Kirsten Rausing on Alpinista: 'There Were a Lot of Tears Shed'

On Sunday, Kirsten Rausing and Sir Mark Prescott achieved the impossible in uniting racing's participants in joy at the victory of Alpinista (GB) (Frankel {GB}) in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.

For Prescott, Newmarket's longest-serving trainer now in his 53rd season with a licence, it was a moment that brought a tear to his eye as the witty one-liners for which he is famous gave way to pure emotion. For Rausing, too, who has painstakingly developed a broodmare band of significant international note over more than four decades at her Lanwades Stud, the five-year-old mare's resounding success at ParisLongchamp was a moment of extreme satisfaction. 

“It was a marvellous, marvellous day for all of us, and there is a big team that has achieved this, but it will still take some time to sink in,” said the owner-breeder on Monday morning as she continued to wade through messages of congratulation before turning her attention to the October Yearling Sale at Tattersalls. 

“Of course it was marvellous to see this crowning achievement of Sir Mark's fantastic career as well. We hardly needed a plane coming home,” she added of the man who has trained her homebreds for 35 years, including Alpinista's dam Alwilda (GB) (Hernando {Fr}) and grand-dam, the treble Group 1 winner Albanova (GB) (Alzao).

Until Sunday, it would likely have been Albanova's full-sister, the dual Champion S. winner Alborada (GB), who held the top spot in Rausing's affections but the fellow grey mare, also trained by Prescott, will now be vying for that honour with her relation Alpinista, whose Arc victory was her sixth consecutive Group 1 win and ensured that she has remained unbeaten for two years. 

It would be hard to find anyone in the breeding business who can speak with more authority and depth of pedigree knowledge than the Swedish-born Rausing. Her association with Alpinista's family started in 1985 when she purchased her fourth dam Alruccaba (Ire) Crystal Palace {Fr}) from the Aga Khan in partnership with her great friend Sonia Rogers of Airlie Stud, where Rausing spent some of her formative years working in the bloodstock business. Needless to say, it was no accident that Rausing ended up with a mare who would go on to have such a profound influence on her broodmare band and is also the ancestress of this season's St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}).

“When I was a schoolgirl my grandfather taught me about pedigrees,” she recalled. “We started with dairy cattle and gun dogs and then we proceeded to thoroughbred horses, of which he knew nothing but he was very interested in their pedigrees and [books such as] Sir Charles Leicester's Breeding a Racehorse. The hero of anyone interested in breeding was the old Aga Khan–Lady Josephine (GB), Mumtaz Mahal (GB) and all that–and so it was through study of the old books and these wonderful fillies that I always thought that this family was, to my understanding, the very best in the studbook.”

Mumtaz Mahal, a daughter of The Tetrarch (Ire) who was purchased as a yearling by Aga Khan III and who became known as the 'Flying Filly' for her extraordinary success on the track, became an even bigger influence at stud for her owner. Fittingly, in the year in which the Aga Khan Studs celebrates its centenary, Mumtaz Mahal appears as the tenth dam of Alpinista.

Rausing continued, “So I was a great admirer of Mumtaz Mahal and those that came after her, and it also helped that when I was a child the Swedish National Stud had a horse called Darbhanga (GB) and he was by Dastur (GB) out of Mumtaz Begum (Fr), so he was a half-brother to Nasrullah (GB). He was a year or two older than Nasrullah and had been second in the Triple Crown in England but being by Dastur nobody wanted him. Nasrullah's greatness had yet to appear, so the Swedish government was able to buy this horse just after the war in 1945 and he came to Sweden and was a great success, probably the best there ever was. In fact, Bull Hancock sent an emissary to Sweden in the 1950s with a blank cheque to buy Nasrullah's brother but the Swedish government said, 'Whom do you take us for, we are a socialist government, not horse wranglers.' In a way that was a pity because if the horse had gone to Kentucky he would have had much more influence of course.”

The first Classic winner bred by Rausing's grandfather was a Danish 1,000 Guineas winner by Darbhanga out of a mare by Abernant (GB), and was thus inbred to Mumtaz Mahal. 

“So that really focused my absolute concentration on this family since I was a schoolgirl,” said Rausing, who bought Ayesha (GB) from Madame Couturié in 1967 from a different branch of the family and bred from her Ayah, who was the second-best two-year-old filly in Ireland in 1975.

“She had the SWE suffix so that was quite an achievement,” Rausing said. “But she died quite early so I was always scouring the catalogues for anything from that family. If anything ever cropped up they were always way too expensive for me. “When I saw Alruccaba in the book as a winning two-year-old in the December Sales of 1985 I was of course mad keen. I went to see her surreptitiously before the sales and, very luckily for me, she had a distinct tendon on her near-fore. She'd been trained by Michael Stoute and at the time his assistant was James Fanshawe who later told me that they'd never had anything slower in the yard, so they were  delighted that she managed to win a maiden at Brighton.”

With Sonia Rogers, a plan was hatched to secure Alruccaba. 

Rausing explained, “Sonia valued her much higher than I did so we had a complicated arrangement that I would bid for her and we would split her up to a certain value, and then if she made more I would keep bidding but she would be 100% Sonia's. Luckily she made a lot less than we thought she would. I bought her for one bid at 19,000gns, her reserve having been 18,000. So Sonia and I owned her together and she spent two years at Lanwades and two years at Airlie, backwards and forwards, throughout her career.”

Alruccaba's offspring include the Sun Chariot S. winner Last Second (Ire) and fellow black-type winners Alleluia (GB), Alouette (GB), and Arrikala (Ire). Another of her daughters, Jude (GB) (Darshaan {GB}), has established her own significant branch of the family which includes the Classic winner Yesterday (Ire) (Sadler's Wells).

“Alruccaba has founded quite a dynasty and it has been helped by the fact that there seems to have been more fillies than colts,” said Rausing. 

There was extra satisfaction for the breeder in the success of Alpinista as she is out of a mare by the former Lanwades resident Hernando (Fr), who also featured as broodmare sire of Saturday's G1 Prix de Royallieu winner Sea La Rosa (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}), bred by Guy Heald.

She said, “With the few opportunities numerically that Hernando had, like Selkirk, he is a significant damsire.”

For Alpinista, the paddocks of Lanwades will call her home for next season after four honourable years in training, in which she has to date won ten of her 15 starts.

“She's done enough, more than enough, and I am eternally grateful to her,” Rausing said. “Whether she runs again is a matter for Sir Mark. She gave us such an incredible day on Sunday and there were a lot of tears shed, even perhaps a few by the great man himself.”