Pedigree Insights: Able Friend (Aus)
by Andrew Caulfield
Now I don’t want to tempt fate, so I am busily touching wood while I type this one-handed, but–with luck–Giant’s Causeway should be around for plenty more years. After all, this multiple champion sire will be no older than 18 next year, whereas his sire Storm Cat and broodmare sire Rahy were respectively 25 and 24 when their last few foals were conceived. His dam Mariah’s Storm has also proved durable, producing her 13th foal–a filly by Galileo– at the age of 23 this year, when she again visited Galileo.
The current year has been very rewarding for the Ashford star. He is now more than $1 million clear on the sires of 2-year-olds list, thanks largely to his Group I winners Carpe Diem and Take Charge Brandi (who has landed three valuable prizes in the space of less than two months in the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, the GIII Delta Down Princess S. and the GI Starlet S.). Giant’s Causeway also stands second behind Tapit on the general sires’ list.
He is also making his presence felt through his stallion sons and grandsons. His son Shamardal ranks third behind Galileo among the leading sires in Britain and Ireland and has racked up a total of 14 group winners in the Northern Hemisphere this year. For good measure, Shamardal’s son Lope de Vega is heading for the first-season sires’ championship in Britain and Ireland.
Shamardal made it a memorable weekend for Team Giant’s Causeway, when–just hours after Take Charge Brandi’s Starlet S. success–his Australian-bred son Able Friend was highly impressive in landing the G1 Longines Hong Kong Mile. This was the gelding’s eighth win in 14 starts.
Australia has played quite an important role in Shamardal’s stallion career, which began earlier than expected.
Apart from a glitch in the G2 UAE Derby on the only occasion he ventured off turf, Shamardal was unbeaten in six starts. Having headed the European 2-year-old rankings in 2004, Shamardal was busily staking his claim to a second championship when he reeled off front-running victories in three Group 1 races in the space of 31 days. He was then scheduled to take on the Derby winner Motivator and the older horses in the G1 Eclipse S. but chipped a bone in an ankle. As surgery would have been required for him to continue racing, the decision was taken to retire him to stud. And as it was only the start of July, it was decided to add the 3-year-old to Darley’s shuttle team to Australia.
Shamardal was to visit Australia in each of the next five years, but things didn’t always go totally smoothly.
Having started out at AUS$55,000 in 2005, his fee was down to half that amount by his fourth season in 2009. It was quite early in the 2009 season that Shamardal injured his withers in a fall, forcing him out of action, and he was given the rest of the season off.
The end result was that he covered only 34 mares that year and his total of live foals from his five Australian seasons stood at 313, for an average of just over 62 per crop. Among his 20 stakes winners were the Group 1 winners Captain Sonador, Faint Perfume (VRC Oaks), Maybe Discreet (SAJC Schweppes Oaks) and now Able Friend. Northern hemisphere breeders may not have noticed that Maybe Discreet is inbred 4×3 to Storm Bird, while Faint Perfume is inbred 4×4 to the same son of Northern Dancer.
It is going to be interesting to see whether Shamardal’s impressive son Lope de Vega replicates his European success with the 90 2-year-olds from his first Australian crop.
There will be no stallion career for Able Friend, as he is a gelding, but the Racing Post handicappers consider him to be Shamardal’s finest effort. He is rated 4lb superior to Shamardal’s Eclipse S. winner Mukhadram, a recent recruit to the Shadwell stallion team. Of course Lope de Vega’s eye-catching start has helped focus attention on other young stallion sons of Shamardal, principally the Racing Post Trophy winner Casamento. His first weanlings, sired at a modest €5,000, recently averaged over 30,000gns.
Able Friend’s dam Ponte Piccolo was sold in 2013 and her buyers were understandably surprised to get her for as little as AUS$35,000. When Able Friend came on the market as a yearling in 2011, his price had been an impressive AUS$550,000 but he hadn’t raced by the time his dam came under the hammer.
Ponte Piccolo is a half-sister to Global News, a Group 1 winner in South Africa, and the next dam, Baronia, was a sister to the Group 2 Australian winner Baronia. Able Friend’s fourth dam, Royal News, was a sister to Sovereign Edition, a classic-placed English miler who sired two winners of one of Australia’s top races, the G1 W.S. Cox Plate.
Half Iced, the sire of Able Friend’s second dam, was very much at home over a mile and a half, as he showed when he defeated those top-class mares All Along and April Run in the 1982 G1 Japan Cup.
Able Friend’s broodmare sire, the Green Desert horse Volksraad, was a speedier type who earned a Timeform rating of 109 during a brief career. Sent to New Zealand, he sired numerous Group 1 winners in the process of becoming New Zealand’s champion sire for six consecutive years.
It comes as no surprise that Shamardal sired Able Friend from a Danzig line mare. Three of his other Group 1 winners–Amaron, Dan Excel (formerly Dunboyne Express) and Casamento–are others from this line.