MATHEMATICS was not my best subject in school, but if my calculations are correct the three-year-old Champagne Prince gave his sire Lope De Vega (Shamardal) his 30th stakes winner of 2024 recently, taking his tally of victories to four with his win in the Listed Wild Flower Stakes at Kempton.

Catalogued back in October in the Tattersalls Horses In Training Sale, the Peter Harris-owned and Jane Chapple-Hyam trained grey won at the beginning of that month, producing a career-best performance, and has improved since. With almost £80,000 in the bank, he is starting to make some inroads into the 230,000gns he realised as a yearling in Book 1 at Tattersalls.

Bred by Brightwalton Bloodstock, otherwise Jeffrey and Phoebe Hobby, Champagne Prince is the first foal out of the Hobby’s homebred Maid Up (Mastercraftsman). Andrew Balding trained her to win four times at three, and significantly she landed the Group 3 March Stakes at Goodwood. This was in the same month that she went down by a short head in the Group 2 Lillie Langtry Stakes at the same course.

While she had a marvellous three-year-old season, the decision to race Maid Up on at four proved to be fruitless.

Champagne Prince was followed by the two-year-old filly Kon Tiki (Night Of Thunder), and she too was purchased by Harris, through Stroud Coleman Bloodstock, as a yearling, and she cost him 220,000gns. Last night, at 6pm, she was due to make her first start. Time now to look up the result and see if Jane Chapple-Hyam has got her off to a good start to her racing career.

Tom Whitehead

One man who will be thrilled with Champagne Prince’s stakes win is Tom Whitehead in Powerstown Stud. He managed to secure the yearling half-brother to Champagne Prince, a colt by Too Darn Hot (Dubawi) in this year’s Book 1 for 97,000gns. Whoever failed to close the gap will surely be ruing it. Brightwalton has a filly foal out of Maid Up by Kingman (Invincible Spirit), and this year the mare travelled to Ireland to be reunited in the covering shed with Lope De Vega.

Brightwalton’s association started with the family in 2012 when Anthony Stroud purchased Maid Up’s dam Complexion (Hurricane Run) for 125,000gns as a four-year-old. She was carrying her first foal, King Of Dreams (Dream Ahead). That was Complexion’s second time to be sold, and came a year after Colbinstown Lodge Stud paid 80,000gns to buy her fresh from winning at three. King Of Dreams more than repaid the investment when he sold for 240,000gns as a yearling.

The first five dams in Champagne Prince’s family have now produced at least one stakes winner. His third dam Ithaca (Distant View) was group-placed and bred the Group 2 Celebration Mile winner Zacinto (Dansili), and that colt was second to Rip Van Winkle in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. We are getting into real quality with the fourth dam, Reams Of Verse (Nureyev).

Oaks winner

One of the top pair of fillies at two in Europe when she won the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile, at three Reams Of Verse added the Group 1 Oaks, and she won of placed on all of her nine career starts.

She had two stakes-winning offspring, the best of them being the Grade 3 Canadian stakes winner Eagle Poise (Empire Maker). Reams Of Verse was a half-sister to Elmaamul (Diesis), winner of the Group 1 Irish Champion Stakes and Group 1 Eclipse Stakes, while their half-sister Midsummer (Kingmambo) bred the great Midday (Oasis Dream).

Lope De Vega’s brilliant year has been headlined by half a dozen Group or Grade 1 winners, two classic winners, and one of these, the Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby winner Look De Vega, will join his sire on the stallion roster at Ballylinch in 2025. While Lope De Vega’s fee has risen to a career high of €175,000, his son is being introduced at a very attractive €20,000.

This is Journalism at its best

HOW could I not look into the family of a graded stakes winner by the name of Journalism? It might well be the first of many mentions for the juvenile son of Curlin (Smart Strike).

Bought by Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners for $825,000 as a yearling, Journalism has run three times, starting with a placed effort at Santa Anita in late October, followed by victory at Del Mar in mid-November, and now he has capped his year with success in the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity. He is trained by Michael McCarthy, and won by more than three lengths from a trio of Bob Baffert runners. Baffert has farmed this race for many years.

McCarthy, a longtime assistant to Todd Pletcher, went out on his own in 2014 and has won more than 420 races with 12 individual Grade 1 winners, including 2021 Preakness Stakes winner Rombauer, the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner City Of Light, and 2021 champion female sprinter Ce Ce. One of the partners now in Journalism is Bridlewood Farm’s John Malone, the owner of Ballylinch Stud.

Journalism is the first foal out of Mopotism (Uncle Mo). She was hugely consistent as a racemare, but only won three times. Her Grade 2 Santa Anita win in the La Canada Stakes was thoroughly deserved, as she was runner-up three times in Grade 2 company, and four times placed in Grade 1 stakes races. Mopotism’s yearling colt by Tapit (Pulpit) sold for $1,500,000 this year.

With her first two offspring selling for more than $2.3 million, Mopotism has made a profit on the $1.05 million she cost Don Alberto Corporation back in 2019.That was her fourth time to sell at public auction, and she has increased in value with each sale. Mopotism is the best of four winners to date from the unplaced Peppy Rafaela (Bernardini), three of which are by Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie). They include this year’s once-raced Ruth, successful on her debut at two.

Apart from Journalism and his dam Mopotism, the only stakes winner in four generations of this family is Songster (Songandaprayer), a half-brother to Peppy Rafaela. He was a smart winner at up to Grade 2 level, with all but one of his four victories being gained in graded stakes.

Best sires

One of the best sires in the USA on a consistent basis, Curlin will officially turn 21 in a few days’ time, and is slotted to cover in the spring at Hill ‘N’ Dale at a few of $225,000. He has been represented this year by three Grade 1 winners and 14 stakes winners in all, and they are among 108 in total he has sired in his first 13 crops.

Twice Horse of the Year, at three and four, he won 11 races. In the US Triple Crown he won the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes, was second in the Belmont Stakes and third in the Kentucky Derby.

At stud, Curlin’s first crop included the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice (now a Group 1 sire), and his most recent Grade 1 winner is Juddmonte’s great Idiomatic, five times successful at the highest level. He has sired six Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup winners, half of them winning on the one day.