BREEDING RECORDS OF GREAT MARES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 4

BREEDING RECORDS OF GREAT MARES

“Top-class race mares are usually disappointing at stud but their daughters often become excellent brood mares.” This statement, one often raised in breeding circles, has come in for close examination since the English Derby victory of Charlottown.

An English bloodstock writer, Peter Willett, believes that a Derby victory for a horse bred like Charlottown invites an examination of the question because his dam, Meld, was a member of the very select band of mares which have won three classics.

Mr Willett feels that the theory that great race mares do not become successful brood mares but their daughters do, has drawn most of its strength from the example of Sceptre, the Oaks winner of 1902, which also carried off the Two Thousand and One Thousand Guineas and the St Leger.

Sceptre was not a complete failure as a brood mare, as she bred four winners, Including the Cheveley Park Stakes winner Maid of Corinth and the Nassau Stakes winner Maid of the Mist. On the other hand, Mr Willett writes, it would be idle to pretend that the stud record of Sceptre was not disappointing for a mare of such staggering eminence on the racecourse. Yet her daughter Maid of the Mist, whose racecourse achievements were vastly inferior, bred two calssic winners, Sunny Jane (Oaks) and Craig an Eran (Two Thousand Guineas). The theory may also have gained a certain amount of corroboration from the example of Pretty Polly, which won the Oaks in 1904 and whose racing career just overlapped that of Sceptre, though they never met Like Meld, Pretty Polly won the One Thousand Guineas, the Oaks and the St Leger. Like Seeptre she bred four winners, of whom Molly Desmond won th r Cheveley Park Stakes and Polly Flinders the National Breeders' Produce Stakes, and her stud record must likewise be accounted disappointing for a race mare of so much distinction. But she did become the grand-dam of the Irish Derby winners Zodiac and Spike Island, though the Irish Derby did not then have the importance that it has today. It should be added that several more generations were to elapse before the female lines emanating from either of these famous mares pro

duced a Derby winner. The Pretty Polly line eventually achieved that objective with St. Paddy and Psidium and the Sceptre line with Relko.

Second Generation In several other cases the second have done better than the first generation descendants of twentieth-century Oaks winners. The 1911 Oaks winner, Cherimoya, produced three winners, of which The Cheetah and The Cheerful Abbot were useful but nothing out of the ordinary. But her daughter, Una Cameron, excelled her by producing the Two Thousand Guineas and Derby winner, Cameronian. The 1928 Oaks winner Toboggan had only one successful offspring, though he was the Newmarket Stakes winner and fairly successful sire Bobsleigh. Yet Toboggan’s daughter Hydroplane was sold

to the United States where she left the brilliant Citation, an American Triple Crown winner. Meld is the sixth Oaks winter in this century to breed a classic winner, ‘■er predecessors in this respect being Keyston II (1906), Rosedrop (1910), Jest (1913), Brownhylda (1923) and Rose of England (1930). Keystone bred the St. Leger winner Keysoe; Rosedrop the war-time Triple Crown winner, Gainsborough; Jest the ill-fated Derby winner Humourist; Brownhylda the St. Leger winner Firdaussi; and Rose of England the St. Leger winner, Chumleigh. The family records of the twentieth - century Oaks winners gives little support to the theory that great race mares tend to be disappointing at stud and to be excelled as producers by their daughters.