El Castello
There may only be spring buds so far, but Arrowfield Stud and Anthony Cummings are hoping for a full blossoming from last Saturday’s Randwick winner El Castello (Castelvecchio) that will help put his young sire on the map.
The three-year-old first-cropper became Castelvecchio’s (Dundeel) first Saturday metro winner in taking the 1600-metre Benchmark 72 Midway handicap, following a Warwick Farm maiden victory the start before.
And while Castelvecchio has made something of a slow start to life at stud, evidence is building that – a little like another young barnmate The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) – good things will come to those who wait.
Bred by New Zealand’s Cambridge Stud, El Castello showed encouraging glimpses in his two-year-old campaign, including a second to subsequent dual Group 1 winner Broadsiding (Too Darn Hot) in Randwick’s Fernhill Mile (Listed, 1600m).
And Saturday’s was a tough, professional win – as $2.90 favourite in a 12-runner field – after the colt showed strong gatespeed to race outside the leader before taking a sit, then surging home in the straight to win by 0.5 lengths.
It came a couple of hours before Team Hayes’s Torvecchio (Castelvecchio) claimed an Echuca maiden, and a week after another daughter, the Phillip Stokes-trained and Arrowfield-owned Comanche Miss (Castelvecchio), finished strongly for a one length second in Flemington’s Exford Plate (Listed, 1400m), behind the smart Dawn Service (Justify).
Castelvecchio now has six winners from 27 starters at a handy 22.22 per cent, including two stakes–placed runners.
Bought for $150,000 at Inglis Classic, and trained by Richard Litt for his major client Ottavio Galletta, Castelvecchio showed class at two, initially as a bookmakers’ pin-up. He won on debut at Canterbury at $61, then took the Inglis Millennium (RL, 1200m) at $21, before three starts later triumphing in the Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m), this time with punters not missing him as $2.90 second favourite.
Yet despite his precocity, the Danehill-free sire’s offspring are proving perhaps more in line with his own sire Dundeel, and before him High Chaparral and Sadler’s Wells.
“His stock obviously haven’t been two-year-olds,” Arrowfield’s Jon Freyer tells It’s In The Blood, “but it looks like they’re going to make some useful three-year-olds.
“El Castello is on a Spring Champion Stakes and Derby path, and Commanche Miss will go to the Edward Manifold en route to the Wakeful Stakes and the VRC Oaks.
“So, once again, it’s looking like he’s a stallion who if you’re patient, you’ll get rewards.
“Castelvecchio was a two-year-old himself, but he’s also a Classic winner by Dundeel, and like the High Chaparrals and Sadler’s Wells horses, they can take a little bit of time.”
In fact, so good was Castelvecchio in his second season, he rated the best three-year-old in the world after running a 1.5 length second to outstanding Japanese mare Lys Gracieux (Heart’s Cry) in the 2019 Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m), beating home older Group 1 winners Te Akau Shark (Rip Van Winkle), Magic Wand (Galileo) and Mystic Journey (Needs Further).
Calstelvecchio progressed into the autumn, winning the Rosehill Guineas (Gr 1, 2000m), beating into second the Cummings-trained Prince Fawaz (Fastnet Rock), further whetting appetites at his future home Arrowfield.
“He was a top–class horse with a beautiful pedigree,” Freyer said. “And he was a Group 1-winning two-year-old, and a Group 1-winning three-year-old. There’s not a lot of them about.”
The now eight-year-old Castelvecchio is standing his fifth spring at Arrowfield, for $22,000. That’s down from $27,500 for the past two seasons, when he covered books in the high 80s, and $33,000 for his initial two seasons of 2020 and ’21, when he covered 142 and 106 mares respectively.
“His numbers have dipped a little bit, but there’s good interest in him this year off the back of these three-year-olds,” Freyer said.
In acquiring El Castello for $220,000 at last year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast sale, Cummings went back to a well which has yielded several famous relatives, and which has served him and his own most famous relative very well.
The stand-out name in El Castello’s pedigree is his fifth dam, the New Zealand mare Soliloquy (Sobig).
A daughter of an outstanding Group 1-winner and sire, and from a producer of three stakes winners in Princess Patine (Pakistan II), Soliloquy was a 1971 drop who won three black– type races, headed by New Zealand’s Lion Brown Sprint (Gr 1, 1400m) of 1977.
She was equally useful at stud, throwing no fewer than four stakes winners, among nine winners from 11 runners. Her third foal was Listed-winning mare Quibble (Ruling), but her next one was far better in Solveig (Imposing), winner of three New Zealand Group 1s among nine black–type victories, and later the dam of two Australian stakes winners.
Soliloquy’s seventh named foal was the colt Reasoning (Grosvenor), who Anthony’s father Bart trained to win in Listed class over 2400 metres in Sydney in 1990. Soliloquy’s stakes-winning quartet was rounded out by New Zealand Group 2-winning mare Soltanto (Tights).
“Soliloquy as a base female is very, very good,” Cummings tells It’s In The Blood. “That’s a great New Zealand family, and I grew up with some of that stuff, so it was a fairly comfortable place to land in looking at pedigrees.
“Dad had some relations from the line, and going way back there were members of that family that stood up. Our family’s had a long association with that part of New Zealand pedigrees, going back to the 1970s. We trained Reasoning here, and we had a couple of sons of Quibble.”
One of Quibble’s progeny not trained from Leilani Lodge was Cross Swords, another son of Grosvenor (Sir Tristram) who won the 1994 Sydney Cup (Gr 1, 3200m). Anthony Cummings trained his younger sister, Cross Words, a provincial winner who went to stud and threw one filly before being fatally struck by lightning.
That filly, however, was a name central to Cummings’ breeding exploits, Cryptic Miss (Snippets). He bought her and trained her to win only a 2100-metre Gosford maiden at her 15th start, which also became her last due to a career-ending injury.
Retired in 2007, Cummings sent her twice to the dual Group 1 winner he’d trained (and played a role in breeding) in Hotel Grand (Grand Lodge). The second of those matings produced the highlight of Cummings’ breeding CV, Fiveandahalfstar (Hotel Grand), who he trained to win the 2012 VRC Derby (Gr 1, 2500m) and the next year’s BMW (Gr 1, 2400m), as an autumn three-year-old.
Cummings has also profited from the Soliloquoy line by breeding and training stakes-winning sprinter Kote (Choisir).
He also bred, with partners this time, the mare Word Games (Fastnet Rock). Slightly better than her dam Cryptic Miss, Cummings trained her to win just a maiden, at Canterbury, from 11 starts. She has, however, produced El Castello as her second foal.
Word Games was bought off the track for $120,000 by Brae Sokolski in 2018, and onsold privately – in-foal to Lonhro (Octagonal) – to Cambridge Stud’s new owners Brendan and Jo Lindsay a year later. After missing to Pierro (Lonhro) that year, Word Games went to Castelvecchio in his first season of 2020.
“We were expanding our broodmare band, and Fastnet Rock mares were something we were after, and she came in-foal to a proven sire,” says Cambridge’s sales and nominations manager Scott Calder.
“And that was a time when our own stallion roster was a bit down on numbers, so we sent a few mares outside the farm, particularly to Australia.
“Castelvecchio was a first year horse, and was very well-credentialed. We thought he had a bit of scope to his pedigree, and was a stallion who could help us breed some middle distance type horses. He was also attractive with a Fastnet Rock mare, being Danehill-free, and we like the Danehill going back into Sadler’s Wells.
“We bred two mares to him in his first year, and this colt was very well put together, so we thought we’d put him in our draft for the Gold Coast.”
Cummings swooped, and thus brought one family back to another once again.
There’s not a great amount of nickery in El Castello’s pedigree, with the only duplications in his first five columns being two lots of 5m x 5m of Northern Dancer (Nearctic) and Sir Tristram (Sir Ivor). The former has sons Sadler’s Wells and Danzig in both sirelines, while the latter had Zabeel as Dundeel’s damsire, and Grosvenor as the sire of Cross Words.
What is known to work well is Dundeel over Word Games’s sire Fastnet Rock, a cross that’s Dundeel’s second-best, with 23 winners from 39 runners, including two at stakes level.
Arrowfield and Cummings will be hoping there’s more proof in the pudding this spring.
Word Games now has a yearling filly by Almanzor (Wootton Bassett) who Cambridge will sell next year, and a younger sister born earlier this month.