Teofilo (Galileo) mare Poyle Sophie gave Harry Herbert’s Highclere Thoroughbred Racing their first British classic success on Sunday when she won the Group 1 Qipco 1000 Guineas – and this was a series of firsts. The first classic win in the first crop for her sire, the first classic victory for the breeder, Hyde Park Stud’s John Bourke, for her trainer George Boughey, and the first top-level winner in at least five generations of the female family.

To think that all of this started with an investment of just 3,000gns in Poyle Sophie when she was sold to Bourke, who is based at Killucan in Co Westmeath, at the Tattersalls December Sale in 2018. Her sale was necessitated by the terminal illness of her owner, the now deceased London Heathrow-based stud farmer Cecil Wiggins, and he had actually bred, with his daughter Alison, Pyle Sophie’s dam Lost In Lucca (Inchinor), sold her as a yearling, and bought her back after she won.

Small price

Lost In Lucca went on to produce five winners, none of them out of the ordinary, and this would in part have accounted for the small price John Bourke needed to part with to acquire Poyle Sophie.

She had been sent to be trained by Ralph Beckett and ran six times at the age of four, being beaten a head on one occasion over a mile and a half at Kempton. She was defeated by an 11-year-old to whom she was giving weight.

If this was far from classic form, it did show a hint of ability at least, and Wiggins sent her to stud. She made an inauspicious start, producing a pair of fillies that together brought £2,490 as yearlings. Her third rendezvous at stud was with the Group 1 winning sprinter Aclaim in his first season at The National Stud in Newmarket, and his fee that year was £12,500. Getting 3,000gns months later when sold in foal to him was, frankly, a disaster.

Thankfully John Bourke had faith in the mare and in the filly she produced, and when Cachet was sent to the 2020 Tattersalls Ascot Yearling Sale, the breeder retained her at £14,700. Though this would have seen him in profit, it was nothing compared to the 60,000gns she brought last year at the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale. Jake Warren, through his Highclere Agency, signed for the filly who was then syndicated by his uncle Harry Herbert.

Seven figures

Today, the classic winning Cachet has a valuation in seven figures, is also winner of the Group 3 Nell Gwyn Stakes, and her placings include finishing third in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile at two. Her winnings of more than £400,000 are an added bonus!

It is not only John Bourke who will have cheered Cachet all the way to the winning post at Newmarket either. Also in Co Westmeath, Micheál Orlandi at Starfield Stud has a two-year-old half-sister to Cachet by his stallion Kuroshio (Exceed And Excel), and she was recently purchased by him through his Compas Equine agency in a private transaction for £25,000. I imagine it would take an extra zero on that number now to buy her.

What of Poyle Sophie’s further progeny? According to John Bourke she has a “queen of a yearling filly” by Cotai Glory (Exceed And Excel) who will be sales-bound in October, and two weeks ago she had a “very, very good colt” by Mehmas, and he is by Aclaim’s sire Acclamation (Royal Applause).

A final decision is due to be made now on a covering sire.

Another 3,000gns

Within minutes of Poyle Sophie being sold for 3,000gns, her three-time winning half-sister Poyle Meg (Dansili) was also knocked down for the very same price. They were sold two lots apart, consigned through The National Stud in Newmarket. Poyle Meg was a winner producer, being five years older that her sibling, and was in foal to Twilight Son (Kyllachy) whose fee that year was £10,000. Her yearling that year has since become a Grade 3 winner in the USA, while the foal she was carrying is the now unbeaten three-time winner Whoputfiftyinyou. He failed to sell as a yearling, made a whopping £82,000 to Kevin Ross as a breezer, and looks certain to become a stakes winner.

What a turnaround in a family that had appeared to be in the doldrums. Poyle Sophie’s sire Teofilo had a magic weekend, being the broodmare sire of the Group 1 Qipco 2000 Guineas winner Coroebus (Dubawi) also. In 2020 Teofilo got his first Group 1 winner as a broodmare sire when Mac Swiney (New Approach) won the Vertem Futurity, and last year he added the Group 1 Irish 2000 Guineas to his haul.

Poyle Sophie’s dam Lost In Lucca was sold by Cecil and Alison Wiggins as a yearling for 10,000gns and won one of her 14 starts. That came over a mile and a half at Newmarket, carrying 7st 9lbs, and she was placed a few times.

Not surprisingly she was bought by Cecil Wiggins for 15,000gns when sold at Tattersalls later that same year, as her two-year-old half-sister Jumima (Owington) provided the pedigree with a big update when she won the Group 2 Lowther Stakes at York.

Runnett

I mentioned earlier that Cachet is the first Group 1 winner in five generations – at least – of the family. That said, her fifth dam Rennet (King’s Bench), who was successful seven times, bred nine winners, and the best of these was Runnett (Mummy’s Pet). He won nine races and among these was his victory in the Group 2 Vernons Sprint Cup at Haydock Park.

Trained by John Dunlop and ridden by Bruce Raymond, Runnett won what is now the Group 1 Haydock Sprint Cup at the age of four, and such was the consistent quality of the race’s winners that it was upgraded some years after he was successful.

It is worth bearing in mind that Moorestyle won it the year before Runnett did, while subsequent winners included Green Desert, Danehill and Dayjur.

The classic success for Cachet is a dream come true for so many, and she is the poster girl now for small breeders everywhere. Yes, what John Bourke has done is relatively uncommon, but it is not impossible. This column will delightedly highlight such stories always. Roll on Royal Ascot and the Group 1 Coronation Stakes, the next intended start for the new star filly.