By Adam Houghton
Having confessed my love for one dual Nunthorpe winner, Borderlescott (GB), in a TDN feature published during York's Ebor Festival, it now seems only fair to revisit the story of another, the force of nature that was Mecca's Angel (Ire), successful on the Knavesmire in 2015 and 2016 and now one of the most exciting young broodmares on the planet through the exploits of her daughters, Content (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) and Bedtime Story (Ire) (Frankel {GB}).
For former owner David Metcalfe it's the story that just keeps on giving, even if his own direct involvement with the daughter of Dark Angel (Ire) came to an end when her private sale to Coolmore was announced on Tuesday, October 18, 2016. Fittingly, it was the same date on which she was bought by trainer Michael Dods for just 16,000gns at Book 2 of Tattersalls October Yearling Sale four years earlier.
“Michael knows I like sprinters and he had an order from me for a nice filly,” Metcalfe says of that initial purchase. “I was flying back from somewhere and motoring down to Newmarket, but I wasn't going to be there in time to see her go through the ring.
“I went to see her as soon as I got to the sales and there was no argument that I'd take her. I just loved the look of her. As for how much, they laugh about it because I said I only wanted to spend 15 grand, so Michael came in as a partner. But we got on very well and were pals, so that didn't bother me.”
It didn't take long for that to prove money very well spent, but first the filly had to be given a name by Metcalfe–better known as 'Mecca' to those closest to him.
“I used to go down to Shropshire and the Welsh Borders buying cattle,” he continues. “The people down there would ask me to ring them when my horses were running, but I knew I'd forget so I told them I'd do something better.
“From then on I christened all of the horses 'Mecca's' something. Then if they looked on the index and saw a 'Mecca's' running, it was likely to be mine. We decided to do it with all of the horses and then we just kept it going because it was lucky.”
Mecca's Angel, a daughter of the Atraf (GB) mare Folga (GB), a six-time winner over sprint trips for James Given, made her first racecourse appearance at Thirsk in May of her two-year-old season, by which stage Metcalfe already knew he had a proper horse on his hands.
“She was that good I could see it for myself,” he replies when asked about the reports of her ability from Dods. “We saw it before she ever ran. I remember telling somebody at one market I was at that you want to watch this horse because she's like nothing I've ever had before. And she ended up winning by 12 lengths at Southwell as a two-year-old.”
That Southwell demolition job was the second of Mecca's Angel's two wins as a juvenile when she was also runner-up in Listed races at York and Ayr. At three she was beaten just once in five starts, with Friday marking the 10-year anniversary of her first Group-race success in the G3 World Trophy at Newbury.
Having been carefully managed in those early years, avoiding fast ground–“We had to protect her a bit because her joints weren't the best in the world,” says Metcalfe–Mecca's Angel was finally unleashed at the top table as a four-year-old when she contested the Nunthorpe for the first time.
The result was an emphatic two-length defeat of Wesley Ward's two-year-old rocket Acapulco (Scat Daddy), while her success in 2016, when beating the G1 July Cup winner Limato (Ire) (Tagula {Ire}) by the same distance, was arguably better still, coming very close to breaking Dayjur's long-standing course record.
“We definitely appreciated the second one a lot,” Metcalfe remembers. “I was on cloud nine–it's just something that you don't expect to happen. I'm pleased that we managed to do it.
“A lot of people don't even get a winner and we've had a lot of success over the years. Now, thank god, she's breeding good ones for Coolmore.
“We didn't want people to know what we got for her,” he adds of the decision to sell Mecca's Angel privately, at the end of a career in which she won 10 of her 20 starts and earned £679,941 in total prize-money.
“We thought we probably could make more at the sales, but it wasn't about how much we got for her. She'd done us proud and we wanted her to go somewhere where we knew she'd be looked after well. We've been over to see her at Coolmore and it's like being at The Ritz.”
Now the dam of three winners from as many runners, Mecca's Angel has certainly rewarded the five-star care given to her by the Coolmore team. Her three-year-old daughter Content was last seen making the breakthrough at the top level in the Yorkshire Oaks, at the scene of her dam's Nunthorpe heroics, while her two-year-old Bedtime Story was unbeaten in four starts–including a nine-length win in the Listed Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot–before her odds-on defeat in Sunday's G1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh.
“I'm so pleased that she's got Content and Bedtime Story,” says Metcalfe, who still has three horses in training at the Dods yard near Darlington. “The more success they have, the happier I am for Coolmore and the team.
“Content running was the reason we went to York [the day she won the Yorkshire Oaks], because we hadn't seen her in the flesh. And Bedtime Story looked out of the ordinary until her last run, but I read in the paper that the vet said she was lame after the race. They say she has a bit of Mecca's Angel's temperament. She likes to go fast and has to be anchored a bit.
“It sent a cold shiver down my back when she won at Ascot. You'd think we had shares in her. We don't, but you feel involved even though you're on the sidelines because Mecca's Angel was ours once–she's always been my mare.”
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