WILLIE Mullins has won the two-mile mares maiden hurdle at Naas that was staged on Monday four times since its addition to the programme in 2018.

He won the first running with Relegate, previously successful in the Grade 1 Weatherbys Champion Bumper. He doubled up the following year with Yukon Lil, a useful mare who showed plenty of versatility. There was a gap of a year to the next winner, Brandy Love, and she went on the following April to collect her Grade 1 victory at Fairyhouse. It is clear that the race is a target always for a smart runner from Mullins’ Closutton Stables.

On Monday, Mullins won for the fourth time with Baby Kate (Champs Elysees), and also supplied the runner-up in the shape of the odds-on favourite Karoline Banbou. These are two well-regarded mares, and both will surely go on to better things. That said, Baby Kate is a listed Cheltenham bumper winner, and has now won three of her four starts for the Gorm Agus Ban Syndicate. There has already been mention of Cheltenham in March, with another run in between, for the winner.

In fairness, this is the third time Baby Kate has featured here. On the first occasion it followed her debut success at Ballinrobe. Less than three months later she travelled to Prestbury Park to run out a more than four-length winner of the 15-runner Listed Evesham Mares’ National Hunt Flat Race. Her only disappointment was at Aintree when she ran flat.

First foal

Baby Kate is the first foal out of Augusta Kate (Yeats), and was bred by the former Irish international soccer player Kevin Doyle. He leases the mare to the syndicate who race her, and he bought Augusta Kate, carrying Baby Kate, for €85,000. Doyle sold Augusta Kate’s second produce, Amen Kate (Flemensfirth), to Bryan Cooper at last year’s Derby Sale for €75,000, and back in September she was the easy winner of a Listowel bumper on her only start, with a certain Patrick Mullins in the saddle.

Doyle bought Augusta Kate after she enjoyed a fine career on the track. She won five times, two of her three bumper successes were in listed races, while her pair of hurdle wins included victory in the Grade 1 Irish Stallion Farms EBF Mares Novice Hurdle at Fairyhouse. On her final start she chased Benie Des Dieux home in the Grade 1 Annie Power Mares Champion Hurdle at Punchestown.

This is a family in which mares do particularly well. Augusta Kate’s third produce, a three-year-old filly by Maxios (Monsun), would look to have been a value purchase by Hugh Mulryan at this year’s Goffs Arkle Sale, even at a price tag of €50,000. Currently at Doyle’s Slaney River Stud are a yearling colt and a colt foal, both by Crystal Ocean (Sea The Stars). This year Augusta Kate visited Jeu St Eloi (Saint Des Saints).

Blacktype winners

Baby Kate’s first four dams have all bred a blacktype winner. The dam of Augusta Kate is Feathard Lady (Accordion), a true rags to riches story. Bought as a foal for IR900gns by Tim Nolan’s Jamestown House Stud, she was never beaten. She won a pair of bumpers and five hurdle races, notably running out a 12-length winner of the Grade 1 Christmas Hurdle at Sandown, and later sold for a record 270,000gns. She ended her racing career with earnings of €146,000.

Augusta Kate is the only winner to date from eight foals and five runners for Feathard Lady, but that mare is the best of six racecourse winners and a point-to-point winner from seven runners for the twice-raced Lady Rolfe (Alzao), Her siblings include the Auteuil listed hurdle winner Invite D’Honneur (Be My Guest). He won nine times, six on the flat and the rest over jumps. His dam was First Water (Margouillet). She only won once, and among her blacktype performances back in the early eighties was to run fourth in the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac at two.

If you delve further into the female line of Baby Kate, you come up with one of the most prolific families at producing racehorses out of the top flight on the flat. Her sixth dam was Courtessa (Supreme Court) and she was unraced Admittedly, she was foaled in 1955, and her five winners were headed by the speedy D’Urberville whose 10 victories included the King’s Stand Stakes and the Windsor Castle Stakes, both at Royal Ascot.

Marvellous taproot

A quick look at the branches of the families that descend from Courtessa show that she is the taproot for at least 35 Group 1 winners on the flat. She is dam of the champion sprinter Habibti (Habitat), grandam of the 1000 Guineas winner On The House (Be My Guest), while some outstanding family winners of more recent times include Cracksman (Frankel), Golden Horn (Cape Cross) and the Melbourne Cup winner Vow And Declare (Declaration Of War).

Ironically, the most celebrated member of the family is the unplaced Eight Carat (Pieces Of Eight). She was sent to Australia and is one of just a handful of mares in history to breed five Group 1 winners, two of which were champions. Eight Carat alone is the source, through her branch of this family, for 18 Group 1 winners. Just three mares in history have produced five Group 1 flat winners, and one of the others will get a mention next.

Baby Kate is a daughter of the multiple US and Canadian Grade 1 winner Champs Elysees (Danehill), and she is from his final crop. Bred in the purple by Juddmonte, Champs Elysees is a son of Hasili (Kahyasi), and she is also a member of that select group of ‘Blue Hen’ mares. Four of her five winners at the highest level were by Danehill (Danzig), and the other was by Green Desert (Danzig). It is often said that her most famous son was Dansili (Danehill), but he ‘only’ won a Group 2. He has been an exemplary sire.

Way To Paris

On the flat, Champs Elysees is the sire of five Group 1 winners, one of whom, Way To Paris, is at stud in Ireland, and he is emerging as a smart broodmare sire too. Over jumps he has compiled a record of 12 blacktype winners, and his final crop, which numbers Baby Kate, also includes another blacktype mare, Arclight.

She was trained by Sir Mark Prescott before being sold to join Nicky Henderson. Winner over a mile at two, she won twice over hurdles and was placed in a listed juvenile hurdle. She won her first two starts over fences, taking a listed mares’ chase at Exeter.

Watch out for Taponthego, from the last crop also, and he was a taking winner of a maiden hurdle for Henry de Bromhead last month, and is a horse with huge potential. The trainer also has another useful son of Champs Elysees in the Grade 3 chase winner Gorgeous Tom, only a length off the winner, Croke Park, in a Grade 1 at Fairyhouse.