Latest Star Shows Turf Legend Undervalued in Europe Too

It's hard to know quite what Kitten's Joy has to do in order to gain a commercial standing commensurate with his achievements. As it is, the champion North American sire of 2018 once again proved unable to crack the top 30 sires ranked by the average value of their yearlings in 2019.

Not that he should take it personally. We all know that the American industry talks a good game about the growing importance of the turf program, but won't follow through when young stallions as well-bred and accomplished as Flintshire (GB) or Karakontie (Jpn) are imported; or even when Noble Mission (GB) manages to produce GI Runhappy Travers S. winner Code of Honor from his very first crop.

Old habits die hard, I guess, despite the American sport's agonized quest for surfaces that are easier on horses' legs. True, there are also dirt stallions whose stock seems to be perennially undervalued at the sales. But what I find barely less culpable than domestic neglect of Kitten's Joy is the failure of so many European prospectors to recognise and exploit the resulting opportunity.

So many, but not all. Step forward David Redvers, who showed what Kitten's Joy can do in Europe when picking out a champion for $160,000 at the Keeneland September Sale of 2016. Fortunately for Redvers, and his patron Sheikh Fahad, their rivals in Europe proved so obtuse in absorbing the example of Roaring Lion that the Tweenhills man was able to return to the same sale, last year, and find Kameko for barely half that sum, at $90,000.

Kameko may not mean a great deal to Americans as yet, his ascent to the front rank of European juveniles having been sealed on the day when attention over here was dominated by his contemporaries contesting the Friday card at the Breeders' Cup. Nonetheless, he made a little piece of history, the G1 Vertem Futurity S. having been transferred from its waterlogged home at Doncaster to the Tapeta surface at Newcastle–and so become the first elite prize contested on synthetics (and under lights) in Britain. And Kameko won in grand style, always travelling best before imposing himself on a smart field by over three lengths, in the process becoming one of the more plausible Classic rivals to champion Pinatubo (Ire) (Shamardal).

Actually, whatever he goes on to achieve next year, the tale of Kameko is already pretty astounding. His dam Sweeter Still (Ire) (Rock of Gibraltar {Ire}) was bred and initially raced by Annemarie O'Brien, whose husband Aidan saddled her for a promising debut from Ballydoyle–promising enough for a sale to California, where she became a Grade III and multiple stakes winner. As such, and also as a half-sister to Kingsbarns (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), an earlier winner of the equivalent Group 1 prize won by Kameko, she was sold (with a cover by the sire of Kingsbarns) for $750,000 at Keeneland January in 2014.

Sweeter Still's buyer that day was Braxton Lynch of Royal Oak Farm, on behalf of Phyllis Wyeth's Chadds Ford Stable. The young mare was viewed as an ideal partner for Union Rags, who had been raced by Wyeth and whose first foals were about to be born. Unfortunately, her produce record became such that she was sold, in the same ring less than two years later, for just $35,000 to Calumet–carrying the Kitten's Joy foal we now know as Kameko–and then returned to the November Sale last year to be discarded, with an Optimizer cover, for the pittance of $1,500 to T. Lesley Thompson.

Her freefall from $750,000 to $1,500, within five years, reflects the fact that not one of her foals had managed a single start by the time Kameko entered the ring. He was literally a sibling to Nobody–which happened to be the name given to one of Sweeter Still's two sons by Union Rags. Nobody, in fact, subsequently became the first of her foals actually to make it onto the track, albeit only to finish down the field in two maiden claimers at Delta Downs.

Unfortunately for Thompson, Redvers soon became perfectly aware that Kameko had the potential to transform his dam's value. And, long before the colt's breakout success at Newcastle, Fergus Galvin of Hunter Valley Farm had tracked down the mare to Tennessee and, acting on behalf of Redvers and Sheikh Fahad, offered Thompson due profit.

Rising 15, she still has a bit of time on her side and it is safe to say that she will not be going back to Optimizer any time soon. “One can assume that she'll be visiting Kitten's Joy for the rest of her life,” Redvers said wryly, before acknowledging what the transaction says about serendipity in bloodstock. “At the end of the day, our marketplace needs everybody. He [Thompson] was prepared to buy a cheap one. To be fair, he didn't get terribly well paid when we bought her! But he made a little bit of profit. And that's how the whole game works, how the wheel turns.”

Sure enough, others who have proved themselves to be on the ball include Mini Bloodstock, who found Catchingsnowflakes–the daughter of Galileo (unraced, naturally) acquired in utero with Sweeter Still–deep into the November Sale earlier this month, and gave $120,000 for her.

And if bringing Sweeter Still herself back into the sport's mainstream represents a canny bit of work, then the opportunity they spotted was no less than Redvers and his team deserve. For one thing, they are still grieving the heart-breaking loss of Roaring Lion to colic in New Zealand. But they are also entitled to prosper for an enterprising fidelity to Kitten's Joy.

Redvers, who stresses the contribution of team members Hannah Wall and Peter Molony, first latched onto the stallion in 2014 as underbidder on a $350,000 colt at Keeneland September. Racing instead for Godolphin, Hawkbill proceeded to win the G1 Eclipse S. and G1 Sheema Classic.

“We loved Hawkbill as a type and–once he went on to do what he did–we made our mission, if another good-looking one came up, that we'd buy him,” Redvers recalled. “It took us a while to find one we really liked, but that's how we ended up with Roaring Lion. And after him, of course we were always going to be intrigued if we found another good-looking Kitten's Joy. I said straight after buying Kameko that we thought he was the value in the sale, so it's quite pleasing to be proven right for a change.”

American readers must indulge the following cricket analogy in a conversation between two Englishmen, but if you think in terms of a baseball “strike” you'll get the rough idea.

“Kameko's dam, though a very good racehorse, had a series of 'dot balls' that turned people completely off,” Redvers said. “So it wasn't really a reflection on the stallion that we managed to buy him for 90 grand, even though he looked pretty obvious to us. It's a very good family, a stallion's pedigree in fact, but at the time the mare was looking a bit exposed. So we got an even better 2-year-old than Roaring Lion for even less money.”

Nonetheless Redvers remains still more perplexed by the fact that they were able to “steal” Roaring Lion for only $160,000.

“The mare was Grade I-placed, and he was an absolute superstar model,” he said. “So possibly that does show a lack of appetite for turf sires in America. To be fair, a Kitten's Joy foal [Hip 468] made half a million at the November Sale the other day. And I suspect that possible changes being proposed in California, and maybe a resurgence of Tapeta, will maybe create a bit of a bounce in the value of those [turf] horses.

“But I'll be delighted if they keep shunning them, because it gives us an opportunity. I can't offer any great wisdom on how the American market works, except for the fact that they tend to like a big, square dirt horse by a big, square dirt stallion. Behaviour, in these things, is only ever changed by money. So one imagines that as there are more opportunities for turf horses, including on man-made surfaces, no doubt demand will increase.”

As it is, the Redvers posse were able to secure another good prospect by Kitten's Joy at the Arqana Breeze-Up Sale in May, paying €130,000 for a filly imported through Gaybrook Lodge Stud after failing to meet her reserve at $130,000 in Keeneland's Book I last year. Siamese ran twice in nine days in September, fourth on debut and then winning decisively on the synthetic surface at Dundalk.

Redvers accepts that one of the reasons that Kitten's Joy has never quite punched his weight at the sales–to the extent that Ken Ramsey threatened to stand him in Europe before instead doing a deal with the reliably imaginative John Sikura, whose Hill 'n' Dale regime could yet boost the horse's commercial profile–is that some of his yearlings lack physical glamour. They say the same about Lookin At Lucky, another reliable purveyor of top-class racehorses. (And he pays a far stiffer price than Kitten's Joy, in terms of his fee, for not always producing “show ponies.”) But handsome is as handsome does.

And you couldn't put a high enough value on the common denominator Redvers detects in the best runners by Kitten's Joy.

“They seem to have a will to win,” he said. “That absolutely seems a common theme between the good ones, that they're competitive by nature and they're tough. Roaring Lion himself was very tough and also had a sensational turn of foot. That can be said for Kameko, as well: when he quickened clear at Newcastle, he put some very good Ballydoyle horses to the sword very quickly. You'd say those are two pretty necessary components in a racehorse, especially on turf. They're not grinders, like you need on dirt.”

Though I feel the industry is generally far too prescriptive about the surface predilections of different stallions, there's no mistaking the fact that Kitten's Joy views the green, green grass as home (if also its kin, synthetics). Admittedly the late Giant's Causeway, thanks to Bricks and Mortar, is about to end a six-year streak for Kitten's Joy as North America's champion turf sire. But he is booked for second and his overall resumé remains that of a historic conduit of one of the most potent bloodlines in the story of the breed.

There's absolutely no argument that Kitten's Joy has proved himself a most important stallion, and against all odds. Ramsey “made” the horse with relatively mediocre mares, no fewer than 36 of his first 38 stakes winners being homebreds: clear evidence that he must be passing on superior genes for class and toughness. Within the turf sector, moreover, he has proved a very versatile influence: he has sired a Breeders' Cup winner at a sprint distance, and has been a champion sire of juveniles as well. (Remember that three of his four grandparents won Group 1 races over a mile in Europe.)

And while Roaring Lion was tragically confined to a single crop, other promising young stallions like Oscar Performance and Divisidero remain eligible to extend their sire's legacy. But Kitten's Joy, approaching his 19th birthday, still has ample opportunity to do so himself. And, not least following his Hill 'n' Dale reboot, the Europeans in particular still have plenty of opportunity to mine the same golden seam as Redvers.