Griff
He might have some big shoes to fill, but Trapeze Artist can already boast something that his sire, the great Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), cannot.
Trapeze Artist went through his first season as a sire with a range of two-year-olds showing potential, with nine winners from 36 runners, which ranked him equal second among first–season sires, but without that important stakes winner to show for it.
But thanks to Griff’s outstanding all-the-way triumph from the outside gate in Saturday’s Caulfield Guineas, Trapeze Artist suddenly has a Group 1 winner to his name from his first crop, an honour that even his old man didn’t have.
The four-time champion sire’s first batch, which produced 61 runners in the end, was highlighted by Silver Slipper Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) victor Chance Bye, plus a pair of Listed winners.
Trapeze Artist’s initial crop has now had 51 runners for 16 winners. He has three stakes wins – all swooped up by Griff completing a Listed, Group 2 and top-tier hat-trick last Saturday.
One swallow doesn’t make a spring carnival, but the upset Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) success for the Ciaron Maher and David Eustace-trained colt will have drawn fist-pumps at Widden Stud, where Trapeze Artist is covering his fifth book of mares, at $55,000, having kicked off in 2019 for $88,000.
“It’s very exciting to see him progress the way he has,” Widden’s owner Antony Thompson says.
“We always had enormous belief in Trapeze Artist, and we were very happy with what his stock did at two. He had a very strong first season, albeit slightly frustrating, being just nosed out in a couple of big two-year-old stakes races.
“And to see Griff do this is very exciting, that’s for sure. It gives you confidence they can progress at three.”
When his first crop went to market, Trapeze Artist ranked third among first season sires by averages from the 2022 select yearling sales, the quadruple Group 1-winning sprinter’s 74 sold lots averaging $217,000, behind top-placed The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) on $305,000 and Justify (Scat Daddy) on $261,000.
Trapeze Artist then finished fifth on the 2022-23 first-season sires’ table, though equal second on the score of his nine winners. His flag was best flown by the Gerry Ryan and Sterling Alexiou filly Facile, who ran three of those frustrating close seconds – in December’s Inglis Nursery (RL, 1000m) and the fillies’ Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) lead-ups of the Sweet Embrace Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) and Reisling Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m).
After missing the Slipper, Facile has reappeared this month to claim her first win in a Warwick Farm Benchmark 68 over 1100 metres.
And Trapeze Artist now sits miles clear atop the second-season sires’ table – albeit in early days – from Yulong’s Grunt (O’Reilly), father of Griff’s Guineas’ runner-up Veight.
The 2018 Everest (1200m) second-placegetter also heads the three-year-old sires’ charts, marginally from Cylinder’s sire Exceed And Excel (Danehill).
“We’ve always had the belief his stock would get better. They looked like nice horses who would just keep improving, like Trapeze Artist himself did. He had a good two-year-old season and stepped it up at three and four,” Thompson says.
Trapeze Artist won the 2017 Black Opal (Gr 3, 1200m) and was sixth in She Will Reign’s (Manhattan Rain) Golden Slipper. He took his first Group 1 at three in the Golden Rose (Gr 1, 1400m), and claimed his fourth in his penultimate start in the Canterbury Stakes (Gr 1, 1300m), at five.
“He’s going well at stud, been nice and popular, and since Saturday there’s been a few more calls again, so we’ve slotted a few more mares in,” Thompson said.
Trapeze Artist, who’s studmate Zoustar (Northern Meteor) has an early lead by winners on the general sires’ table, has been popular through his four seasons at stud, covering 180 mares in year one before the standard “jury’s out” dips to 122 and 133 in the following two seasons, and up to 183 last term.
Perhaps, the same can’t be said for Griff’s dam, Chateau Griffo (Sebring), who although a handy two-year-old has had several homes as a broodmare, being sold four times in the past five years through a bit of a bumpy saga.
A $50,000 Milburn Creek yearling out of the Tasmanian Listed-placed Commands (Danehill) mare Moulin Rouge, Chateau Griffo was third on debut in Caulfield’s Blue Diamond Preview (Gr 3, 1000m) behind a pair of good ones in Limestone (Helmet) and Tulip (Pierro), but needed an immediate spell. Despite that early promise she managed just a Bendigo maiden win from nine starts.
Chateau Griffo was bought off the track in 2018 for $85,000 by Kingstar Farm, who sold her a year later in-foal to Capitalist (Written Tycoon), for $155,000 to Widden.
Her new owners sold the Capitalist colt for $45,000 at the Inglis Premier sale in 2021, then saw him flipped a few months later at Inglis Melbourne Gold for $115,000. Now a four-year-old gelding named Social Conscience, he’s won three from 18 at Cranbourne, Sale and Bairnsdale, along with two Moonee Valley benchmark seconds.
Widden and partners put Chateau Griffo in-foal to Trapeze Artist, welcomed the colt who’s now a Caulfield Guineas winner, and sold the mare again once he was weaned in 2021, for $32,500 to William Cockram. He had her covered by Newgate’s North Pacific (Brazen Beau) – and there’s now a yearling colt as a result.
And then in February this year, Cockram sold Chateau Griffo once again – for $75,000 in-foal to I Am Immortal (I Am Invincible) – to Victoria’s Matthew Stevens of Edgar Park Livestock, who now also has the resultant colt and has, unsurprisingly, sent her back to Trapeze Artist.
Griff’s pedigree catches the eye for an array of heavy hitters. Along the sireline comes Danehill-Redoute’s Choice-Snitzel, and through the bottom half there’s such maternal side power as Halo-Southern Halo-More Than Ready-Sebring (Chateau Griffo’s sireline), Flying Spur as Sebring’s damsire, and at the bottom Commands and his sire – Danehill (Danzig) – again.
Much has been said about the trickiness of duplicating Danehill, and that it’s best done either gender-balanced or through daughters. In this case Griff packs a triplication of the mighty son of Danzig (Northern Dancer), and tempting the gods still further, it’s through three sons – at 4 x 5, 4 – in Redoute’s Choice, Flying Spur and Commands.
Thompson believes it’s different strokes for different sires.
“As a rule, people would say duplicating Danehill doesn’t work,” he says. “But as we’ve found with various stallions, particularly Sebring and Zoustar, and even Star Witness, where it’s through damsires, you can certainly make it work.
“Sebring has good success duplicating, as does Zoustar, not through a straight top line but through the damsire. With Sebring, duplicating was never an issue.”
Much further back, there are four intriguing appearances by a British mare foaled in 1937, Sun Princess (Solario), via two sons and a daughter, and mostly in impactful places in the ninth remove.
Bred by the Aga Khan, Sun Princess was a half-sister to the outstanding racehorse and breed-shaper Nasrullah (Nearco). She had a most influential dam and granddam duo in Mumtaz Begum (Blenheim) and one of the greatest of all mums, Mumtaz Mahal (The Tetrarch). Mumtaz Begum also threw two other stakes-winners, including champion French two-year-old Dodoma (Dastur).
Sun Princess achieved no greatness on the track (making it possible for another Sun Princess to do so in the 1980s by winning the Epsom and Yorkshire Oaks and the St Leger). But she did her illustrious bloodlines proud at stud, throwing no fewer than five stakes winners among 11 runners.
In Griff’s pedigree, she kicks off the sireline of Trapeze Artist’s damsire Domesday, as the dam of Royal Charger (Nearco, 1942). Domesday hails from the Roberto branch of Royal Charger sirelines, via Turn-To, Hail To Reason, Roberto and Red Ransom.
Sun Princess also comes strongly into Trapeze Artist’s female line as the mother of Lucky Bag (Windsor Supper), sire of Trapeze Artist’s sixth dam.
In the bottom half, Sun Princess comes in, rather directly, through Chateau Griffo’s sireline through the Halo branch of Royal Charger sirelines (Royal Charger, Turn-To, Hail To Reason, Halo, Southern Halo, More Than Ready and Sebring).
And she’s on the female line of Chateau Griffo’s most influential broodmare sire Commands, as his sixth dam. That’s through her daughter Tessa Gillian, another offspring of the super sire Nearco (Pharos) who takes no fewer than 21 spots in Griff’s first nine generations.
Nearco might have been Italian but he didn’t have a Roman nose. Griff does, and it’s Sebring’s (More Than Ready) influence coming to the fore.
Roman noses perhaps don’t make for the noblest of heads, but neither factor has been known to slow a horse down.
“It’s definitely a characteristic of Sebring and that More Than Ready line,” Thompson says. “Griff does have a bit of a Sebring head to him. You could look at a Sebring foal or yearling and they’re easy to pick. It was a sign of how Sebring stamped his stock.”
Sebring has made strong early strides as a broodmare sire, with 188 winners from 325 runners at 58 percent, including seven stakes winners. And while Trapeze Artist’s sire Snitzel over Sebring has borne just three runners, Sebring’s sire More Than Ready is the most potent of Snitzel’s many golden nicks, on the score of with 35 winners from 36 runners, and has brought four stakes-winners.
“Sebring should be a successful broodmare sire,” Thompson says of his late stallion, who died in 2019. “When you look at the job More Than Ready is doing as a broodmare sire, and Flying Spur – who like Sebring is a Slipper winner and good sire – he should do well.”
Trapeze Artist has sprung to life as a stakes-winner sire in spectacular fashion, not mucking about, but with one of the most important Group 1s on the calendar.
Widden are confident this is just the start of the show.