Leigh Stock To Be Dispersed At Tatts

A significant storyline to this year’s Tattersalls December Sale is the dispersal of the final bloodstock holdings of the Leigh family. Sarah Leigh, who had continued breeding Thoroughbreds after the death in 2002 of her father, Gerald Leigh, passed away in September at just 53 years of age, and her last remaining horses will be sold in a dispersal handled by the Cumani family’s Fittocks Stud, with whom the Leighs had a storied and successful relationship since the late 1980s.

The Leigh dispersal won’t make much noise in the grand scheme of the sale–it is, after all, made up of just six horses–but those six, which all descend from Gerald Leigh’s foundation mare, Brocade, are the product of generations of selective breeding by the Leigh family, and so it would be no surprise to see them continue to reproduce success on the racecourses and as producers for years to come.

“It’s small but select,” said Tattersalls Marketing Director Jimmy George of the Leigh dispersal. “We all remember Gerald Leigh and his daughter Sarah, and the huge impact the Leigh family had on breeding in this country in the last 30-odd years. The list of Group 1 and Classic winners bred by the Leigh family is amazing considering the number of broodmares they had, so it’ll be tinged with sadness, as all dispersals are, but a great tribute to a hugely successful operation.”

Brocade, the winner of the G1 Prix de la Foret, produced G1 2000 Guineas and GI Breeders’ Cup Mile victor Barathea (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells) for Gerald Leigh, as well as the G1 Fillies’ Mile and G1 1000 Guineas winner Gossamer (GB) (Sadler’s Wells), herself a Group 1 producer and also the second dam of a Group 2 winner. Brocade produced two other group winners and six of her daughters have produced stakes winners or stakes-placed horses, with many of them also the second dams of stakes winners. Brocade is the second or third dam of all six horses in the dispersal.

The star of the sextet is likely to be Seta (GB) (Pivotal {GB}) (lot 1965), an 8-year-old stakes-winning mare out of Bombazine (Ire) (Generous {Ire}), a stakes-placed daughter of Brocade and the dam of five total stakes winners. Seta’s first foal, the winning juvenile Seastrom (GB) (Oasis Dream {GB}), was a 425,000gns Tattersalls October purchase by John Ferguson, while that one’s full-brother went the way of Blandford Bloodstock for 420,000gns at the same sale this year. Seta’s Exceed and Excel (Aus) weanling colt (lot 1247) is also part of the dispersal, and Seta is offered empty after being covered again by Oasis Dream this year.

Fittocks’s Sara Cumani described Seta as a “a very attractive, young mare.”

“Seta would be the star of the show I would think,” Cumani said. “Her third foal, which is the one in the sale, is a very nice Exceed and Excel, so she herself is a multiple listed winner and Group 2-placed from a fantastic family, and she’s done everything right so far with her offspring, so she should be very popular. She’s lovely looking–she’s blonde and beautiful, so she’s very appealing.”

Also on offer is Seta’s unraced half-sister Rivara (GB) (Red Ransom) (lot 1893) and three of her progeny: the unraced 3-year-old filly Delaine (GB) (Beat Hollow {GB}) (lot 2245) and 2-year-old filly Farandine (GB) (Rock Of Gibraltar {Ire}) (lot 2247), who is currently in training with Luca Cumani and won Oct. 21 in Newmarket, and a Pivotal (GB) yearling colt (lot 147).

Sara Cumani said of Farandine, “she’s a very exciting 2-year-old who won at Newmarket on her third start and has everything possible to look forward to next year. We’d very much like to keep her and continue the line. It’s sad it’s all come to an end; Sarah was very keen, very interested, and was learning and enjoying it and her life was cut short, very sadly.”

The connection between the Leigh and Cumani families dates back to 1986, when Gerald Leigh sent Luca Cumani a filly named Infamy (GB) (Shirley Heights {GB}) to train, who would go on to win the GI EP Taylor S. Other Grade/Group 1 winners trained by Cumani for Leigh include Markofdistinction (GB) (Known Fact) and Gossamer, and Cumani also trained Barathea, who was bred by Leigh and raced by Sheikh Mohammed, and Seta, who raced as a homebred for Sarah Leigh. Gerald Leigh also bred the G1 1000 Guineas winner Bosra Sham (Woodman), who he sold for 530,000gns as a yearling.

“We went on through the years and trained lots of horses for him,” said Sara Cumani. “He and Luca had a very special relationship. He was very influential in Luca’s life and his attitude was very much influential on Luca.”

Cumani also recalled Gerald Leigh’s attention to detail when he was setting up his Eydon Hall Farm.

“He left nothing to chance and explored every angle and was pretty intent on finding out everything there was to know about developing a stud and breeding and buying the right animals, and he did pretty well at it,” she noted. “His influence is there to be seen. Unfortunately, when he died, a lot of what he spent his life building up was sold, but Sarah retained a portion of his stock, and those are the ones now going to the sales.”

The Leigh family accomplished what they did with a broodmare band that never numbered much more than 20, and was even smaller when Sarah took over the reins shortly after the turn of the century.

“They never had big numbers, but they had huge success,” Cumani reflected. “The one thing I remember quite clearly about Gerald is that we might have said to him on occasion, ‘you’re so lucky,’ and he’d look at us and say, ‘it has nothing to do with luck, it’s hard work.’”

“Gerald was Luca’s mentor and a friend and is much missed,” she added. “These studs take years and years to build up so it’s sad it isn’t able to carry on through fate.”