Glint Of Hope out to give downsizing breeders Raffles Racing a day to savour
Daughter of Deep Impact attempts to hand her late super sire a fifth Group 1 winner in Australia
Glint Of Hope (Deep Impact) will be striving to provide more Japanese siring glory for the grandest of that country’s stallions and a last hurrah of sorts for the Raffles breeding arm in today’s Australasian Oaks (Gr 1, 2000m).
The promising Busuttin and Young-trained filly, who has won only her maiden from eight starts but is well in the market for the $500,000 feature, would give the great Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) a fifth top-tier winner in Australia if she can prevail at Morphettville.
She would also bring laurels for heavyweight Malaysian breeder Dato Yap Kim San, at a time when the businessman has substantially wound back his breeding interests.
ANZ Bloodstock News can reveal Dato Yap quietly sold his renowned New Zealand breeding enterprise, Raffles Farm, in February to concentrate on his core businesses as the world moves to recover from the pandemic.
The Cambridge endeavour – breeder of three Group 1 winners in Imperatriz (I Am Invincible), First Seal (Fastnet Rock) and More Than Sacred (More Than Ready) – has been lost to the bloodstock world, having been sold privately to equestrian interests.
Dato Yap will continue with certain northern hemisphere thoroughbred pursuits. His Raffles Racing concern – famed for owning the succession of “Sacred” top-liners headed by four-time Group 1-winner Sacred Falls (O’Reilly) – will still race a smaller band of horses, mostly in Singapore but also via shares in horses with New Zealand trainer Tony Pike.
However, Raffles Farm’s absence from the Australian and New Zealand breeding scene will be significantly felt. The stud was established in the 1990s by the late Freddy Lee, brother of long-term Singapore president Lee Kwan Yew, and formed part of Jim Campin’s Chequers Stud before becoming part of Dato Yap’s Raffles structure in 2008.
“Raffles Farm has been sold. Raffles Racing continues on, but in a reduced capacity,” the farm’s former managing director Bruce Sherwin told ANZ.
“Dato Yap has still got quite a strong presence in Singapore in terms of racing numbers, but his breeding numbers he’s cut right back. He might return at some stage when things improve in the business world.”
The businessman’s northern breeding stock still includes Glint Of Hope’s British-bred dam, Sacred Sight, a daughter of (Fastnet Rock). Dato Yap bought the well-credentialed staying German-bred mare Give Me Five (Monsun) in-foal to the shuttling Australian super sire via agent Guy Mulcaster at the Tattersalls December Mare Sale in 2013, for 250,000gns. The businessman raced the resultant foal, Sacred Sight, in Japan, but she was retired after three unplaced runs.
Sacred Sight was sent to Deep Field (Northern Meteor) for a southern hemisphere-timed cover, with Glint Of Hope then exported to Australia as a weanling in 2019. She fetched only a moderate sum, considering her sire, of $250,000 at Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale in 2020, a price compromised by Covid forcing the auction online, and that she was slightly turned out in the front.
Bought and raced by Japanese interests, presumably keen to secure a bargain Deep Impact yearling outside of Japan just eight months after the stallion’s death, Glint Of Hope impressed through her first campaign last spring. Her five-race preparation began with maiden placings at Benalla and her home track Cranbourne before she stepped up impressively for a third in the Edward Manifold Stakes (Gr 2, 1610m) at Flemington, a second in the Ethereal Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m) at Caulfield, and a solid seventh in Willowy’s (Kermadec) VRC Oaks (Gr 1, 2500m), beaten four and three-quarter lengths.
She resumed in March to break her maiden at Pakenham at start six before placings at Sandown and Caulfield. While stepping up from 1600 metres to 2000 metres today, Glint Of Hope was around the $11 mark last night, behind Team Snowden’s dominant favourite My Whisper (Frankel), winner of her past four – including the Auraria Stakes (Gr 3, 1800m) at Morphettville last start.
The two fillies may yet unfurl a battle of international super stallions tomorrow, with the Yulong-bred-and-raced My Whisper a daughter of the surging Frankel (Galileo), bred to southern time out of British Godolphin mare Hersigh (Poet’s Voice).
Confidence in Glint Of Hope’s potential to excel at today’s 2000 metres and far beyond appears well founded based on her pedigree. Not only did Deep Impact win two of his seven Group 1s in Japan at 3200 metres and 3000 metres, Sacred Sight comes from rich staying blood.
Her dam Give Me Five also threw, as her second foal in 2008, Colour Vision (Rainbow Quest), winner of the Ascot Gold Cup (Gr 1, 2m 4f) in being crowned Britain’s Champion Older Male Stayer in 2012, while also winning at Group 3 and placing third in Longchamp’s Prix du Cadran (Gr 1, 4000m). Give Me Five, a Group 3 winner over 2200 metres in Germany herself, was a half-sister to that country’s Champion 3YO Stayer of 1998 Graf Philipp (Acatenango), a stakes-winner at up to 3200 metres.
For all his remarkable achievements, Deep Impact can boast a relatively small number of Group 1 winners in Australia. Fierce Impact did win three of them, however, and Tosen Stardom two, while Real Impact took one in Japan before his fly-in-fly-out raid to claim the 2015 George Ryder Stakes (Gr 1, 1500m). Profondo remains the only Australian-born Deep Impact to win a Group 1, via last year’s Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m).
Real Impact (Deep Impact) has Count De Rupee – a $2.4 million winner after his second in the Golden Eagle (1500m) and victory in The Gong (1600m) last spring – chasing a first stakes success in today’s Victory Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) at Eagle Farm, as second-favourite behind local hero Rothfire (Rothesay).
Fierce Impact completed his first season at stud at Leneva Park last year, covering 142 mares, while Tosen Stardom, also Victoria-based at Woodside Park stud, has 196 live foals on the ground after four seasons.
Sacred Sight, meanwhile, also has a three-year-old colt by champion mare Almond Eye’s sire Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha) named Lovero, who has a win and a place from two Tokyo starts, both earlier this year.
Dato Yap is understood to be keen to next exploit her staying blood by sending her to the now-Japan based American sire Declaration Of War (War Front), who in just the 2014 and 2015 seasons seasons in Australia for Coolmore sired eight stakes winners, most notably 2019 Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) victor Vow And Declare.
Like Glint Of Hope, Give Me Five ultimately ended up in Australia. She was exported to the country by Dato Yap in-foal to Frankel in 2015, producing the rather costly gelding Switching To Win, a $475,000 New Zealand Bloodstock Premier Yearling Sale in 2017, who won one of 18, before her death in 2017.