Beiwacht
It’s early days, but first–season Darley sire Bivouac (Exceed And Excel) has already made a piece of modern history.
In winning Saturday’s Silver Slipper Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) in the Godolphin royal blue, Bivouac’s son Beiwacht not only shot to the top, by exemption, on the Golden Slipper’s (Gr 1, 1200m) order of entry, but put his young sire up with some illustrious breeding company.
That is Bivouac’s own sire himself, Darley giant Exceed And Excel (Danehill).
In a remarkable piece of symmetry, Bivouac has matched Exceed And Excel’s own highly promising start at the same point in his glittering stud career.
After the fourth Saturday in February of his first season, Exceed And Excel had two Group winners.
And now so does Bivouac.
In fact, according to Darley intel, he’s the first Australasian sire to achieve that feat since Exceed And Excel himself, in 2008.
Bivouac’s first winner, in fact, was a black type success with Intention taking Manawatu’s Wakefield Challenge Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m), and he now has four winners from 14 runners overall, two of those runners having been in New Zealand.
For your next (extremely difficult) trivia night, by the same week, the first-season Exceed And Excel had had the winners of both Blue Diamond Preludes, with Wilander in the males’ and Believensucceed taking the fillies, with another daughter Sugar Babe running second for good measure.
Bivouac also has quality in his other two winners. The Tom Dabernig-trained Cavalry Girl scored on a Saturday at Flemington, beating subsequent Group 3 placegetter Sword Of Legacy (Too Darn Hot) by 1.5 lengths. And in Perth, Luana Miss won Ascot’s prestigious Magic Millions Plate (1000m) by 1.82 lengths.
It would be a brave person to back Bivouac to match the career of Exceed And Excel, who was retired last March aged 23. The youngster has 217 stakes winners to go to catch his dad, who was Australia’s champion sire in 2012-13 and a successful shuttler to Britain and Ireland for many seasons.
But at least the eight-year-old’s start to stud life is off on the right foot, in the way Darley had hoped when they retired him after his four-year-old autumn as a triple Group 1 winner, twice up the Flemington straight 1200 metres.
“He was the fastest son of Exceed And Excel, in my opinion, and was his highest-rated son and was a world champion sprinter,” Darley’s head of stallions Alastair Pulford told It’s In The Blood.
“He went to stud with quite a similar profile to his father, although Exceed went straight to stud at four, after winning the VRC Newmarket at three, and Bivouac trained on to win the VRC Newmarket at four, when he beat Nature Strip down the straight at Flemington, which was his career highlight.
“He was a really high class horse, and obviously we’re hoping he makes it into a really high class stallion.”
Beiwacht and Bivouac are related in name and nature, with “bivouac” the French word for “beiwacht”, which comes from a German dialect of Switzerland, and so far everything around the pair is running like clockwork.
Just as Bivouac does have one thing up on Exceed And Excel – with three Group 1 wins to two – Beiwacht now has a bragging right over his father: being qualified for the Golden Slipper.
Bivouac was an unused first emergency for his Slipper – which may have given his stablemates a bagging right, since Godolphin did get five runners into the race that year, including the first two home in Kiamichi (Sidestep) and Microphone (Exceed And Excel).
Beiwacht is now a $13 third-favourite to try to become Godolphin’s second Slipper winner, and is progressing in a timely fashion for the race.
After winning two barrier trials he bombed his debut in late January as second-favourite when seventh over 1000 metres at Randwick, perhaps with a mix-up on riding instructions contributing.
At a more cautious $12, he atoned with a 0.55–length second in Randwick’s Lonhro Plate (Listed, 1000m), then sat just off the leader in the Silver Slipper and raced away to win by 2.15 lengths, leaving Golden Slipper favourite Wodeton (Wootton Bassett) in third place, albeit with a hard luck tale.
Pulford said there were parallels with Bivouac, who won Randwick’s Kindergarten Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) two weeks after missing that Slipper run.
“The stable has had a high opinion of Beiwacht from day one,” Pulford said.
“Bivouac was a bit similar in that he wasn’t a pre-Christmas two-year-old, even though he had one start in October, but he was a horse who got better and better as he got older. Let’s hope his progeny can do the same.”
The match-up that produced Beiwacht was also methodical, with Darley adhering to its strategy of putting its proven mares to its unproven stallions.
In this case the mare was one of its own by one of its siring legends, being Metastasio (Street Cry).
The stud bred Metastasio from another mare Darley bred in Irish import Libretto (Singspiel), who earned a special place in the empire’s Australian folklore as the dam of Colette (Hallowed Crown). That dual Group 1 winner was Godolphin Australia’s highest earner – with $7.14 million – until Anamoe (Street Boss) came along.
Metastasio won her first two starts – again as a post-Christmas two-year-old in 2013 – including in Listed class over 1100 metres at Caulfield, before running eighth in the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
She added a Group 3 placing before retiring after nine starts. At stud, she had a measure of early success, with her third foal being Melbourne Listed winning gelding Gravina (Sebring).
Before that, two covers from the proven Exceed And Excel didn’t work, but now her mating with his son Bivouac – her seventh – appears to have clicked handsomely in the form of Beiwacht.
Metastasio’s sire Street Cry (Machiavellian) is one of the most potent nicks with Exceed And Excel, ranking as his fourth-best by winners, with 43 from 58.
So why has Bivouac appeared to have worked with this mare better than Exceed And Excel?
One possibility is that Bivouac has Halo (Hail To Reason) and Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native), and Exceed And Excel has neither.
The mating that produced Beiwacht effects a triplication of Halo, gender-mixed and through three different offspring, at 5m x 5f, 5f.
Metastasio has Halo twice. He’s the damsire of Street Cry’s sire Machiavellian and of Libretto’s sire Singspiel. Bivouac has Halo as the third sire of his dam, Dazzler (More Than Ready).
Then – possibly even better in this case – there’s Mr. Prospector.
All of Exceed And Excel’s top four nicks carry Mr. Prospector in their first three generations. In order by winners, they are Elusive Quality (Gone West), Encosta De Lago (Fairy King), Lonhro (Octagonal) and Street Cry.
Not only is Mr. Prospector Metastasio’s third sire, the mixture is strengthened by the fact Bivouac has him twice.
‘Mr. P’ is on both sides of Bivouac’s dam, which supplies him to Beiwacht at 6m, 6m x 4m – and through three different sons in Woodman, Gone West and Machiavellian.
Also in Beiwacht’s pedigree are seven appearances from the great blue hen Natalma (Native Dancer). And it’s in the usefully diverse way that happens whenever Danehill (Danzig) – carrying Natalma’s son Northern Dancer and daughter Spring Adieu – meets Street Cry and/or Machiavellian, with the latter’s second dam being another Natalma daughter in Raise The Standard.
Beiwacht is also reinforced by seven mentions in his first seven columns of Natalma’s influential dam Almahmoud – four through Natalma and three through Halo’s dam Cosmah (Cosmic Bomb).
Putting the crystal balls back down, thankfully for breeders, when you take sires and damsires as successful as Exceed And Excel and Street Cry, that’s usually reason enough to believe a mating will work.
“It’s a well-tried nick, Exceed And Excel over Street Cry,” Pulford said.
“Plus Street Cry is one of those great things that works with pretty much everything. Exceed And Excel is pretty much the same – suited to all sorts of mares.”
Another from the Darley hall of fame for Exceed And Excel over Street Cry is Cylinder – yet another VRC Newmarket winner who now stands for Sheikh Mohammed’s juggernaut at their Northwood Park farm in Victoria.
And from outside the empire there’s September Run, who also triumphed up the Flemington straight with the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) one of her two elite victories.
Street Cry finished third on the Australian broodmare sires’ table last season, thanks mainly to being the maternal grandfather of globetrotting Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) winner Romantic Warrior (Acclamation), and currently sits sixth on that table, with Godolphin’s Tom Kitten (Harry Angel) his best grandchild this season.
“Street Cry as a broodmare sire just keeps getting better,” Pulford said.
“So, it wasn’t rocket science, putting a proven mare to a young stallion on a proven cross, but in any event Beiwacht looks a very exciting colt.”