She’s been one of the most consistent producers of top-quality racehorses in Britain for the last few years, and Shastye proved yesterday that she hasn’t stopped yet when her son Mogul added another G1 to the family’s trophy cabinet with an impressive success in the Grand Prix de Paris at ParisLongchamp
Mogul is a full-brother to dual G1 winner Japan, Epsom Oaks runner-up Secret Gesture and the high-class Sir Isaac Newton, all by Galileo.
Nineteen year-old Shastye is the pride and joy at Newsells Park stud farm in Hertfordshire, Southern England, which is also the home of Enable’s sire, Nathaniel, a world top 30 stallion, but the stud’s Julian Dollar doesn't think Mogul's victory yesterday will enhance her value.
“It’s always important to win a Group 1 and, for us, it’s about breeding top-class racehorses,” he said after the race. “So today’s result was important. For the value of the mare, I don’t think it makes a lot of difference. I think she was already pretty special.”
Mogul asserted his credentials as a top-level performer in the making exactly 12 months ago when winning the G2 KPMG Champions Juvenile Stakes at Leopardstown. Between then and now, however, plans had not come together quite as well as connections would have wanted, with a lacklustre first outing in the G2 King Edward II Stakes at Royal Ascot preceding a sixth place finish behind Serpentine in the Epsom Derby.
But the colt well and truly turned the tables with that stablemate yesterday, with the Epsom hero a well-beaten fourth in Paris.
Dollar said afterwards, “It’s good to see Mogul win a Group 1 because over the winter I believe the Ballydoyle team thought he was their number one pick for the Derby, and then everything went crazy with coronavirus and threw everything off track. It’s no secret that this family are good doers. They’re pretty chilled out and they put on weight quite easily, so both Japan and Mogul found it hard to shift the weight.”
Dollar continued,“[Shastye] has been vital to Newsells Park, I suppose. She’s been absolutely exceptional, producing Group 1 winners throughout and obviously she’s been incredibly commercial for us. We’re a commercial outfit that needs to make money, so she has been incredibly important and we’re lucky that we’ve got three daughters of hers here at the stud. That’s one of the reasons we decided we had to put the sister into the sale.”
Newsells Park specialises in yearling preparaton, and Mogul’s victory is a timely reminder of the standout star within the farm’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1 draft this year, the half-sister catalogued as Lot 436.
“I have mixed emotions about selling the filly, obviously. I’m sad to do it really. I’d have loved to have just kept her, but she’s owned with Coolmore and we were thinking of racing her together, but we feel we have to put her up for sale and see what happens.”
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Asked about the filly as an individual, Dollar said, “All of them have been pretty similar. Japan was a little bit more leggy and elegant than Mogul, who was a real bull of a horse. Sir Isaac Newton was a really beautiful horse, he was pretty much perfection, and of the fillies I think this is the nicest she’s ever produced. She’s bigger and stronger than Secret Gesture, I think she’s nicer than Secret Gaze, who’s the full-sister we have here at the stud. I think she’s the nicest of the fillies.
“We’ve got a lot of lovely horses in the draft. It’s obviously going to be a tricky market, but they’re very nice horses and hopefully they’ll go well.”
Shastye is currently carrying to Darley linchpin Dubawi. Dollar concluded by explaining the reasoning behind the switch:
“She was barren to Galileo last year, having had the filly in January. She got in foal towards the end, then lost the pregnancy soon after coming back to the UK, so we gave it one more throw of the dice this year but she was empty on the first two covers and we just couldn’t afford a mare like this to go empty again. So we switched to Dubawi and we’ll have a good think about who she’s going to go to next year.
“She’s 19 but she looks fantastic. You’d think she was 15 or 16 at most, so hopefully we’ll get a good few years out of her yet.”