LAST year was a memorable one for Tony and Anne O’Callaghan’s Tally Ho Stud, and for the couple themselves. It was crowned when they were inducted into the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association Hall of Fame.

The year brought success after success, whether it was for horses they bred, horses sired by their stallions, or even horses they pinhooked – usually profitably! Well, it would seem that the winning run is continuing, and this time it concerns Malavath. In 2021 she won the Group 2 Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte, was then beaten half a length in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, and she has come back from winter quarters with a bang.

Trained in Chantilly by Francis-Henri Graffard, she won the Group 3 Prix Imprudence at Deauville and is now considered a leading fancy for the Group 1 1000 Guineas at Newmarket. Could she do it? Her pedigree suggests she might.

Impact

Malavath is from the second crop of Tally Ho’s Mehmas (Acclamation), and what an impact he has made at stud.

Raced only at two, he won a pair of Group 2 races and chased home Churchill in the Group 1 National Stakes and Caravaggio in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes. His first crop included a pair of Group/Grade 1 winners, Going Global and Supremacy, while Malavath is one of a trio of Group 2 winners in his second crop.

What of the dam side of Malavath’s pedigree? She is the first foal out of the New Approach (Galileo) mare Fidaaha, who was trained by Dermot Weld for Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum after being purchased as a yearling from her breeder, Jim Bolger. She cost Shadwell a cool €200,000. Having shown nothing in two starts, Fidaaha was despatched to the Goffs November Sale and bought by Tally Ho for €15,000.

Given a chance to redeem her racing reputation, she ran twice more, finishing well down the field on both occasions, and it was off to the breeding shed. Malavath sold as a yearling for £29,000 and then for £120,000 as a breezer. She looks value now, and races for the partnership of Everest Racing, David Redvers and Barbara Keller.

Classic aspirant

The juvenile success enjoyed by Malavath, and the phenomenal success of Mehmas, combined to make sure that the classic aspirant’s full-brother sold last autumn at Newmarket for 210,000gns. He is named Knight, while Fidaaha’s third produce is a yearling filly by another Tally Ho stallion, Cotai Glory (Exceed And Excel).

Though Fidaaha showed nothing on the racecourse, four of her siblings won. Her full-sister Ceisteach (New Approach) was acquired by Newsells Park Stud for $700,000 after winning a Grade 3 race in the USA. They got a lot of that back when her first foal, Arranmore (Oasis Dream), sold for 350,000gns. He is a four-time winner.

Steip Amach (Vocalised), the Irish for step outside, is a half-sister to Fidaaha, and she was a group winner ay two and four, later being placed in a pair of Group 1 races, the Prix Rothschild and Prix Jean Romanet.