Our pedigree expert Cassie Tully takes a look at a wonderful Royal Ascot week for sire Kodiac - and one of his sons already at stud.
Kodiac’s progression through the stallion ranks to become the world-class sire that he is today has hardly gone undocumented.
Many of us are already well aware of the climb from an initial €5,000 fee in 2007 to his command of €65,000 today. The Group Three placed son of Danehill consistently produced winners and Black Type scorers off low fees before Cheveley Park Stakes heroine Tiggy Wiggy emerged from a fee of €6,500 and then a record-breaking number of two-year-old winners in 2017. That crop, from a fee of €10,000, launched their sire to new heights.
This year’s Royal Ascot meeting catapulted Kodiac’s name into the stratosphere, creating new milestones with three Group winners at the meeting as well as his first sire-son getting off the mark.
Look at his record. Two Group Two winning juveniles and the Diamond Jubilee winner on Saturday, plus a Group Two winning grandson on Friday.
Galileo and Sea The Stars were the only other sires to have more than one Group winner at the fixture.
The latest sprinting stars by Kodiac are from three very different families.
Nando Parrado and Campanelle, who won the Coventry and Queen Mary Stakes respectively, are bred off Kodiac’s €50,000 fee in 2017, the most expensively bred crop on the track to date.
Nando Parrado is out of the Argentinian Group Three winning mare Chibola whose entire family, including her Group One winning full brother Chollo, ran in either Argentina, Chile or South Africa.
Chibola is by Roy, one of the greatest stallions of South America who sired one top level winner in the Northern Hemisphere but 49 Group One winners in South America.
As a broodmare sire, Roy so far has three top level winners in the Northern Hemisphere, all in the USA, but will potentially soon have this European grandson as a fourth.
Nando Parrado is the sixth foal and best produce to date out of Chibola, who has also bred the stakes placed pair Muntadab and Dubai Horizon. Mrs James Wigan is the breeder of all of these foals since the mare’s import to Europe.
Campanelle, on the other hand, comes from a family not exactly flourishing with stakes performers. Her dam, grandam and herself are the only Black Type horses in the first four generations and there is no Group One winner within six.
Campanelle’s dam Janina was a stakes winner at York and produced three other winners before this exciting juvenile and she is out of the Danehill Dancer mare who won a Group three at Newbury. Janina, obviously very good looking, still commanded 190,000gns as a yearling.
In contrast, four-year-old Hello Youmzain was bred off the cheaper Kodiac fee of €25,000 and is out of the unraced Shamardal mare Spasha.
She has also bred Italian and German champion Royal Youmzain (who is actually by the dual Group One winner and three-time Arc runner-up, Youmzain), as well as stakes-winning filly Zuhoor Baynoona.
Spasha’s damsire is Sadler’s Wells and they stem from the family of Derby hero Slip Anchor and Hardwicke Stakes winner Sandmason.
Three incredibly different families, all producing a top Royal Ascot sprinter. Kodiac is the only common denominator here.
The Tally Ho stalwart’s tough genes seem to emerge no matter what. Of his 27 Group winners to date, 25 of them are by different broodmare sires. They vary from giants in the division such as Pivotal and Shamardal, to the lesser accomplished in that field Mujtahid and Namid, who for example, is damsire of just three Group winners, two of whom are by Kodiac.
And as mentioned, it was not just as a sire that Kodiac excelled last week. One of his first sons at stud has successfully passed on those genes to another generation and got his second career off to the right start.
Prince Of Lir, who raced exclusively as a two-year-old and won the Norfolk Stakes at Royal Ascot, produced this year’s winner of that same race, The Lir Jet.
The Lir Jet represents Prince Of Lir’s first crop of two-year-olds conceived off a fee of €5,000, of which there have so far been just nine runners.
At the same point in his career, Kodiac didn't have a Black Type horse but did have fourth placed Stone Of Folca in the Norfolk.
Kodiac has four sons at stud that have progeny of racing age. All of them covered their first crop in 2017 and therefore have their first runners this year. Although all Group winners and therefore achieving more on the racetrack than Kodiac himself, each of these sires are starting off at a similar price to that which he started, standing for a fee of €6,000 or lower.
The quartet have all had at least one winner already this year and The Lir Jet’s Royal Ascot win for Prince Of Lir has reignited the dream for smaller breeders that there is another promising stallion on the rise.
The Lir Jet was not the only cheaply conceived winner last week, however.
Five of Royal Ascot’s 19 Group races were won by sires standing at £/€10,000 or less. That includes Pyledriver, the Group Two King Edward VII winner who is now a leading contender for the Investec Derby, conceived off a £7,500 fee to the late Harbour Watch.
Kodiac’s upward trajectory seems ever continuing with the increase of fee and mare quality. And while his rise is still a growing legend, the precedent has been set and a solid path of potential now worn for his sons to follow suit.
Prince Of Lir has taken the first steps towards emulating his father’s journey down that road to success.
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