Available at a £45,000 fee in his third season at Dalham Hall in Newmarket, the five-time G1 winner has made a promising start to his stud career – as James Thomas reports
GB: Palace Pier was a truly exceptional racehorse. That much is a matter of record, as proved by a CV that features no fewer than five G1 victories.
Unbeaten at two, he defeated Pinatubo to land the St James's Palace Stakes on just his fourth outing before seeing off Alpine Star and Circus Maximus in the Prix Jacques le Marois.
He was even better at four, annexing the Lockinge and Queen Anne Stakes before giving Poetic Flare 6lb to win his second Jacques le Marois. His second success in the prestigious Deauville event was gained in a faster time than his own sire Kingman, the brilliant Dubawi and either of the mighty Miesque’s back-to-back wins.
He retired as a bona fide champion, with Frankie Dettori hailing him the best miler he had ridden.
Yet while a blue-chip pedigree, electric pace and an irresistible turn of foot are potent ingredients to throw into the stallion melting pot, there is another crucial component required: the support of mare owners.
Strength-in-depth
Encouragingly the G1 theme has continued since Palace Pier retired to Dalham Hall Stud. His first two books of mares have numbered a combined 285, and to highlight the strength-in-depth contained within, 120 of those coverings have been with either a G1 winner, a G1 producer, their sibling or their daughter. That is a serious level of support.
Of course numbers matter, but so do the names behind those figures. Among the high-end breeders who have got firmly behind Palace Pier is Meon Valley Stud, which has a good reason for branding itself the ‘Cradle of the Classic Thoroughbred’.
“I saw Palace Pier racing and was very taken with him, so I’d always had it in mind to use him once he retired to stud,” says Meon Valley’s managing partner Mark Weinfeld. “He was a great racehorse and I thought he was a very good stallion prospect.
“We don’t really breed sprinters as such but because he got a bit more of a trip – he was an out-and-out miler – we thought he’d suit our mares very well. We’ve had some luck with his sire Kingman and in the past the Reprocolour family has worked very well with the Green Desert line.”
Weinfeld backed his belief by investing in a breeding right and sending the two-time G1 winner Speedy Boarding in Palace Pier’s first season.
Cracking colt
The result of that mating is a colt born on April 28 that Weinfeld describes as “cracking”, adding: “He’s a big, strong colt. He’s got plenty of bone and we really like him; we’re very pleased with him.”
Buoyed by the quality of Speedy Boarding’s foal, Meon Valley arguably gave Palace Pier an even bigger vote of confidence in year two, as he covered the stud’s homebred Oaks winner Anapurna.
“She probably could’ve got more than a mile and a half and we felt that with her breeding, Palace Pier might just speed her foal up a little bit,” says Weinfeld.
Meon Valley is sending two mares to Palace Pier this year in Ronni Scott, a daughter of Frankel and Jazzi Top, and Celestial Girl.
Another top breeder lending Palace Pier strong support is the leading French farm Ecurie des Monceaux, whose graduates include the likes of Feed The Flame, Paddington and Sottsass.
“I thought Palace Pier was a very talented horse with a great turn of foot and great speed,” says stud director Henri Bozo. “I like his breeding and I was really impressed by his physical.
Very impressed
“I saw him when he raced in Deauville and I was very impressed – I thought he was just a superior horse. I was very impressed by him as a racehorse and even more impressed when I saw him in detail physically.”
Monceaux’s picturesque paddocks are home to two yearlings by Palace Pier, a colt out of the well-related Marbre Rose and a filly out of Scone, a daughter of Dansili from the immediate family of Beauty Parlour.
On the colt out of Marbre Rose, Bozo says: “This is a family that enjoys speed and we got a beautiful colt from the mating. He’s strong, has good size, a very good head and good conformation. He walks well and is very athletic too. He’ll go to the Arqana August Yearling Sale if everything goes well.”
On the filly out of Scone, he adds, “She’s really a superior filly with a very good step, good size and strength and a nice hindquarter. I really like them both. They have the same shape, plenty of size, and both have quality. I’m very happy with our two yearlin
gs and that’s why we’re using him again.”
Monceaux has shown Palace Pier sustained support and in 2023 sent him Almana, a daughter of Galileo and Danedream’s half-sister Debutante, while his 2024 book contains Lucerne, a Frankel half-sister to Charm Spirit.
Palace Pier has also been able to count on home support from Godolphin, as Sheikh Mohammed’s operation and his associates have thrown their weight behind the horse with 24 mares in 2023 alone.
Godolphin have also got behind Palace Pier in the ring too, purchasing the most expensive member of his first crop offered at last year’s foal sales.
The lot in question is the colt out of Devotion, a half-brother to the Listed scorer Dubai Love who fetched 200,000gns when sold at Tattersalls by Petches Farm. Although the Petches team were understandably delighted with the price, it didn’t come as a complete surprise given the esteem they held the colt in before the sale.
No-brainer
Explaining the decision to send Devotion to Palace Pier in his first season, stud manager Oliver Costello says: “He was the best racehorse to retire that year and he’s a very good-looking horse too, so once we’d seen him it seemed like a no-brainer.
“The colt from that mating was always the best foal that we had around the place, certainly of that year and probably for the last few years.
“The mare is fairly easy to breed and she throws to the stallion so once we’d chosen the mating we were always confident we’d get a good model, and that’s certainly what we got. He was very straightforward and from day one he was lovely, always very athletic and a lovely mover. We were very happy with him from the get-go.”
The qualities Costello saw in the colt at home also came to the fore once he was on the ground at Tattersalls, where the youngster was so popular during inspections that he was barely in his stable.
“He was very straightforward at the sale and was obviously very, very busy,” says Costello. “There was a big number of end-users who liked him a lot and most of the pinhookers too. He was super busy but took it all in his stride. Going there we were confident that he’d make plenty but we were very happy with 200,000gns.”
Godolphin’s purchase wasn’t the only big result Palace Pier enjoyed during the foal sales. He had eight lots bred at £55,000 sell for an average of £101,696 and a median of £102,375, highlighting not only the quality buyers saw in his stock, but the consistency too.
While Godolphin took home Palace Pier’s most expensive colt foal, the priciest filly went the way of David Ryan of Elton Lodge who pinhooked the half-sister to Fighting Irish for €145,000 at the Goffs November Sale.
Proper filly
“I like to buy a nice filly every year and I went around and looked at them all at Goffs,” he says. “I had her on the list because she was the only Palace Pier in the sale. From the minute I saw her she was the only one I wanted. She was the only filly I bid on in the whole sale.
“She’s gorgeous; very correct, a great walker and very well put together. She’s a beautifully balanced filly with a great attitude. I went to see her two or three times and she just put her head down and did everything the exact same each time. If she’d been in Newmarket I’m sure I’d have had to dig deeper in my pocket.”
While the six-figure sum represents a significant outlay on a resale prospect, Ryan’s confidence has only grown since he got the filly home.
“Put it this way, I see her every morning and if you asked me now if I’d take €145,000 for her I’d tell you you can’t have her because I love her,” he says effusively. “Sometimes you come home and you look at what you’ve bought and you think ‘oh bloody hell!’ but not this filly. She can go to any sale.
“What they do in the field means nothing but I know she can move. I can’t wait to get her on the lunge. She’s a proper filly, just gorgeous.”
High-end pinhooks invariably have to have the pedigree to match their physique, with sire power an important part of the mix. Ryan rates Palace Pier as a “very exciting young stallion” prospect, not least because of the positive start Kingman has made as a sire of sires.
Serious racehorse
“When you take what Kingman has done with Calyx, he did better than market expectations and he was nowhere near the racehorse that Palace Pier was,” he says. “Five Group 1s between three and four and all at proper tracks beating proper horses. He was only a neck behind Baaeed giving him 3lb. He was a serious racehorse. I wanted a foal with sire power and he was the one I zoned in on at Goffs when I saw this filly.”
Breeding to any stallion in his third season is not without risks, particularly for those operating on a commercial basis. The yearlings resulting from his third book will pass through the sales in the year his first three-year-olds reach the racecourse, by which point there may be no place to hide.
However, for anyone thinking of using Palace Pier at a fair-looking fee of £45,000, they can do so safe in the knowledge that the horse appears to have all bases covered.
He was an outstanding racehorse and a top-class specimen who seems to be transferring his qualities to his offspring.
Moreover, the makeup of his early crops means anyone breeding to him in year three will have some of the biggest names in the business working for them. What’s not to like?
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