Appleby: Blue Point a ‘carbon copy of Shamardal’
Godolphin trainer lauds his best horse and believes he will be popular with Victorian breeders
Trainer Charlie Appleby believes that his champion sprinter Blue Point will be highly sought after by Australian breeders, labelling the bay as the potential second coming of his super sire Shamardal (Giant’s Causeway) as the champion sprinter prepares to stand his first season at stud in Victoria later this year.
Four-time Group 1 winner Blue Point, who ended his career by emulating Choisir’s (Danehill Dancer) historic sprinting double at Royal Ascot by taking the King’s Stand Stakes (Gr 1, 5f) and the Diamond Jubilee Stakes (Gr 1, 6f) last year, will stand at Darley’s Northwood Park farm in Seymour at a fee of $44,000 (inc GST). He has already served one book at the operation’s Kildangan Stud in Ireland.
“If you wanted to have a carbon copy of a Shamardal, he is the closest you’re ever going to get to it at the moment,” Appleby told ANZ Bloodstock News from his Newmarket base. “We’ve been very lucky to have a lot of Shamardals go through our system. Like any good stallion, he does stamp his stock.
“We were very lucky at the back end of last year, we got to see Shamardal and Blue Point both opposite one another in the stallion boxes at Kildangan and it certainly was a mini me or a younger Shamardal, basically. Obviously, on the passing of Shamardal, I don’t think there’s any better horse out there that can hopefully fill his boots.”
Shamardal died last month at Kildangan Stud at the age of 18, having begun his stallion career in the Hunter Valley in 2005 after being retired mid-season in Europe. A winner of four Group 1 features, including the Prix du Jockey Club (Gr 1, 2100m), he served five seasons in Australia in addition to his 14 seasons at Kildangan.
To date, Shamardal has produced 146 individual stakes winners worldwide, including 25 Group 1 winners, with Able Friend, Captain Sonador, Delectation, Faint Perfume and Maybe Discreet his Australian-bred Group 1 winners. Others of note include Lope De Vega, the sire of Australian feature victors Santa Ana Lane, Gytrash and Vega Magic; Hong Kong enigma Pakistan Star, and Appleby’s own hugely exciting prospect Pinatubo.
Blue Point is one of only two sons of Shamardal confirmed to be standing in Australia for the upcoming breeding season, with Swettenham Stud’s Puissance De Lune the other. Yarradale Stud’s Gingerbread Man and Crackerjack King for Wyndholm Park are others who are likely to be confirmed for the 2020 season.
Appleby is busily preparing for the return of British racing next month with a team that includes last season’s champion two-year-old Pinatubo (Shamardal) and 2018 Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) winner Cross Counter (Teofilo), among a raft of potential stars. However, it is clear that Blue Point is a horse close to his heart, despite the fact it has been almost a year since the galloper walked out of his Newmarket stables.
“For me, his consistency was pretty much second-to-none,” Appleby said. “Breaking his maiden on his first start and going on throughout that first season as a two-year-old and winning a Group 2 and being placed in two Group 1s subsequently. His hallmark is his consistency throughout his career, from two to five. Bar his maiden and his second start, a novice which he won by 11 lengths with James McDonald up that day, he’s only ever campaigned at Group level.”
A sign of that consistency is the fact that Blue Point only missed the top four twice in his career. He finished last of nine in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize (Gr 1, 1200m) in Hong Kong in 2018, with circumstances firmly against him throughout, while later that year he finished midfield as favourite in the July Cup (Gr 1, 6f), with the colt appearing to travel too keenly over the undulating Newmarket July course.
In addition to his four Group 1 wins, he was placed at Group 1 level four times, while he also won two Group 2 events and three Group 3s. While he broke through at Group 1 level as a four-year-old, taking the King’s Stand Stakes for the first time, it was his five-year-old season where he came of age. He won three races in Dubai, including the Al Quoz Sprint (Gr 1, 5f) on Dubai World Cup night, before he closed out his career with that famous Royal Ascot double.
“We were lucky enough with him that Harry Angel retired the year before and that allowed us to keep him in training that extra year,” Appleby said. “As we all know, nowadays, we don’t get to see these horses race up until their five-year-old year. He was one of the few that had come through the system that was still here at the age of five and therefore it allowed us to see him as the finished article.
“His final start for us was quite something, achieving the Group 1 double at Royal Ascot in the King’s Stand and the Diamond Jubilee. I’m never going to be able to get away from that as the ultimate pinnacle of his career.
“In Australia, you can back horses up quicker and you see it quite regularly at the top level, horses backing up quite quickly. We wouldn’t see it very often here. Our style of racing is different and our tracks can be quite testing. So for it to be achieved, especially at Group 1 level, I’m grateful we were able to witness that.”
Appleby has become something of a revered figure in Australian racing in recent years due to his frequent raids of the features down under. The Brit has already walked away with many of the best staying contests in Melbourne and Sydney, in addition to some of the world’s biggest races; it is sometimes hard to remember that he has only been one of Godolphin’s two primary UK trainers since mid-2013.
The 44-year-old, though, is excited by the prospect of having influence in Australia in another way, by producing a potential top stallion that, on paper, looks well-suited to the Australian market.
“I felt a bit old there the other day walking around the yard because I had trained quite a few of the mares that now have their foals in training with us,” he said. “And now, thankfully, we’re playing a part in the stallion industry as well! It’s what we strive to achieve as trainers: when you’re on the level that we are hopefully competing at, the aim is to produce stallions and hopefully good race mares too, and then you hope to see their progeny go on and achieve it on the race track.
“It’s exciting to produce a stallion but it’s more exciting to hope that you’ve produced a good one. As we know, there are plenty of stallions out there but to have that horse that is going to potentially shape racing and keep it to a very high standard, it’s what we hope Blue Point is going to achieve.
“Personally, I think he’s going to go down well because he’s just a horse that has an abundance of natural pace. He’s a strong individual, short-coupled, a proper sprinter and I think he’s going to tick a lot of boxes for the Australian market.”
While Blue Point was by a Darley stallion in Shamardal, he was bred and raised by Oak Lodge and Springfield House Stud in Kildare. Offered at the 2014 Tattersalls December Foal Sale, he was purchased by Ebor Bloodstock for 110,000 gns (AUD$216,000). He was then pinhooked in Book 1 of the 2015 Tattersalls October Yearling Sale, purchased for 200,000 gns (AUD$392,000) by John Ferguson Bloodstock on behalf of Godolphin.
Appleby recalls: “He was one of the sharper yearlings when he came to us. I was fortunate enough to be off at the sales when he was purchased, as it happens. So I saw him go through the sales ring. He was a likeable individual and that’s why we went ahead and purchased him.
“When he came into the yard, he was a very forward-going yearling and then obviously, when he turned two, he found everything naturally very easy to do. He was one of the first two-year-olds that William Buick would have jumped on at home and he liked him right from the get-go, he said that he had so much natural pace. He then started his career in the June of his two-year-old career and went on from there.
“He was a natural athlete, from the word go. Willie Ryan (former Derby winning jockey) used to ride him on a daily basis throughout his two-year-old and three-year-old career and he said that he’s one of the quickest he’s sat on; he rode so many good horses through the years as a jockey, mainly riding for Henry Cecil, so that means something.”
Appleby has had plenty of success with headline horses like Hawkbill (Kitten’s Joy), Wild Illusion (Dubawi), Masar (New Approach), Blair House (Pivotal) and Jungle Cat (Iffraaj) as well as current stable stars like Ghaiyyath (Dubawi), Old Persian (Dubawi), Barney Roy (Excelebration), Cross Counter and Pinatubo. However, he places Blue Point at the top of the pecking order.
“I’ve been asked that a few times now and I think he’s probably number one,” Appleby said. “We’ve been very lucky in the horses we’ve had on hand in my career as a trainer, but I think he is that top horse. He was one of those horses that excited you in the mornings; you’re excited to watch him work, you’re excited to see him as an individual and watch him gallop. He was always such an impressive galloper, very honest and genuine and always wanted to please.
“The thing about him is that he did it in the afternoons as well. We’ve all been around horses long enough to have seen plenty of good horses in the mornings but they just don’t seem to bring it to the table in the afternoons. He did it AM and PM, he was out there to please you.”