Value sires taste Italian juvenile success

IT was a big weekend in Italy for Cheveley Park Stud’s Twilight Son (Kyllachy). The sire, whose fee for 2022 deservedly goes up to £7,000, had a stakes double. The three-year-old Aria Importante brought his tally of victories to eight, two at Group 3 level and four listed wins, and his earnings exceeded £200,000.

This is a happening family, as this son of the listed winner and Group 3 Italian 1000 Guineas runner-up Aria Di Festa (Orpen) is related to the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes winner Quick Suzy (Profitable), their dams being half-sisters.

Another of Aria Di Festa’s half-sisters, the unraced Chiosina (Danehill Dancer), is the grandam of Millebosc (Le Havre) who was third in the summer’s Group 1 Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby.

Aria Importante is the best winner to date from the first crop by Twilight Son, the dual Group 1 winning sprinter, and the second crop contains three juvenile stakes winners in 2021. Twilight Jet won the Group 3 Cornwallis Stakes, and at the weekend Baghed won the Listed Premio Rumon.

Baghed was sold through Whatton Manor Stud to Marco Bozzi for just 7,500gns as a yearling. He looked an immediate bargain when he won his first two starts in Italy, before running second, well-beaten, in the Group 3 Premio Primi Passi. Undeterred, connections sent him to Chantilly where he did well to finish runner-up behind Atomic Force in the Group 2 Prix Robert Papin.

Stakes victory

They set their sights even higher in August and ran the grey colt in the Group 1 Prix Morny, and he was an honourable seventh, beaten less than three lengths, behind the dual Group 1 winner Perfect Power.

An attempt to sell him at the Arqana Arc Sale failed when he was unsold at €240,000, and that might have looked a regrettable decision when he was only third in the Group 2 Gran Criterium in Rome. Now he is back on track with his first stakes victory.

Baghed is the first offspring of the winning mare Dealer’s Choice (Exchange Rate) and this spring she gave birth to the stakes winner’s full-sister. This is the family of champion juvenile, Group 1 Prix Morny winner and now leading young sire, No Nay Never (Scat Daddy).

A second listed race for juveniles in Italy was the Criterium Femminile, and this represented a second win for the Austin Curran-bred Prichi, the first foal out of the unraced Medaglia D’Oro (El Prado) mare Naseej. Sold for £18,000 when the Sportsman’s Sale was moved to Doncaster last year, the purchaser was Razza Latina.

No surprise

It was no real surprise to see that the same purchaser signed for the filly’s Golden Horn (Cape Cross) half-brother at the recent Goffs Autumn Yearling Sale.

Prichi’s grandam Sortita (Monsun) sold as a yearling to Shadwell for €750,000 and won a couple of times. The reason for her high value is that she is a full-sister to five-time Group 1 winner Schiaparelli (Monsun), dual Group 1 winner Samum, and the Group 1 German Oaks heroine Salve Regina.

For good measure, another full-sister was the unraced Sanwa (Monsun), dam of a third German Derby winner in the family in the form of Sea The Moon (Sea The Stars), now a Group 1 stallion.

Prichi is a sixth stakes winner for the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 2000 Guineas winner Awtaad (Cape Cross), and the second from his two-year-old crop. The first crop of three-year-olds includes Creative Belief among their number.

At €5,000 in 2022, Awtaad could be one of the best value stallions around.