News

Delectation's Exceptional Blue Blood Breeding

26th Nov 2015

Thoroughbred News – By Brian Russell – Wednesday 25 November, 2015

Few current performers in Australia are more blue blooded than Delectation, the four-year-old gelding who provided the Waller training colossus with a new Group 1 winner when he beat superstar sprinter Chautauqua in winning the million dollar Darley Classic (1200m) at Flemington on Saturday November 7.

His immediate pedigree sees him a 2011 foal bred in NSW by G.I. Perry using Darley’s world class racehorse and sire Shamardal (USA) and Grace and Power (USA), a More Than Ready (USA) mare with a quadruple dose of one of America’s greatest matriarches, La Troienne.

There are four sires in the breeding used in both hemispheres and sires of Group1 winners in each. All visitors to the Hunter Valley, they are Shamardal (Darley, five visits, 2005, 06, 08, 09, 10, over 300 foals), his sire Giant’s Causeway (Coolmore; four, 2002-05, 280 foals) and More Than Ready (Vinery; back for fifteenth successive year,1400 foals) and his dam’s sire Woodman (USA) (Coolmore; five seasons,1997-01, 400 foals).

Between them they supply over 1000 mares, mostly quality owned, who between them should play big roles through descendants in Australia for much of this century.

Shamardal, a resident at Darley’s Kildangan stud in Ireland, raced seven times, all in Europe, for six wins and the titles of champion European 2YO and 3YO Miler and Giant’s Causeway (by Storm Cat) ran 13 times in Europe for nine wins, six Group1s and the Horse of the Year title at three. He has been champion American sire three times and his world wide statistics are 12 crops of racing age, 1100 winners (155 SWs, eight champions), 3150 races.

He is also making an impact as a broodmare sire, his daughters already being dams of nearly fifty stakes winners, including three named champions and Verrazano, a More Than Ready American dual Group1 winner now on his first visit to Coolmore in the Hunter Valley. Verrazano shares with Delectation having both Giant’s Causeway and More Than Ready in his pedigree.

Giant’s Causeway’s leading sire son Shamardal had his first European runners in 2009 and Australians in 2008-09 and already has been represented world wide by 616 winners (a splendid 71.4 per cent), 88 stakes winners (10.2 per cent), 69 others stakes placed and earnings of $85.8million.

His best have included 15 successful in Group1 races, including among them northern hemisphere produced Lope de Vega (won French Two Thousand Guineas, sire Europe and Australia), Casamento (Group1 winner 1600m at two in race record time, standing at Darley in Ireland) and Dan Excel (won Singapore International Cup twice and third once).

Dan Excel’s exploits in Singapore have been outstanding, but overshadowed by the majesty in Hong Kong of Turangga Stud, Scone bred Shamardal gelding Able Friend, a winner to date of 13 races and Aust$8.5million. For 2014, he was anointed Hong Kong Horse of the Year and third best older horse in the World Rankings.

Besides Able Friend and Delectation, other Australian bred Shamardal progeny have included Faint Perfume (won Victoria Oaks, STC Storm Queen Stakes, second AJC Australian Oaks), Maybe Discreet (won SAJC Australasian Oaks) and Captain Sonador (won AJC Epsom, third Randwick Guineas; sire).

Another good performer by Shamardal in Australia has been Ireland foaled Puissance de Lune. Now in his first season as a sire at Adam Sangster’s Swettenham Stud at Nagambie in Victoria, he included in his Australian efforts, wins in Melbourne in the Blamey Stakes, JJ Liston Stakes and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. He placed twice in the Makybe Diva at Flemington.

Himself from Helsinki, a sister by the Mr. Prospector sire Machiavellian to the deceased Dubai World Cup winner Street Cry, one of Darley’s most successful dual Hemisphere sires, Shamardal got his latest Group1 winner, Delectation, as the first foal of Grace and Power, a winner in America of a very modest stakes, but good enough to run second in a Group1 at Hollywood Park.

Three of her four doses of La Troienne are derived through More Than Ready’s dam Woodman’s Girl (she traced to her on the bottom line and her sire Woodman carried her 5x6 maternally). In addition Grace and Power’s fourth was by Secretariat and from Priceless Gem. La Troienne was Priceless Gem’s third dam.

Hailed as one of the most influential broodmares in America of last century, La Troienne (by breed shaper Teddy) was a1926 France foal whose seven outings resulted in a second and third and earnings of $146.

At four sold for about $2,000 at a sale in England to America carrying a foal to premier sire Gainsborough, one which was born deformed and destroyed, she produced14 foals for ten winners, four of which were successful in stakes.

She is ancestress of hundreds of good horses, including Delectation, a $250,000 Easter yearling raised and marketed for a client by the Vinery Stud. In earning $1,373,775, he has included in 20 starts five wins, among them the Darley Classic and Royal Sovereign Stakes, and three Group race seconds, the Group1 Ascot Vale and Group 2 Baguette Stakes.