WHAT an appropriately-named winner Emotion proved to be when, thanks to her success in the Listed Chalice Stakes at Newmarket, she provided her sire Frankel, who stands nearby at Banstead Manor Stud, with his 100th individual stakes winner.

Emotion’s win came in the nick of time. Twenty-four hours later and Frankel would have failed to match the record for the fastest 100 in history, an honour he now holds with the great Danehill, who was also bred by Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte. Frankel has achieved the feat more than six months faster than both Dubawi and Galileo, the latter being his sire. The only thing that could have made the day more special would have been had Juddmonte bred Emotion – but that honour fell to The Molly Malone Partnership.

Peter Molony was ringside at the 2017 Arqana December Sale when the Group 1 Prix du Cadran winner Molly Malone was offered for sale from Monceaux. The daughter of Lomitas (Niniski) was sold with a covering by Golden Horn (Cape Cross), and her first foal, the then three-year-old Morgan Le Faye (Shamardal) had been stakes placed twice from her first three runs.

Molony signed the purchase docket at €600,000, the third highest price at the sale, on behalf of David Redvers.

Good and bad was to follow. The good news included the fact that Morgan Le Faye, racing for Godolphin, went on to win at Group 2, Group 3 and listed level, and she was twice in the frame in Group 1 races, including the Prix du Cadran. That filly was bred by Dieter Burkle who had also bred and raced Molly Malone. Morgan Le Faye was born a year before Magnet (Exceed And Excel), and he too was a winner.

Two from two with her first foals was a great start at stud for Molly Malone, and the investment made by Redvers looked a good one. However, he and The Molly Malone Partnership members must have been disappointed when the mare’s next two foals, both fillies, failed to race, and the colt she was carrying at the sale was to go unnamed.

Nonetheless, Redvers knows that patience is a much-needed virtue when it comes to breeding, and in the spring after her purchase Molly Malone was covered by super sire Frankel, and Emotion was the outcome. She is followed by a pair of colts, a two-year-old by Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy) and a yearling by Dubawi (Dubai Millennium). There is much to look forward to with the family.

Redvers purchased Molly Malone a week after he gave 1,800,000gns for another filly from the same family, the Group and Grade 3 winner Wekeela (Hurricane Run). She was unlucky not be a top-level winner, having been runner-up in the Group 1 Prix Saint-Alary and twice finishing second in Grade 1 races in the USA. Her first foal, and only runner, is a winner. Wekeela’s stakes-placed full-sister Matauri Pearl (Hurricane Run) has since bred the 2020 Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner Aunt Pearl (Lope De Vega).

This is also the immediate family of another pair of high-class winners. Emotion’s fourth dam Mosella (Surumu) was a stakes winner in West Germany, as it was then known, and she is remembered as the dam of three-time Group 1 winner, champion sire and sire of sires, Monsun (Konigsstuhl). That colt’s half-sister Morning Light (Law Society) bred Brametot (Rajsaman), winner of the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Poulains-French 2000 Guineas and Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby in 2017.

Frankel’s stud fee

2013 £125,000

2014 £125,000

2015 £125,000

2016 £125,000

2017 £125,000

2018 £175,000

2019 £175,000

2020 £175,000

2021 £175,000

2022 £200,000

**********