Ladyswood Set For Tattersalls Debut

There's a new name among the foal consignors at Tattersalls this week and one that brings with it an elite draft of five weanlings, including the only foal by Shamardal in the catalogue.

Ladyswood Stud, which came under the ownership of Alex and Olivia Frost last year, offers its first batch of homebreds across two days–three on Thursday and two on Friday.

The quintet features one of 14 members of the first crop of the Derby and Arc winner Golden Horn (GB) catalogued for Tattersalls (lot 989) and the February-born colt is out of the Listed winner and Group 3-placed Damaniyat Girl (Elusive Quality) who has already bred a treble winner to Hard Spun and a winning 3-year-old filly by Medaglia d'Oro. The mare also has a Kingman (GB) filly to race for her.

“I was obsessed by Golden Horn as a racehorse and I thought he was so impressive physically,” says Alex Frost, who bought the 90-acre Wiltshire farm at the end of 2016.

“We're very happy with our colt by him and it will be very interesting to see how his foals are received. It's a really interesting part of the game when you start to really look at the influences of the stallions.”

The colt will enter the ring on Friday immediately after the foals from the Ballymacoll Stud dispersal and he will be followed by his paddock mate (lot 990), the sole Shamardal foal at Tattersalls. The son of the G2 Oaks d'Italia runner-up Wadaat (GB) (Diktat {GB}) is a half-brother to juvenile winner Al Khafji (GB) (New Approach {Ire}) and also has a yearling half-sister from the first crop of Kingman.

From the same family as the Golden Horn weanling comes a colt by Exceed And Excel (Aus) (lot 688), the first foal of Damaniyat Girl's daughter Mrakeb (Medaglia d'Oro). Damaniyat Girl is herself a daughter of 1000 Guineas runner-up Dabaweyaa (Shareef Dancer), whose other offspring include GII American H. winner Magellan (Hansel) and Aneesati (GB), the great grandam of Tiggy Wiggy (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}).

Also representing Dabaweyaa's dynasty is a January-foaled Iffraaj colt out of her Bernardini daughter Dubai Cyclone, who sells as lot 687.

“That's our foundation family–we have two families running but that's our main one,” Frost explains.

“We bought the stud this time last year and before that I had mares with Peter Stanley at New England Stud and also at Barton Stud but now they are all together and we've added three mares recently so we have eight now. I think that's a good number to start with but we probably have the capacity for 12 eventually.”

The sole filly in the draft is lot 689, a daughter of the popular French stallion Siyouni (Fr) out of a Giant's Causeway daughter of the G1 Prix Marcel Boussac runner-up Titian Time (Red Ransom), who is bred on the same cross as the G3 Prix Perth winner Siyoushake (Fr).

Frost, who is advised by Richard Brown and Jamie Trotter and earlier this year employed Hannah Henney as stud groom at Ladyswood, says, “It's a very exciting week for us, having our first draft under our own name. For me it's like being on the board at Epsom–I'd been there many times as a racegoer and you think to yourself, they could do this or that, but once you're on the board you realise how complex things can be.”

He continues, “It's so easy to make passing observations about horses but it's quite a different matter when you're responsible for keeping them alive and helping them to thrive before you sell them. That's a task in itself. We've been very lucky. Richard Brown was very keen on us taking on Hannah Henney and she's been absolutely fantastic. We've been down to the stud a lot but it's all down to her. Hannah's view is that you should always handle the foals a lot from an early age and give them some gentle walking when they're still quite young and that's been really great.”

The new venture has no immediate plans to break into the yearling market, though Frost hasn't ruled it out for the future. He says, “For the first few years at least I think selling foals should work well. We may sell yearlings in due course but we need the cashflow coming in to keep things going and it makes logistical sense to move them on early from a small farm. We're quite keen to make a mark and I think it's a nice time to sell them. It's a fascinating time in a horse's life and we've seen them change so much in the last few months.”