Danehill

Now I do realise that I am in a minority of one here. But while everyone else seems to perceive some unique alchemy between Galileo (Ire) and Danehill, to me the number of good horses obtained by that cross is pretty much as you should expect when one breed-shaping stallion is mated with the daughters of another. After all, their dams will in turn have been well-bred and/or accomplished runners, simply to have gained access to an elite sire. If we call this "selective breeding", we are surely flattering ourselves....

The advent of Twitter over the last decade or so has made racing results quickly accessible to fans and observers anywhere in the world, so much so that it seems that a greater number of people in the U.S. are more familiar with European racing than ever before. Back when I was a kid, we'd have to wait for the Blood-Horse magazine to arrive in the mail to scan the 10-day old European results in the agate type in the back pages. Now, we get a video of a race...

Arrowfield Stud's Snitzel (Aus) (Redoute's Choice {Aus}-Snippets' Lass {Aus}, by Snippets {Aus}) has become just the sixth sire in the 137-year history of the Australian Sires' Premiership to earn four or more consecutive champion sire titles. With the current season Down Under wrapping up on Friday, Snitzel joins his grandsire Danehill (who won nine titles, six consecutively, in the 2000s), Star Kingdom (1960s), Delville Wood (1950s) and Valais and his son Heroic (1920s and 30s) as sires to earn a quartet of premiership titles. Snitzel's achievement is made all the...

Last weekend was an extraordinary one for the great Galileo (Ire). A world-best 85th Group 1 winner with Peaceful (Ire) in the G1 Irish 1000 Guineas went along nicely with the top-level victories by his son Teofilo (Ire)'s unbeaten G1 Prix Saint Alary heroine Tawkeel (Ire), plus that of Sottsass (Fr)-out of Galileo mare Starlet's Sister (Ire)--in the G1 Prix Ganay. When the Danehill gelding Zipping became his sire's 84th Group 1 winner in the Australian Cup at Flemington on March 13, 2010, it seemed an unsurpassable record at the...

And still the arrow holds its course: that perfect blaze, tapered down from the fletching between his eyes until opening into the neatly pointed tip above his nostrils. His whole life has seemed to obey the inexorable momentum implied in that warpaint. Ever onwards, ever upwards. Sure enough, with perhaps the most telling of all his records secured outright by his daughter Peaceful (Ire) in the G1 Tattersalls Irish 1,000 Guineas on Saturday, Galileo (Ire) maintains his unwavering trajectory even into the evening of his career. With another spring of...

   In Part II of a two-part series, John Berry looks at Juddmonte's lasting influences from the late 80s through to the present on the 40th anniversary weekend of Prince Khalid Abdullah's first Classic win with Known Fact in the 2000 Guineas. Click here for Part I. When the mighty Dancing Brave (Lyphard) retired to stud, his brilliant 1986 G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe triumph shining like a beacon in the collective consciousness, it was generally felt that Prince Khalid Abdullah had probably reached the pinnacle of his ownership...

Inbreeding to successful sires can become unavoidable at times when there is a strong run on a very successful stallion and his sons. Just look at what has happened in Australia with Danehill. And Sadler's Wells presents a similar challenge in Europe. There is no evidence that commercial buyers pay much attention to whether a prospective purchase is closely inbred. As long as they tick all the other boxes, it hard to imagine them walking away on account of a foal or yearling carrying duplicate lines of a preeminent sire...