It’s In The Blood

By Trevor Marshallsea

 

 

You mightn’t guess it from his pricetag, but Danehill Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) winner McGaw (I Am Immortal) hails from a pedigree boasting plenty of blue blood, with strong notes of a particularly regal European family.

The first stakes winner created by an entity named Havaparty – the breeding wing (and nickname) of the like-sounding David Azzopardi of Dream Thoroughbreds – McGaw is the son of a mare Azzopardi bought for $16,000 in Niki Piki Milo (Librettist).

 

 

And even then the breeder couldn’t turn a profit when McGaw went to last year’s Inglis Premier Yearling Sale, selling from Stonehouse Thoroughbreds’ draft for $14,000 to trainers David and Emma-Lee Browne – which was $6,000 short of his reserve.

But the gelding’s pedigree suggested he’d have a good start in life.

Dream Thoroughbreds raced the sire, I Am Immortal (I Am Invincible), and when they sold him to Victoria’s Swettenham Stud, Azzopardi retained a small share and decided to enter into breeding.

At the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale of 2020, Swettenham conducted research – via G1 Goldmine – into appropriate mares for I Am Immortal. Niki Piki Milo, a Listed winner in New Zealand, came up as a recommendation, and the mare is now responsible for one of that stallion’s two stakes winners.

We all want to repeat influential broodmares if we can, and catching the eye mostly in this mating is a 5f x 5f duplication of important mare Eljazzi (Artaius).

 

 

Irish-bred, Eljazzi was a foundation mare for the breeding empire of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Faisal bin Khaled bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, he of the maroon with grey epaulettes carried with distinction by a host of quality thoroughbreds. They include dual Group 1 winners and subsequent sires Belardo (Lope De Vega), a former shuttler to New Zealand, and Make Believe (Makfi).

Most of all, they include Mishriff (Make Believe), who won three Group 1s and the world’s richest race, the Saudi Cup (1800m) in 2021, a year before it attained top-tier status.

The John Gosden-trained Mishriff himself is a product of the Eljazzi family, with that mare being his fourth dam.

Purchased by Prince Faisal in 1982 for 92,000gns, the Henry Cecil-trained Eljazzi won on debut at Leicester by four lengths. She couldn’t win again in three more starts, but became a runaway success at stud.

Her first named foal Rafha (Kris) won five from seven, four in black type, including Chantilly’s Prix de Diane (Gr 1, 2100m), or French Oaks, and was one of Eljazzi’s two stakes winners, alongside four stakes placegetters.

Rafha enjoyed outrageous success at stud. Four of her first nine runners were stakes winners, and three more were black-type placed.

Most notable among these were the Group 1-winning Invincible Spirit (Green Desert) and the Group 3-placed Kodiac (Danehill). They have of course gone on to be super sires, the former with 154 stakes winners, the latter 103.

Rafha also threw the great blue hen Massarra (Danehill), who in Ireland left no fewer than six stakes winners include elite victor Nayarra (Cape Cross) and the Group 1-placed Gustav Klimt (Galileo).

It’s via Invincible Spirit that Eljazzi comes into McGaw’s top-half, nice and strong since Invincible Spirit is McGaw’s third sire.

At the bottom, Eljazzi’s influence is even more powerful, undiluted as she’s McGaw’s fifth dam.

Eljazzi was imported to Australia in 2002, aged 22. That’s not why she feeds into McGaw, but she did become a success here as well.

She threw only two foals here before dying in 2005, but one was Al Anood (Danehill), dam of three stakes victors headed by dual Group 1 hero Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry), now the sire of 18 stakes winners topped by Bella Nipotina, Dubai Honour, and Pride Of Jenni.

While still in Ireland, Eljazzi threw McGaw’s fourth dam Fayfa (Slip Anchor), who was Listed-placed and also came to Australia to throw Listed winner Hillfa (Danehill) and her city-winning full-sister Doduo (Danehill), McGaw’s third dam.

 

I Am Immortal

Doduo was a three-quarter sister to Massarra, Kodiac and Al Anood, and bore the dams of MRC Angus Armanasco Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) winner Shuffle Dancer (I Am Invincible) and New Zealand Group 2 and Group 3 victor Contessa Vanessa (Bullbars) – who has renown as one of only three stakes winners by the obscure sire of Mr Brightside.

Dudou’s daughter Joiya (Stravinsky) was a city winner in New Zealand and bore Niki Piki Milo and three stakes placegetters, including the Group 1-placed Bella Gioia and Bella Mente.

Azzopardi put Niki Piki Milo to I Am Immortal for three straight years, yielding the Dream Thoroughbreds-retained I Am Piki, who’s won two from 11 so far, McGaw, and a filly bought at Premier this year by Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young.

Her price was $160,000, and Busuttin and Young’s fellow Kiwi expats David and Emma-Lee Browne were under-bidders, at $150,000. That’s a fair bit more than the $14,000 they’d paid for McGaw from Book 2 at the same sale a year earlier, hinting at the quality they’d seen from him.

McGaw had debuted by then, with a 3.5 length win in an 1100-metre Pakenham maiden. Two weeks after that sale, he followed with victory at start number two in the $1 million Vobis Showdown (1200m).

Second place went to Befuddle (Hanseatic). Raced by Dream Thoroughbreds, and co-bred by Azzopardi – who also has a small share in Rosemont Stud’s Hanseatic – she’s now a Group 3-placed city winner from five starts, further boosting the portfolio of her novice breeder.

“We’ve only been breeding for three seasons,” Azzopardi, who has six mares, tells It’s In The Blood.

“I couldn’t have imagined how much success we’d have so early in the breeding game. I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m not kidding myself – I still know how hard it’ll be to have more success – but to get that kind of success, it’s been a very exciting ride.

“To have bred the quinella in the Showdown was just wild. I wasn’t sure which one to cheer for.

“But McGaw has always shown ability from day one,” Azzopardi says of the three-year-old, now a $15 shot for the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Flemington on November 1.

“Watching him grow and fill into his frame has been great, and I think there’s a lot more to come. He’s still a bit of a long-legged baby, so as he matures further, he’ll keep improving.”

Azzopardi had budgeted for roughly double what he paid for Niki Piki Milo. She’d had just two runners, and one winner, from four foals at the time, but came up trumps on G1 Goldmine as a match for I Am Immortal.

“She was by Librettist, which probably wasn’t one of the most attractive of sirelines, but at $16,000 she was worth a gamble,” he said.

“As a yearling, McGaw was probably a bit big and leggy for a lot of buyers, and there wasn’t any real interest from anyone in him. But David and Emma-Lee, because they were New Zealanders, they knew Niki Piki Milo, and knew she was a good horse.

“We probably could have passed him in and raced him in Dream Thoroughbreds’ colours, but we wanted to get the stock of I Am Immortal into some good stables.”

I Am Immortal now has two stakes winners from 64 runners, at 3.1 per cent. That’s not bad among the six sons of I Am Invincible who’ve sired stakes winners so far – second behind Brazen Beau’s 4.6 per cent, and ahead of third-ranking Hellbent’s 2.4 per cent. For the record, the others are Kobayashi (1.8 per cent), Strasbourg (1.5 per cent) and Super One (0.9 per cent).

The other stakes winner for I Am Immortal is Phillip Stokes’s four-year-old gelding Athanatos. Out of an O’Reilly (Last Tycoon) mare, he’s shown stamina by winning Morphettville’s Chairman’s Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m), and is at $16 for Saturday’s Toorak Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m), as another of those sneaky lightweight chances in major Caulfield handicaps for jockey Craig Williams.

While the Eljazzi family runs vibrantly in McGaw, he’s also powered by Danzig (Northern Dancer), at 5m, 4m x 3m, 5m, through four distinct sons. In the top-half, Danzig comes through fourth sire Green Desert and I Am Immortal’s damsire Ad Valorem. Down south, he’s the sire of Librettist, and of third dam Doduo’s sire Danehill.

The influential Nureyev is repeated at 5m x 4m via I Am Immortal’s second damsire Fasliyev, and Niki Piki Milo’s damsire Stravinsky.

Like Eljazzi, American broodmare Special (Forli) is another mare worth noting, at 6m, 8f x 5m, the first and last via Nureyev, and the middle through Sadler’s Wells (Northern Dancer), I Am Immortal’s fourth damsire.

Natalma (Native Dancer) makes a strong nine appearances from the fifth to the eighth removes, with another great American mare Lalun (Djeddah) reinforcing the whole five times at 8m, 8m, 8m, 9m x 9m via Never Bend (four times) and Bold Reason.

The dominant sire is Hyperion (Gainsborough) with 19 mentions from columns seven through nine, ahead of 16 from Native Dancer (Polynesian), at six through nine.

***

Godolphin’s two stakes winners from Saturday come powered by some reliable pedigree tricks, one with a particularly royal blue hue.

The Joe Pride-trained three-year-old colt Attica (Lonhro), winner of Randwick’s Dulcify Stakes (Listed, 1600m), is the first foal of former outstanding Godolphin mare Savatiano (Street Cry).

Now 11, Savatiano won 12 times from 14 starts, with seven stakes wins including five Group 2s. She didn’t quite finish with an elite success, but was placed three times at the top level, including a 0.1-length second in the 2021 All Aged Stakes (Gr 1, 1400m), and a 1.3-length second in the 2020 Canterbury Stakes (Gr 1, 1300m).

Exacerbating that pain, she was first across the line in the 2021 Canterbury Stakes, but was disqualified 12 months later – affecting connections but not punters – for a mysterious, unexplained positive swab to three banned steroidal substances.

Savatiano now has a two-year-old colt named Sabates (Palace Pier) in Ciaron Maher’s stable, and a yearling colt by I Am Invincible.

Attica is also boosted by that ever-reliable staple of pedigrees, a duplication of Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native) at 4m x 4m, coming in strong as the sire of Lonhro’s damsire, and as Savatiano’s third sire.

Godolphin’s winner of Saturday’s Super Impose Stakes (Listed, 1800m) at Flemington – the Team McEvoy-trained Options (Impending) – boasts that much coveted occurrence of having Northern Dancer full-brothers Fairy King and Sadler’s Wells on either side of the pedigree, and close enough in the fourth remove.

Fairy King is there as the sire of Impending’s damsire Encosta De Lago, while Sadler’s Wells is well placed as the third sire of Options’ mother Alternatively (New Approach).

Options also has a doubling of Mr. Prospector, at 5m x 5m.

 

Original Article: https://www.anzbloodstocknews.com/mcgaw/

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