FRESH from the weekend news that State Of Rest (Starspangledbanner) will join the stallion ranks at Rathbarry Stud at the end of his racing career, Dermot and Meta Cantillon were celebrating a Group 3 victory at Naas for the colt’s year-younger half-sister Tranquil Lady. It was an additional pleasure for Dermot as he is chairman of the racecourse.

This daughter of Australia (Galileo) is now a leading Oaks fancy, and what an achievement it would be for her dam Repose, a daughter of Quiet American (Fappiano), the broodmare sire of the weekend’s Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath, were she to win.

State Of Rest and Tranquil Lady are the first two winners from three runners for Repose, and this year she will be represented by Double Scoop (Dandy Man), a two-year-old in training with Anthony Dutrow in the USA. Double Scoop sold as a yearling for €180,000.

Could the best still be to come? On the ground is a filly foal out of Repose by Sea The Stars (Cape Cross), and, wait for it, she is in foal to Frankel (Galileo).

In case you missed it, State Of Rest has won his last three starts, on three continents, and they were the Grade 1 Saratoga Derby in the USA, the Group 1 Cox Plate in Australia, and the Group 1 Prix Ganay in France. Now Tranquil Lady is on a quest for her Group 1 success, and what value she looks already. In fact, Dermot and Meta failed to sell her as a foal for €30,000, the decision to retain being wholly justified when she made £180,000 at the 2020 relocated Goffs Orby Sale.

The couple sent 10 yearlings to the sales in 2013 and sold nine. The one to return home was the unraced Repose. She is clearly a mare who is being upgraded, and deservedly so.

I have written many times about the great rewards the Cantillons have enjoyed over the years from purchasing older mares, with Meta’s speciality in the field of mare fertility being an undoubted added bonus.

Monaassabaat

The couple bought the then 16-year-old stakes winner Monaassabaat (Zilzal) at Goffs in 2007 for €42,000 from Darley, in foal to Refuse To Bend (Sadler’s Wells). She was immediately despatched to the USA where, having produced a colt that won subsequently in Japan, she was covered by Street Sense (Street Cry). The result of that mating, a colt named Prince Alzain, sold for $200,000 as a foal and was a stakes winner in England.

Quiet American appealed to Dermot as a covering sire for Monaassabaat. He was a proven stallion at a reasonable fee, and represented a ‘semi-outcross’ in this part of the world, being by Fappiano (Mr Prospector). The former Jonabell Farm stallion Quiet American has now gone on to become an outstanding broodmare sire.

On the female side of the pedigree, State Of Rest’s third dam is the talented It’s In The Air (Mr Prospector). Champion at two and three, winner of 16 races including five at Grade 1 level, she is ancestress of seven Group or Grade 1 winners.

That list also includes this year’s Group 1 Dubai World Cup winner Mystic Guide (Ghostzapper), the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches-French 1000 Guineas winner Musical Chimes (In Excess), five-time Grade 1 winner Music Note (A P Indy), and three-time Group/Grade 1 winner Storming Home (Machiavellian).