Pedigree Pointers: Breeding expert Cassie Tully assess Love's lineage and her rise to prominence on the track

Making history and breaking records has become so routine for Galileo in recent years that every new milestone is being accepted as standard, rather than being marvelled at.

Breaking the world record number of Group/Grade One winners ever produced by a stallion, when Peaceful won the Irish Guineas three weeks ago, ended up being a box checking formality of when rather than if.

Galileo’s pastime of siring Group One winners saw him achieve yet another record at Epsom as Serpentine became his fifth Derby winner, beating the previous standard of four set over 200 years ago which was equalled by several since, including Montjeu.

The significance of many of these achievements will probably not truly sink in until he has left us with a standard in which all future aspirants to eminence will be measured.

Galileo’s 86th top level winner and most recent Derby hero, Serpentine, represents the Galileo over Danehill Dancer cross, which has now produced six Group One scorers including Minding, Circus Maximus and The Gurkha. This is following on from Danehill Dancer’s own preeminent sire Danehill’s affinity with Galileo.

That particular cross has produced a whopping 15 Group One winners (appreciating most sires don’t produce that many in their lifetime, let alone a nick with one individual horse), including the likes of Frankel, Highland Reel, Teofilo and so on.

Galileo progeny from Danehill mares does also represent the highest number of runners out of all his broodmare sires, however (245). Danehill Dancer has 89 runners. Meaning they have actually both produced a similar 6% and 7% Group One winners with Galileo respectively.

There is another cross, however, which has dramatically come to the fore in the past three years, and that is the mating with daughters of Cheveley Park Stud stalwart, Pivotal.

Pivotal has launched himself to glory in his own right as a broodmare sire with 23 individual Group One winners. Six of those are by Galileo, and another two are by his son Frankel. The remaining 15 are by 15 different sires.

The six Galileo Group One winners out of Pivotal mares are all Coolmore-bred horses and represent a much smaller sample size of just 29 runners.

That gives this cross a huge 21% Group One winner from runner percentage.

Five of the six are fillies, all of whom are multiple Group One winners. Siblings Magical and Rhododendron and then Hermosa and Hydrangea, have now been joined by the latest prodigy, dual Classic winner Love.

Love’s dam Pikaboo is an unplaced Pivotal daughter who is a three-part sister to Group Two winner Arabian Gleam and Stakes winner Kimberella, both of whom are younger siblings.

While relatively light on Black Type performers in five generations of her family, Pikaboo’s grandam is, however, a sister to another dual Classic winner in Don’t Forget Me, who won the British and Irish 2000 Guineas in 1987.

Pikaboo went through the sales ring five times - as a foal for 41,000gns, a yearling for 85,000gns, three-year-old in training for 20,000gns, carrying her first foal in 2007 for 30,000gns and in foal again in 2012 for 50,000gns.

It was that last transaction in which Pikaboo was bought back by her breeder Paul Venner, just before one of her children emerged as something special.

Her first two foals were by Ishiguru and Sleeping Indian, neither of whom ever produced a top-level winner, but both of these progeny did win three races between them.

Pikaboo’s third foal was by Lucky Story. Another very inexpensive sire who produced one Group One winner and a single Group Two winner in his six crops. That Group Two winner was a filly out of Pikaboo named Lucky Kristale. She won the Lowther Stakes at York and the Duchess of Cambridge Stakes at Newmarket as a juvenile.

Pikaboo’s next two foals did not race. But after Lucky Kristale’s juvenile performances in 2013 and the mare’s apparent ability to upgrade a cheaper stallion, she ended up in ownership at Coolmore and her visits to Galileo began.

The following year produced the first of three Galileo runners from this mare; all three are fillies and all three have won Group races.

Aidan O’Brien trained Flattering to win the Group Three Munster Oaks and then her sister Peach Tree to win the Group Three Stanerra Stakes at Leopardstown, as well as the Listed Silken Glider.

But the most recent and last known foal out of Pikaboo announced herself as one of the most exciting horses in training at the moment when securing the Epsom Oaks, her second Classic after the Newmarket 1000 Guineas, with a nine-length devastating display that set a new record time in the Classic and was one of the best performances seen in the Oaks this century.

There are still opportunities to add more Classics to that tally with the Irish Oaks and also with the St Leger, the latter of which has sparked immediate interest in the potential of completing the English Fillies’ Triple Crown.

The last filly to achieve that feat was Oh So Sharp in 1985 (who went on to breed Group One winner Rosefinch and Group Two winner Shaima who produced subsequent St Leger winner Shantou).

But the British Guineas/Oaks double has only been completed by four other fillies in the 34 years between Oh So Sharp and Love, and none of those four fillies attempted the St Leger.

Being the first to try in 35 years, Love’s more likely target seems to be a clash against the older middle-distance queens Enable and Magical in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October, in which she will also receive an attractive weight allowance.

'Love recognizes no barriers', as the saying goes, and whatever path she embarks upon for further success, she has already added her name to the list of the illustrious.

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