BLOODSTOCK agent Billy Jackson-Stops joined forces with trainer Andrew Balding to purchase a yearling colt in Book 2 of last year’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sale for 65,000gns. The son of Mishriff’s sire Make Believe (Makfi) was bred by John O’Connor, and sold through the Ballylinch Stud that he runs, and where the colt’s sire stands.

Named Royal Supremacy, and sporting the colours of Michael Blencowe, the bay may have won on his debut by just a nose, but it was the manner of his win, coupled with an unfavourable draw in the seven-furlong Sandown maiden, that caught my eye, and there is bound to be more to come from him. Oisin Murphy steered Royal Supremacy to his first win.

Victory now means that the colt’s dam, two-year-old winner Adelasia (Iffraaj), is responsible for four winners with her first four progeny, and her latest is a colt foal by Ballylinch’s Waldgeist (Galileo).

Win-win

It has been a win-win for John O’Connor. He actually bred Royal Supremacy’s dam, Adelasia, and sold her as a yearling at Arqana for €300,000 to John Ferguson, acting for Godolphin. Charlie Appleby saddled her to win second time out, over seven furlongs at Doncaster, at two, but as she didn’t retain that form at three, she was bought back by O’Connor, through Amanda Skiffington, for 46,000gns the following year.

Adelasia is one of 10 winners from the juvenile winner Flaming Song (Darshaan), and two of them were German pattern winners. Fight Club (Lavirco) won and was runner-up in the Group 2 Euro Cup at Frankfurt, while his year-older half-brother Flambo (Platini) was a Group 3 winner at the same venue.

Make Believe won both his starts at two, but it was in his second season racing that he excelled, beating his fellow Ballylinch Stud stallion New Bay in the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Poulains-French 2000 Guineas, before dropping back to seven furlongs to capture the Group 1 Prix de la Foret from Limato and Toormore. Royal Supremacy is from his fifth crop.