Coolmore splash out for some Scat Daddy magic

Recently deceased sire’s genes are racing’s hot ticket and can add speed to Galileo’s stamina

Stallions are like great painters. You can pretty well guarantee that if they die prematurely, their work will suddenly become all the rage. So it was no surprise that the top three lots at the Craven Breeze-up sale in Newmarket last week were by the recently-deceased American sire Scat Daddy.

On the racetrack, Scat Daddy was not a champion, but he was a very good horse. He won the Grade One Champion Stakes at Belmont Park and in the run-up to the Kentucky Derby he triumphed in the Florida Derby. Unfortunately, he suffered an injury in the “Run for the Roses” but, being by the champion European two-year-old Johannesburg, who traces back to the great Secretariat, he was a hot property for the breeding sheds.

In relatively little time, Scat Daddy’s stock started to deliver the goods on the track. The best known of his progeny, as far as British racegoers are concerned, have been Royal Ascot winners Caravaggio and Lady Aurelia.

Aidan O’brien has described Caravaggio as the fastest horse he has ever trained. That makes him a hugely important gene pool as far as the Coolmore Stud operation are concerned, because they are constantly looking for quality speed to combine with the greatest stamina genes ever bred – those of Galileo, who has been champion sire every year bar one since 2008. Galileo has sired so many Classic winners it actually belittles his success to name a few of them – even Frankel.

But there is another Scat Daddy colt that may surpass even Caravaggio as a Coolmore influence if he wins the Kentucky Derby this year, and that is the extraordinary Mendelssohn.

As a two-year-old, he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf; but it was during his first major test as a three-year-old that he really caught the eye, blasting the opposition in Dubai out of the water, encouraging one to think that he will deal with the awful dirt surface that he will have to race on at Churchill Downs.

There is only one horse who can stop him bringing the house down on May 5 under Ryan Moore – do not think for one minute that Ryan will miss it for the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket – and that is another son of Scat Daddy, Justify, who won the Santa Anita Derby last time out.

So, the Craven Breeze-up sale last week was just about the last opportunity for the market to buy a potential Scat Daddy stallion and it was Lot 155 that the Coolmore team decided would be possibly their last roll of the Scat Daddy genes dice in the sale ring.

Lot 155 was a bay colt born on Feb 27, 2016; his grandmother is a full sister to the 2,000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus and he has the excellent Mr Prospector as a great grandfather on both sides of his family.

The Coolmore team had been monitoring him for three months prior to the sale, and you can be sure they would not have bought him if he was not physically a good individual; pedigree alone does not get you over the winning line. But what are the chances of them buying a horse out of this sale, who will be fast, sound and brave enough to combine with the Coolmore Galileo mares to breed champions for the future?

No doubt they will be watching closely the exploits of a Scat Daddy graduate of last year’s Breeze-up sale, Kings Shield, who cost 675,000 gns. He is trained for Qatar Racing by John Gosden and has won both his starts to date. He is entered at Sandown this Saturday and also in the Qipco 2,000 Guineas on May 5.