Keeneland spring meet wrap-up: the second weekend
Master of The Seas is back
By Frances J. Karon
Trainer Charlie Appleby shipped seven Godolphin horses to Keeneland before the spring meet began, but leading up to the G1 Maker’s Mark Mile on Friday, April 12th, his star horse Master of The Seas (Dubawi) wasn’t often spotted in daylight hours, going out instead at 5:30 most mornings with three of his stablemates. However, winner of last year’s G1 Breeders’ Cup Mile looked the part when he came out for his afternoon engagement with regular rider William Buick up, winning the Maker’s Mark as the favorite handily over stablemate Naval Power (Teofilo). It was his first start since the Breeders’ Cup in November.
The quirky bay gelding is now a three-time Grade 1 winner, all in N. America, where his dam Firth of Lorne (Danehill) was an allowance optional claiming winner (at Bay Meadows) and Grade 2/Grade 3-placed for Godolphin’s precursor Darley Stable and trainer Eoin Harty. Before that, Firth of Lorne—a daughter of Group 3 Cherry Hinton winner Kerrera (Diesis)—was a listed stakes winner in France and had run second in the filly Classic Poule d’Essai des Pouliches. She’s excelled as a producer: other than Master of The Seas, she’s also the dam of Group 3 winner Falls of Lora (Street Cry), who is the dam of four-time Australian Group 1 winner Cascadian (New Approach) and Canadian Grade 1 winner Albahr (Dubawi); listed stakes winner/Group 1-placed Latharnach (Iffraaj); listed winner Etive (Elusive Quality); and is granddam of Australian Group 1 winner Just Fine (Sea The Stars).
MASTER OF THE SEAS (2018 Dubawi – Firth of Lorne, by Danehill)
B: Godolphin
O: Godolphin, LLC
T: Charlie Appleby
Record: 17-9-3-2, $2,520,582 USD
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: none
Master of The Seas is one of 57 Group/Grade 1 winners for Dubawi. A 22-year-old sire of 269 stakes winners (13% to foals), Dubawi is still going strong at Darley’s Dalham Hall Stud in Newmarket, England, where he has a £350,000 covering fee.
Five of the seven Appleby horses have run at the meet, with one winner and three runners-up, including English Rose (Frankel) in the G1 Jenny Wiley. The remaining two horses—including last spring’s G3 Sycamore winner Bold Act (New Approach), fresh off his win in the G2 City of Gold at Meydan last month—are entered in the G2 Elkhorn this Saturday.
Beaute Cachee’s latent Grade 1 ability
In contrast to the blue-blooded pedigree of Master of The Seas is that of G1 Jenny Wiley winner Beaute Cachee—whose name translates from French to “hidden beauty.”
Conceived on an advertised €3,000 stud fee, the 5-year-old French-bred mare is one of 260 foals sired by Literato—for comparison, Master of The Seas’s sire Dubawi has more stakes winners than Literato has foals of racing age—and she sold for €1,500 to trainer Gaël Barbedette at Arqana’s autumn yearling sale in Deauville in 2020. Racing in France initially, it took Beaute Cachee five attempts to break her maiden, and even then, it was at Le Mans, a low-level racecourse. That was her only win in 12 starts in the country, but she did run fourth in a Group 3 in August of 2022, her final race before moving to Chad Brown in the U.S. following a private sale.
BEAUTE CACHEE (2019 Literato – Sign and Seal, by Hurricane Run)
B: Gregor Vischer
O: Madaket Stables LLC, Michael Dubb, and Louis Lazzinnaro LLC
T: Chad Brown
Record: 18-4-5-2, $539,462 USD
Highest achievement: Grade 1 winner
Last Auction Price: €1,500 Arqana yearling
Brown had trained Literato’s daughter Alterite to win the G1 Garden City S. in 2013, so he did have some familiarity with the obscure sire, but even then it had to take a lot of imagination to see Beaute Cachee emulating Alterite by winning a Grade 1 of her own.
However, in her six N. American starts, Beaute Cachee has really blossomed and never finished worse than third, with an allowance and listed stakes win at four last year and now at five, her Grade 1 win as the fourth-longest shot of Brown’s four runners in the Jenny Wiley. (Do we call this the “other other other Chad Brown” angle?)
Literato has doubled his tally of Grade 1 winners to two; he has no other Group/Graded winners from his total of seven stakes winners. The son of Kendor was a good racehorse, winning nine of his 13 starts, and he was highweighted in France from 9.5-11 furlongs as a 3-year-old in 2007, the year he won his only Group 1, the 10 fur. Champion S. in England, for Godolphin. At stud, it’s been a different story; Kendargent, for instance—a son of Kendor who was inferior to Literato on the racecourse, placing once in a Group 3 without winning a stakes race—has sired 41 black-type winners, 14 at group level.
Beaute Cachee is the only stakes horse from her unplaced dam, who is a daughter of Italian listed stakes winner Seraphine (Dashing Blade). That second dam Seraphine was out of an unraced mare and produced no stakes horses, but she was a half to the dam of dual Group 1 winner Indian Ink (Indian Ridge). Beaute Cachee’s fourth dam, Sovereign Dona (Sovereign Path), was a Group 3 winner and the dam of U.S. Grade 2/German Group 2 winner Royal Touch (Tap On Wood).
Like Alterite, Beaute Cachee is bred on the Literato/Sadler’s Wells cross, and they are the only Group/Grade 1 winners from the Kendor line with Sadler’s Wells-line mares. Beaute Cachee’s broodmare sire Hurricane Run—the 2005 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner—is also broodmare sire of N. American Grade 1 winners Aunt Pearl (Lope de Vega) and Dalika (Pastorius).
A winning pedigree combination
Lane’s End sire Liam’s Map made his affinity for Bernardini mares known early on, when his first-crop daughter Wicked Whisper won the G1 Friztte at two in 2019. Colonel Liam, also out of a Bernardini mare and from the same crop as Wicked Whisper, won the first of his Grade 1s as a 4-year-old.
ROSES FOR DEBRA (2019 Liam’s Map – Essential Rose, by Bernardini)
B: Blackstone Farm LLC
O: Cheyenne Stable LLC and John O’Meara (originally for John O’Meara)
T: Christophe Clement (originally with Michelle Brafford)
Record: 12-8-1-1, $579,868
Highest achievement: Grade 3 winner
Last Auction Price: $25,000 Keeneland September
Roses for Debra is Liam’s Map third graded stakes winner from 24 foals (including 2-year-olds) out of Bernardini mares, and the Christophe Clement-trained filly won the G3 Giant’s Causeway turf sprint to go along with her G3 Caress win last summer at Saratoga.
The $25,000 yearling buy to the bid of Chris Drakos is half to restricted stakes winner Rose’s Vision (Artie Schiller) and 2023 listed-placed Rosie’s Alibi (Justify). Second dam Essential Edge (Storm Cat) was a Canadian Grade 2 winner who was not much of a producer but brings a great back pedigree to the table: Rose of Tara—Roses for Debra’s third dam—is the granddam of current Darby Dan stallion Flameaway (Scat Daddy), among others, and was a half-sister to the three-time Classic-winning filly Salsabil (Sadler’s Wells), who won the Irish Derby against colts; Group 1 winner Marju (Last Tycoon), a good sire in his day; Group 3 winner Danse Royale (Caerleon); and others.
Shancelot off the mark
Buck Pond Farm stallion Shancelot (Shanghai Bobby) is the second freshman this season to get a first winner at Keeneland after his Wesley Ward-trained daughter Perfect Shances, a Crawford Farms homebred, was a 4 3/4-length debut winner in a deluge on Thursday’s card. Perfect Shances’s unraced dam American Baby (Bayern) is a full sister to stakes winner Sweet Harmony out of restricted stakes winner Sweet Marini, whose sire Marino Marini is a son of Grade 1 winner Halo America—the third dam of G3 Commonwealth winner Bo Cruz (Creative Cause) on opening weekend.
Perfect Shances is one of 34 registered foals by Shancelot, a Grade 2-winning sprinter who was second as the favorite behind champion sprinter Mitole in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and second to Omaha Beach by a head in the G1 Santa Anita Sprint Championship.
Back-to-back winners for Omaha Beach
Omaha Beach, a second-crop sire at Spendthrift, was represented by the winners of races six and seven on the Friday card when Kehoe Beach broke her maiden on the dirt in her second start and then Hot Beach won the listed off-the-turf Limestone Stakes by four lengths. A $400,000 Saratoga yearling trained by Brian Lynch for Boardshorts Stable, Hot Beach is one of four stakes winners and 12 stakes-placed runners by the War Front stallion, a Grade 1 winner on the dirt over six, seven, and nine furlongs. Tom Bachman’s 6 1/2-length winner Kehoe Beach was a $450,000 Keeneland September yearling and is trained by Wesley Ward.
Odds and ends: Encino (Nyquist) won the G3 Stonestreet Lexington on Saturday and has enough points to get into the Kentucky Derby field if connections opt to go that route. We wrote about him after he won the John Battaglia at Turfway last month, so if you’d like to read more about his pedigree, you can find it here…
Roger Attfield unveiled Chuck Fipke’s 3-year-old filly Ready for Shirl (More Than Ready) to good effect when she won a turf maiden by 3 1/2 lengths the day after the Maker’s Mark Mile. Her half-brother Shirl’s Speight (Speightstown) had won the G1 Maker’s Mark Mile in 2022, and their dam Perfect Shirl won the G1 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Churchill Downs. Perfect Shirl is by Perfect Soul, winner at Keeneland of the G1 Shadwell Turf Mile and the then-G2 Maker’s Mark Mile. All are homebreds for Fipke trained by Attfield…
Saturday’s allowance winner Royal Majesty (Frankel) races as a homebred for Ben Leon’s Besilu Stables, in whose silks Royal Delta (Empire Maker) ran in her final two seasons on the track. Royal Majesty’s dam is a half-sister to Royal Delta. Bill Mott, who trained Royal Delta, trains Royal Majesty…
Lady Emily Kathryn (Frosted), who won an allowance on Sunday for Ken Ramsey and trainer Saffie Joseph Jr., is a granddaughter of a full sister to Ramsey’s Stephanie’s Kitten (Kitten’s Joy), winner at Keeneland of the G1 Alcibiades in 2011 and the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf in 2015.