Caulfield on Kingman

Saturday, Newbury, Britain 
AON GREENHAM S. S.-G3, £60,000, NBY, 4-12, 3yo, c/g, 7fT, 1:26.95, gd. 
1–KINGMAN (GB), 126, c, 3, by Invincible Spirit (Ire) 
     1st Dam: Zenda (GB) (G1SW-Fr, GISP-US, G1SP- Eng, $406,560), by Zamindar 
     2nd Dam: Hope (Ire), by Dancing Brave 
     3rd Dam: Bahamian (Ire), by Mill Reef 
O-Khalid Abdullah; B-Juddmonte Farms; T-John 
Gosden; J-James Doyle; £34,026. Lifetime Record: 
3-3-0-0, £60,591. *1/2 to Remote (GB) (Dansili 
{GB}), GSW-Eng. Werk Nick Rating: A. Click for the 
eNicks report & 5-cross pedigree. Click for the 
Racing Post result. VIDEO, courtesy Racing UK. 
   Part of my role as pedigree consultant to Juddmonte Farms since 1995 is making the initial mating suggestions for Prince Khalid Abdullah’s European mares. This is a fascinating task, but you will understand that not all the recommendations are made with the same degree of confidence. Maybe a very attractive mating has been tried before without achieving the expected results, or perhaps there simply isn’t much information available. Sometimes I am overruled before the suggestions reach the Prince, with General Manager Philip Mitchell often having his own views, based on his profound knowledge of the Juddmonte families. 
   However, there was plenty of confidence in the two candidates that the team arrived at for the Prince’s Classic-winning mare Zenda when the suggestions were sent to the Prince in December 2009. One suggestion was Montjeu. With six crops on the track, the brilliant son of Sadler’s Wells had already been represented by two winners of the Derby and three of the Irish Derby. Zenda is by Gone West’s son Zamindar and Gone West had sired the dam of one of Montjeu’s Derby winners. Montjeu had also gone close to winning the King George with Papal Bull, a horse whose broodmare sire was Zamindar’s brother Zafonic. Montjeu also had Group 1 winners with Lyphard and Bellypha blood, so he was likely to suit a mare whose broodmare sire was Lyphard’s brilliant son Dancing Brave. Zenda was also a likeable physical match, possessing better hocks than Montjeu. 
    The other option, Invincible Spirit, was a very different type. Whereas Montjeu was an old-fashioned Classic type, the smaller Invincible Spirit was all speed. This son of Green Desert did all his winning over six furlongs, taking seven of his 13 starts over that distance, and he failed to reach the first three on the three occasions he tackled seven furlongs. Significantly, his biggest success came in Haydock Park’s Sprint Cup–a race also won by Green Desert. 
In other words, he had inherited a full measure of his sire’s speed and little of his female line’s stamina, which had helped his dam Rafha win the G1 Prix de Diane over 1 5/16 miles. His third dam, Border Bounty, had flourished at up to 1 3/4 miles. 
    In this respect, Invincible Spirit was very similar to Zenda’s brilliant half-brother Oasis Dream, another son of Green Desert. Hope, the dam of Oasis Dream and Zenda, was a sister to another middle-distance Classic winner in Wemyss Bight, winner of the Irish Oaks. The next dam, Bahamian, had stayed even better than Wemyss Bight, once crossing the line first in a Group 2 over 1 7/8 miles; and Bahamian’s dam Sorbus numbered a second in the Irish St leger among her achievements. Even though his first three dams were all by major winners over a mile and a half, Oasis Dream inherited none of their stamina. Fortunately, he was fast enough to become Europe’s champion 2-year-old of 2002 and then Europe’s champion sprinter at three. 
    Sending Zenda to Invincible Spirit would therefore produce something bred along similar lines to Oasis Dream and Prince Khalid preferred this option. How right he was to do so was amply demonstrated three days ago, when Kingman–Zenda’s Invincible Spirit colt–maintained his unbeaten record in exhilarating style in the G3 Greenham S. 
His victory was so stylish that the bookmakers have made him a very short-priced favorite for next month’s G1 2,000 Guineas. He is priced at between even money and 6-4, even though the potential opposition includes two unbeaten Group 1 winners in Toormore and Kingston Hill and another very exciting prospect in Australia. 
    Clearly there are few worries, despite Invincible Spirit’s overall record as a stallion, that Kingman will stay a mile. He settles well and Zenda stayed at 1 1/8 miles, as she showed with her narrow defeat in the GI Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at Keeneland. She had previously won the G1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches with some give in the ground and had been caught close home when second in the G1 Coronation S. on a fast surface. 
    Zenda’s broodmare career could be used to argue the importance of situating breeding stock to maximise their opportunities. As Zenda was in the U.S. when the decision was made to retire her, she spent the early years of her broodmare career in Kentucky. It wasn’t known at that time that her sire Zamindar would make very little impact during a short spell in Florida (of course he later returned to Europe to sire the brilliant filly Zarkava). 
    During her time in Kentucky, Zenda visited a mixed bag of stallions, producing foals to Danzig, Storm Cat, Empire Maker and Johannesburg. None of them won. Zenda is a tall daughter of a very tall stallion and the decision was reached that Europe might offer her a wider choice of stallions, so she returned to England for the 2008 breeding season. Juddmonte’s excellent stallion Dansili had obvious claims, as he had already sired Group 1 winners from mares by tall stallions such as Zamindar’s brother Zafonic and Theatrical. Also, Zamindar had been represented in 2007 by the exciting 2-year-old Zarkava, who shared the same broodmare sire–Kahyasi–as Dansili. 
    The first mating with Dansili resulted in Panzanella, a lightly raced winner who is visiting Invincible Spirit’s Classic-winning son Lawman this year. A second visit to Dansili proved much more rewarding, resulting in the very talented Remote. A busy spell last spring saw Remote make rapid progress from winning a maiden race at 25-1 to justifying favoritism in the G3 Tercentenary S. over a mile and a quarter at Royal Ascot. Although he was sidelined during the second half of 2013, Remote could well be a name to remember this year. 
    Zenda then made it three consecutive winners with Kingman and there is every reason to be optimistic about her third Dansili foal, the 2-year-old Multilingual, who has followed her siblings into the care of John Gosden. In a move which underlines Juddmonte’s confidence in Dansili’s fast son Bated Breath, Zenda visited him in his first season and produced a likeable filly at the end of January. Zenda is now a member of the illustrious book of mares visiting Frankel in his second season. 
    So this family looks primed to continue the excellent work which began with the purchase of Kingman’s third dam, the Mill Reef filly Bahamian, as a yearling 28 years ago.