VICTORY for the improving Kyprios in the nine and six-furlong Listed Vintage Crop Stakes at Navan was highly significant on a number of fronts.

Foremost is the fact that the colt beat his six-year-old, dual Group 1 winning own-sister Search For A Song to land the prize for trainer Aidan O’Brien. A target now for Kyprios must surely be the Group 1 Ascot Gold Cup.

Recording his third win in just five starts, it was the first in stakes company for the four-year-old son of Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), and Kyprios thus became the eighth blacktype winner for his dam Polished Gem.

That great Moyglare Stud matron is a winning daughter of Danehill (Danzig) and the classic winner Trusted Partner (Affirmed), and she has an impeccable record as a broodmare, her 10 foals are all winners.

Mind you, Polished Gem had a lot to live up to, as both her dam and grandam, Talking Picture (Speak John), produced 11 winners each. This wasn’t a case of quantity over quality, as there are few families about that have enjoyed so much high-class success, and all of it nurtured by the one farm. Talking Picture was acquired by Moyglare when her racing days ended, and that champion filly was born 51 years ago.

Talking Picture earned her title of champion two-year-old filly in the USA in 1973 with wins in the Grade 1 Spinaway Stakes over six furlongs at Saratoga, and the Grade 1 Matron Stakes at Belmont over seven. She was bred at Elmendorf Farm, and that was a memorable year for them as they could also boast of producing the champion two-year-old colt Protagonist.

Affirmed success

Triple Crown winner Affirmed (Exclusive Native), who beat Alydar on each occasion, was to play a large part in Talking Picture’s success as a broodmare for Moyglare Stud. She had six daughters by the 1978 champion, with the five who ran all earning blacktype, four of them being successful at that level.

The quartet were Easy To Copy, whose biggest win came in Italy in the Group 2 Premio Legnano and she is a multiple stakes-winning producer, Grade 3 winner and Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes-placed Low Key Affair, stakes winner, group-placed and successful broodmare Epicure’s Garden, while the best of them all was Trusted Partner.

The highlight of Trusted Partner’s career came in 1988 when she won the Group 1 Goffs Irish 1000 Guineas at the Curragh from 14 others, in the hands of Michael Kinane and trained by Dermot Weld, and the field that year included challengers from Britain and France.

Her 11 winners at stud are headed by the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes winner Dress To Thrill (Danehill), winning under Pat Smullen, and she had failed by less than a length to reel in Quarter Moon when running second in the Group 1 Moyglare Stakes at two.

Unaccompanied

Trusted Partner bred a second Grade 1 winner, but that was under National Hunt rules. Archive Footage (Sadler’s Wells) capturing The Ladbroke at Leopardstown, and that gelding’s full-sister produced the Grade 1 Galway Hurdle winner Indian Pace (Indian Ridge).

Interestingly, Trusted Partner’s stakes-placed full-sister Magical Cliché (Affirmed) is the grandam of Moyglare’s homebred Unaccompanied (Danehill Dancer), and that mare won a pair of Grade 1 hurdle races and was runner-up in the Grade 1 Triumph Hurdle at Cheltenham.

Polished Gem is one of 13 named foal from Trusted Partner, a dozen of which raced and all but one, who was placed, were winners. One of these was Trust In Luck (Nashwan), and a pair of Group 1 winning juveniles who descend from her are Vert de Grece (Verglas) and, more recently, the National Stakes hero Thunder Moon (Zoffany).

Back to Polished Gem now. She has shown great versatility as a broodmare, being very successful with Galileo and another son of Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer), High Chaparral. She is also the dam of group and listed winners by Notnowcato (Inchinor), Medicean (Machiavellian) and Dark Angel (Acclamation).

Her other winners are a daughter of Bahamian Bounty (Cadeaux Genereux) and a multiple winning son of Dubawi (Dubai Millennium).

Rich History

The latter horse is named Rich History, an apt name for a horse coming from such an esteemed family, and he is busily covering mares at Tom Meagher’s Kedrah House Stud this spring, his first year at stud. He has much to offer National Hunt breeders. His sire is one of the best in the world, and also responsible for Grade 1 Champion Chase winner Dodging Bullets.

Rich History is a half-brother to the Irish National Stud’s Free Eagle (High Chaparral), a successful sire of stakes winners and of the Group 1 Derby runner-up Khalifa Sat, and to a couple of others who have won also under National Hunt Rules.

This is truly an amazing family, producing tough, sound and durable runners, and it is a credit to Eva Maria Bucher Haefner that she and her team have kept Search For A Song in training for a fifth season. Hopefully her reward will be another Group 1 win, though it is also possible that she will cheer on Kyprios to do the same. Could it be at the expense of his older sister?