MOSS Keane and Colm Tucker are forever recalled whenever Moss Tucker steps out on a racecourse. With the Rugby World Cup in full swing, there was no better time for the five-year-old gelding to gain the most important win of his career, in the Group 1 Malih Al Basti-sponsored Flying Five Stakes.

An eighth success for Moss Tucker, the gelding was proudly led in by his breeder and joint-owner Donal Spring, a man who knows a thing or two about the oval ball. Spring captained both Munster and Leinster during a playing career which also took him to France.

Along with Moss Keane and Colm Tucker, both now deceased, Spring was on the Muster side that famously beat the All Blacks in 1978. Days after that famous win, Spring won the second of his seven Irish caps.

A second Group 1 winner, after four-time Group 1 winner Barney Roy, for his sire Excelebration (Exceed And Excel), Moss Tucker is the only winner to date for his dam, Rare Symphony (Pastoral Pursuits). A €3,2000 Goresbridge yearling purchase, Rare Symphony won twice at three and then twice more over hurdles. In recent times she has had a couple of offspring by Boardsmill Stud stallions.

Great friends Peter Reynolds and Robert Dore bred Rare Symphony, and she was the first foal of Rubileo (Galileo), whom the pals bought with her first pregnancy for 19,000gns. Rubileo has gone on to breed seven winners, headed by the Grade 3 Astra Stakes at Santa Anita winner Pantsonfire (Sir Percy). Not surprisingly, Rubileo revisited Sir Percy and that mating at Lanwades Stud resulted in the 2023 US winner Percolate.

Champion

In addition to this pair, Rubileo also bred the 2012 champion three-year-old colt in Scandinavia by the same stallion. Named Bomar (Sir Percy), he won six times in Norway and Sweden, capturing the Listed Svenskt Derby and finishing runner-up in the Norwegian equivalent.

Rubileo, a half-sister to Hammadi (Red Ransom) who won the Listed Jebel Ali Sprint, and her placed half-sister Winning Note (Victory Note) are the only non-winners among the 10 foals produced by Ruby Affair (Night Shift). That mare was one of the mares to visit Dubawi (Dubai Millennium) in his first season at stud, the resulting filly Waajida winning over hurdles in Italy at four, running second in a Grade 2 hurdle race there, and finally winning on the flat as a six-year-old in Slovakia.

Ruby Affair was deserving of a mating with Dubawi since she was a half-sister to the Group 1 2000 Guineas winner Island Sands (Turtle Island). That colt was bred at Kilcoran House Stud by the late Joan (Mrs T V) Ryan, and this classic success came just weeks before Oath, bred by Mrs Ryan’s daughter Isabel Morris, won the Epsom Derby.