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Category: national hunt

  • Goliath du Berlais to become a giant of NH breeding?

    When I was a business student, the text books loved case studies explaining how the nimble Japanese car industry took market share from the bloated US auto giants. In a bloodstock context this could be updated with a chapter on how the French breeding industry wiped the floor with their Irish rivals over the past two decades. The reasons are varied but include the French benefiting from :
    1. The soundness and toughness brought by AQPS mares
    2. The use of stallions who have proven that they can jump
    3. The willingness to support stallions with unfashionable pedigrees and backgrounds
    4. Smaller book sizes allowing opportunities to more stallions
    5. Earlier timelines for NH racing allowing a quicker estimation of the merits or otherwise of a sire.
    6. Not slavishly going for sire lines- in Ireland piling into sons of Galileo and sons of Monsun hasn’t worked. Now its unproven sons of Sea the Stars with whom breeders are rolling the dice.
    7. Cooperatives. Some of the great success stories of Irish business came from the cooperative movement such as Kerry Group. We never adopted that model for bloodstock. Breeders in central France have banded together to back Haras de Cercy under a cooperative model. Irish breeders need to look at this model which has so many potential benefits and upsides for breeders. Cooperatives redress the imbalance of power between mare owners and stallion masters.

    In recent years in Ireland we have routinely seen books of 250+ for unproven middle distance flat horses from the same few sire lines . There are now thousands of broodmares by failed NH sires that highlight the long term consequences of this herd mentality. In search of a quick fix, Irish stallion masters have now decided to purchase the better French young sires knowing that the economics of our huge book sizes make this approach financially viable. It will be interesting to see what sort of offers are made for the 9 year old sire who has just had two winners of three year old hurdles in France and who has all the qualities to become a major NH sire. That sire is Goliath du Berlais who stands at Haras de la Tuilerie.

    Goliath Du Berlais’ Pedigree:

    Pedigree Overview

    Saint des Saints has become a stalwart of French breeding and enjoyed a stellar Cheltenham with three winners in Prokterat, Monmiral and Sine Nomine. He has also delivered as a broodmare sire and despite his age, still covered 81 mares in 2023 at €15000. King’s Daughter was a Grade 3 winner over hurdles as a three year old and she is a daughter of the outstanding 5 time champion NH sire in King’s Theatre. She has compiled an impressive record at stud with 7 winners and 4 black type winners. Aside from Goliath du Berlais, James Du Berlais (by Muhtathir) was runner up in a Punchestown Stayers Hurdle for Willie Mullins. Queen Du Buelais (by Muhtathir) was a Grade 3 hurdle winner and David Du Berlais (by Saints des Saints) was a Listed hurdle winner and is now at stud in Haras de Cercy. For good measure, Goliath Du Berlais’s second dam Bint Bladi is the dam of RSA Chase 2nd Lyreen Legend (also by Saints des Saints). It’s hard to fault this pedigree…

    Goliath Du Berlais Racecourse Performance

    Goliath Du Bearlais won 7 of his 12 starts culminating in an impressive 14 length victory in the 2019 Grade 1 Prix Ferdinand Dufaure chase at Auteuil as a four year old. Earlier that season he had won a Grade 2 and a pair of Grade 3’s for trainer Guillame Macaire. As an entire, this was more than sufficient to ensure his popularity once he was retired to Haras de la Tuilerie to stand alongside his sire Saint des Saints.

    First runners:
    Goliath’s first runners have certainly started with a bang. Two winners and two placed horses from four runners in French three year old hurdles is definitely impressive. This will be music to the ears of the breeders who utilised Goliath (140 in 2020, 131 in 2021, 119 in 2022 and 130 in 2023 so he will have big numbers to come. He seems poised for stardom. He retired at a fee of €7500 in 2020 and it is unchanged since then but if his electric start continues we can expect a significant price hike and big offers from Irish studs.

  • National Hunt Sire Lines- 1st Monsun, 2nd Montjeu, 3rd Galileo

    With the world in the grip of a pandemic, it may seem crass to write about something as trivial as horse racing, but we all need our distractions.

    I was asked via Twitter to look at the overall performance of grandsons of Galileo in National Hunt Racing (I recently wrote about their performance at Cheltenham). As the overuse of sons of Galileo is a bugbear of mine, I didn’t take much persuasion to accept the challenge.

    To make a meaningful comparison, I looked at the performance throughout the 2019/2020 season of sire sons of Galileo, Montjeu and Monsun. The numbers confirm that sire-sons of Galileo are nothing special in the world of National Hunt racing. In fact their performance is inferior to that of sires by Montjeu and especially by Monsun.

    Methodology:

    I looked at the sire standings for National Hunt in 2019/2020 for the top 550 sires from the Racing Post website. I then extracted and aggregated the results for the sons of Galileo, Montjeu and Monsun. The summary results are shown below:

    SIRELINEWnrsRnrsW/R %WinsRuns%Stks Wnrs
    GALILEO SIRES TOTAL12752224.3%174172110.1%11
    MONSUN SIRES TOTAL22479728.1%322263712.2%15
    MONTJEU SIRES TOTAL16561326.9%235202311.6%13

    Summary of Findings:

    Sons of Galileo fare poorly in terms of winners to runners and wins to runs compared with sons of Montjeu and especially sire sons of Monsun. There may be some reasons to account for the difference such as a younger age profile of the representatives of the Galileo tribe but there is nothing in the figures to suggest that National Hunt breeders should be flocking to sons of Galileo…

    Blindly believing in sire lines on the flat or in National hunt racing will lead to lots of disappointments. There are individual sons of Galileo who could be promising jumps sires (Nathaniel especially) but overall the figures suggest that most sons of Galileo are not that welcome an addition to National Hunt pedigrees. The real concern is that sending one third of mares to sons of Galileo may eventually cause long term damage the National hunt breed by narrowing the gene pool. National Hunt breeders may feel reassured in using sons of Galileo ( everyone else is doing it) , but as the Corona virus has shown, being part of the crowd isn’t always such a good idea….

    Detailed Workings: Stallions listed by their placing in the sires table by earnings- figures as shown on Racing Post website on 28/03/2020 and referring to UK and Irish earnings for 2019/2020 season

    RankStallionWnrsRnrsW/R %WinsRuns%Stks WnrsEarnings £
    13Mahler5321325%7275210%2£949,163
    49Nathaniel173944%2211719%4£328,541
    98Sixties Icon53415%71216%0£146,624
    114Rip Van Winkle102934%1410114%0£121,731
    135Sans Frontieres64115%91178%1£98,224
    141Teofilo83921%91257%1£92,078
    148New Approach72429%98211%0£87,972
    164Soldier Of Fortune31127%64513%1£71,857
    240Cima De Triomphe11100%2450%1£42,105
    246Imperial Monarch21613%4469%1£40,774
    253Australia3933%32811%0£37,282
    255Heliostatic3560%41233%0£36,694
    259Battle Of Marengo2633%42615%0£35,329
    294Finsceal Fior21217%32811%0£27,716
    390Vendangeur1425%1205%0£14,971
    435Frankel090%0240%0£11,521
    444Noble Mission1333%2633%0£11,039
    451Roderic O’Connor1714%1157%0£10,552
    465Intello090%0190%0£9,464
    485Feel Like Dancing11100%1520%0£8,178
    512Ruler Of The World1425%11010%0£6,607
    529Cape Blanco030%060%0£5,688
    537Red Rocks030%0120%0£5,478
    GALILEO SIRES TOTAL 12752224.3%174172110.1%11


    RankStallionWnrsRnrsW/R %WinsRuns%Stks WnrsEarnings £
    11Getaway7525829%9886611%5£1,100,603
    16Network216134%3219616%3£845,837
    29Arcadio3014121%454819%1£541,960
    30Shirocco3914826%5543613%2£531,547
    57Schiaparelli105020%141549%1£283,101
    63Gentlewave61250%83921%1£233,923
    72Samum4667%81942%1£201,211
    82September Storm93327%1714911%0£181,315
    133Salutino51436%116517%0£102,638
    149Aizavoski93030%127915%0£87,690
    167Manduro51436%84916%0£69,827
    220Noroit31619%4557%0£48,225
    254Lauro3560%41429%0£37,087
    264Axxos2367%21513%0£34,877
    303Ocovango1425%2825%1£26,632
    367Speedmaster22100%21217%0£17,480
    MONSUN SIRES TOTAL 22479728.1%322263712.2%15


    RankStallionWnrsRnrsW/R %WinsRuns%Stks WnrsEarnings £
    17Scorpion4218922%557198%1£810,218
    35Walk In The Park82730%98011%4£483,862
    36Fame And Glory3313624%4938013%1£473,569
    37Authorized225937%3220016%1£451,972
    77Pour Moi113037%189020%0£195,358
    92Montmartre72726%128814%2£155,773
    96Maxios81747%115122%1£150,255
    97Motivator72035%125920%1£148,850
    103Papal Bull83126%101139%1£139,334
    105Davidoff2540%41822%1£135,129
    120Jukebox Jury61060%123139%0£114,475
    153Camelot52818%5836%0£84,328
    352Honolulu2450%21020%0£19,342
    375Frozen Fire2633%22110%0£17,080
    400Hurricane Run0110%0320%0£14,439
    455Masked Marvel1250%1714%0£10,104
    461Spider Flight050%0200%0£9,735
    484Recital1617%1215%0£8,221
    MONTJEU SIRES TOTAL 16561326.9%235202311.6%13

  • Cheltenham 2020 and Galileo..

    I recently wrote about the deeply concerning rush by National Hunt breeders to use sons of Galileo https://www.montjeu.com/archives/1122. The results at Cheltenham don’t lessen that concern.

    Herd mentality will see one third of NH mares go to sons of Galileo this year. Looking at the results at Cheltenham, where Galileo had 3 runners and his sons sired 17 runners, there is nothing to justify such faith.

    Nathaniel did very well with 2 winners (albeit Burning Victory was fortunate that Goshen unseated) from 3 runners. However, he is a £25000 flat sire and if you take him out the results are very ordinary. If Irish and UK breeders want to reclaim some of the ground they have lost to French breds then they will have to put less trust in the adverts from the stud farms and look at supporting a more varied range of NH stallions… The full listing of runners by Galileo and his sons is shown below.

    HorseSirePositionRunnersClassType
    WhatsnotoknowMahler815Grade 1Hurdle
    SupasundaeGalileo717Grade 1Hurdle
    SacchoaandvanzettiFinsceal Fior1122Grade 3Hurdle
    Fraser IslandAustralia1822Grade 3Hurdle
    Ocean WindTeofilo623Grade 1NHF
    Mahler AllstarMahler1223Grade 1NHF
    Annie McMahler912Grade 1Chase
    Itchy FeetCima de Triompheur12Grade 1Chase
    ConcertistaNathaniel122Grade 2Hurdle
    Vienna CourtMahler822Grade 2Hurdle
    Bob MahlerMahler323HcpChase
    Deise AbaMahler523HcpChase
    Le MuseeGalileo1323HcpChase
    Like the SoundSoldier of Fortunepu23HcpChase
    Burning VictoryNathaniel113Grade 1Hurdle
    Navajo PassNathaniel413Grade 1Hurdle
    Lord LamingtonAustralia1013Grade 1Hurdle
    BuildmeupbuttercupSixties Icon324Grade 3Hurdle
    Chris’s DreamMahler1012Grade 1Chase
    Big BlueGalileo1923HcpHurdle

  • Stowaway found dead

    Sad to hear of the death of Stowaway just prior to the start of the covering season. I wrote about him in detail back in 2011 in this article https://www.montjeu.com/archives/346.  For any mare owners now looking for a substitute jumps stallion from the Mill Reef line I would recommend Robin des Champs (Garde Royale ex Relayeuse by Iron Duke). His ability to  sire outstanding performers such as Quevega, Sir des Champs and Vautour means that it is worth taking a chance on his less than stellar fertility figures.