Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Jet still the master

David Thiselton
Jet Master ended the season Champion Sire for the fourth time in succession, while the most improved performance came from Silvano whose progeny earned over R10 million to put him in second place less than R2 million behind Jet Master.
All the big guns like Captain Al, Fort Wood, Western Winter, Kahal and Jallad were in the top ten again, although National Emblem was just outside the top ten for the first time in many seasons.
Parade Leader was the turnaround story of the season, finishing seventh on the National log.
Having been deemed a failure after the good support he received in his first few seasons, he was sent so few mares in his fifth season that he has just over ten two-year-olds on the ground at present.
However, such is his new found popularity, thanks mainly to the exploits of his son Pierre Jourdan, that five of those now two-year-olds were on this year’s National Yearling Sales.
The sire sensation of the season, however, must surely have been Dynasty.
With his oldest progeny having been only three-years-old, he finished ninth on the log.
Among his three-year-olds were the Grade 1 winners Irish Flame and Ancestral Fore, with the
former likely to be a strong candidate for Equus three-year-old champion.
The Vodacom Durban July winner, Bold Silvano, by Silvano, will also stake a claim for three-year-old champion.
It was unfortunate for Silvano that another of his Grade 1 winning three-year-old sons, Bravura, missed the Champions Season, as he might then have come closer to the Champion Sire title.
Silvano also had the Summer Cup winner, the four-year-old Aslan, so won two of the country’s big three races.
Mogok finished just outside the top ten sires with his Grade 1 winner and July third placed Orbison being his chief earner.
The Equus Horse Of The Year Award might go to one of
the three-year-olds mentioned, although among them Irish Flame, who was July runner-up, was the only dual Grade 1 winner of the season, while Pierre Jourdan was the highest earner.
The only other dual Grade 1
winning horses of the season were the Jet Master superstar sprinter, J J The Jet Plane and the Windrush filly Mother Russia.
J J in fact only ran in two races in South Africa during the season and his superiority in both might see him earning a Jet Master progeny the Horse Of The Year Award for the fourth year in a row with Pocket Power having won it for the last three years.
Pocket Power himself can’t be written off for the title again having won the Queen’s Plate for the fourth time in succession and having finished third in three other Grade 1 events.
The performances of Mother Russia helped Windrush make it into the top ten sires for the first time. He finished eighth.
If Bold Silvano does get Horse Of The Year it will boost his stallion potential one day.
Breeders and buyers won’t make the same mistake with him as they did with Jet Master, whom they said had too weak a female line to make it as a stallion.
Like Jet Master, Bold Silvano has a long line of South African-breds in his direct female line.
Furthermore, Jet Master’s seventh dam was the South African-bred Giddy Girl by the imported Polymelus sire, Polystome, while Bold Silvano’s sixth dam was also a South African-bred by an imported Polymelus sire, Polyscope.
The leading freshman stallion was Tiger Ridge, who produced 11 winners of 13 races and was unlucky not to win a Grade 1 with Kavanagh.
He is closely related to the former South African Champion Sire Al Mufti, who is damsire of Bold Silvano.
Tiger Ridge is from a stallion producing family being out of Weekend Surprise, who is a daughter of Al Mufti’s celebrated dam, Lassie Dear.

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