Scaling new heights
Pride Of Dubai sits atop sires’ table following Bella Nipotina’s Everest success
Only three years ago, Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry) covered just 30 mares in a season at Coolmore Stud. The year after, 2022, he served just 54.
On Sunday, the 12-year-old sat atop Australia’s general sires’ table, a $22,000 stallion who was the toast of the land.
Of course he was catapulted to the summit thanks to 69 seconds of work in the $20 million The Everest (Gr 1, 1200m) by one of his daughters Bella Nipotina, a horse who might have been retired last year but who’s thrived to such an extent she could be Royal Ascot-bound.
But let’s not forget Pride Of Dubai has sired another even better seven-year-old mare, and Ciaron Maher stablemate, in Horse of the Year Pride Of Jenni. She would have shot him far further ahead on the standings 80 minutes after The Everest, if not collared for second in the $5m King Charles III Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m).
And neither has Pride Of Dubai been a two-trick pony. The injury-afflicted racehorse, who won a pair of two-year-old Group 1s from just five starts, has had four stakes winners this season, ranking equal-fourth in the country by that measure. Two have been at Group 1 level, and that’s without Pride Of Jenni having yet added to last season’s three at the top tier.
Yulong import Deny Knowledge, yet another seven-year-old mare, borne from her sire’s two shuttle seasons in Ireland, claimed last week’s Might And Power Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m) before a fifth in Saturday’s Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m).
Two weeks before that, the New Zealand-bred Desert Lightning won the MRC Sandown Stakes (Gr 3, 1500m) at Mornington, the day after Pride Of Jenni’s first black type victory of the season in The Valley’s Feehan Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m).
While a career tally of 23 stakes winners from 494 runners (4.6 per cent) from seven crops racing worldwide helps explain Pride Of Dubai’s relatively low service fee – he ranks seventh of his farm’s 13 stallions – Coolmore will spring into this week further assured he’s one of the best value sires in the country.
Pride Of Dubai fell off a cliff, numbers wise, in 2021. In Covid-affected 2020, with three Australian crops running, he’d covered a career-high 202 mares at $38,500. Coolmore dropped his fee to $22,000, and he still had just those 30 covers, the stud book shows. The following year he went down still further, to $16,500, but that brought only two dozen more.
Last year, after Pride Of Jenni earned her first Group 1 placing and British raider Dubai Honour won two of them in the Sydney autumn, their sire recovered to serve 102 mares at $27,500.
And now he’s on track for a book of some 150, according to Coolmore sales and nominations manager Colm Santry, and it would not surprise if the phone was running hot early this week for a good few more, following Saturday’s Randwick reminders of Pride Of Dubai’s ability to sire a good horse.
“I guess when a stallion covers a book of 30 mares, you do have a think about things,” Santry told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“But he never went anywhere really, in terms of results. He’s just stuck in there and now he’s back to being supported. The commercial breeders did drop off a bit and he had a quiet two years. Bella Nipotina and Pride Of Jenni were around, but they hadn’t reached the heights that they have now.
“But he’s been a really resilient stallion. And now he’s got the two best horses in Australia, and the two best horses in training with Ciaron Maher.
“His numbers increased significantly last year, on the back of the two mares and Dubai Honour. And he’s very popular this year.”
With his ‘big three’ of Pride Of Jenni, Bella Nipotina and Dubai Honour doing his bidding, Pride Of Dubai has finished eighth and then fourth on the general sires’ table by earnings in the past two seasons.
The winner of Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) and ATC Sires’ Produce (Gr 1, 1400m) before being retired with a hind fetlock injury after one failed three-year-old run, he can clearly sire horses who train on.
Bella Nipotina debuted, for Lindsay Park, as an October two-year-old with a fourth in Caulfield’s Debutant Stakes (Listed, 1000m), before running a close second in Warwick Farm’s Inglis Millennium (RL, 1100m) in February 2020.
After eight Group 1 attempts following a switch to Maher, including three placings, she finally broke through as a five-year-old in The Valley’s Manikato Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) in October 2022, and has now won three more.
Pride Of Jenni, who had her first 11 starts with David Brideoake and then Symon Wilde, didn’t race until her three-year-old spring, winning her maiden and a Benchmark 58 back-to-back at Mornington.
Transferred to Maher in 2022, she looked mostly just below standard in a series of lower stakes races before hitting radars by nearly stealing Rosehill’s Coolmore Classic (Gr 1, 1500m) at $31 in the autumn of 2023, when one of her early all-the-way bids ended in a late usurping from Espiona (Extreme Choice).
Since then, her bold front-running style has brought three Group 1s and an All–Star Mile (1600m) in her stunning six-year-old season, before she added the Feehan Stakes and two Group 1 seconds in this one.
“Pride Of Dubai’s runners are sound and resilient and they train on,” said Santry, nominating the stallion and his $44,000 barnmate, the 18-year-old Starspangledbanner (Choisir), as “the two best value stallions in the country.
“That’s such an important factor in a racehorse, that they can train on and step up, especially at three and four years of age and beyond, and give you that longevity.
“Pride Of Dubai is out of a Danehill mare and he’s by Street Cry, so he’s a big, strong and very good looking horse who gets very sound stock.
“He’s great value for money at $22,000 because he’s now getting commercial breeders and owner-breeders using him. He falls into both categories.”
Bella Nipotina’s breeder and managing owner Michael Christian was on Sunday still coming to terms with her “surreal” Everest win, which increased her earnings by $7m to $18.8m.
Following a lengthy after-party at Randwick’s Doncaster Hotel, the former Collingwood AFL premiership star, now general manager of Victoria’s Longwood Thoroughbred Farm, was able to reflect on how things might have turned out vastly differently for the mare.
Talk of retirement emerged in the late autumn of 2023, after a middling sixth in Morphettville’s Robert Sangster Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m). A rising six-year-old, she would have had substantial breeding value due to her Manikato success, but hadn’t won in six starts since then, though she had added two more Group 1 placings.
“She ran well in Adelaide without really excelling,” Christian said. “So we had a think about – do we breed with her or do we race on?
“The ownership group took Ciaron’s lead in terms of what he was thinking. He thought she certainly had more to offer.”
Still, her next ten starts brought just one win – lucrative though it was when in the fourth of those starts a bonus for taking the $3m Giga Kick Stakes (1300m) earned her $3.6m in total.
After her subsequent six starts in that patch were highlighted by a second in Randwick’s TJ Smith (Gr 1, 1200m), she went to Brisbane’s winter carnival this year still carrying a question mark.
“We went to Brisbane in May. If she had have performed poorly, there would have been a decision to make in July,” Christian said.
Bella Nipotina emphatically shut down any doubts. While it was initially planned to contest only the Kingsford Smith Cup (Gr 1, 1300m) and Tattersall’s Tiara (Gr 1, 1400m), Maher reported she had thrived so much she should first tackle the Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1200m).
She won that, and ran a narrow second in the Kingsford Smith to I Wish I Win (Savabeel). She then had the Stradbroke Handicap (Gr 1400m) added to her schedule, her first try at 1400 metres, and ran a narrow second in that from gate 17 of 18, to Stefi Magnetica (All Too Hard). She then took out the Tiara, doing it tough from barrier 15 of 17.
That of course killed any notion of retirement. An Everest slot-holder was found in the TAB, and third-up from a spell, and part-inspired by her Tiara run, Bella Nipotina went forward from the outside gate of 12 under Craig Williams to score her gritty 0.12 length win over Giga Kick (Scissor Kick).
Since that decision to persist following last year’s Goodwood, the iron lady has had 17 starts for four wins and $14.9m in prize-money, capped by the $7,549,000 for taking the Everest.
Next, she’ll try to repeat last year’s victory in the $3m Winners Stakes at Rosehill on November 2, while Royal Ascot and the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Stakes (Gr 1, 6f) may await next year.
“We’re pretty glad we pressed on,” Christian said. “Breeding is something we do, we bred her, and we bred her mum, but it’s hard to turn down the chance at the prize-money these days. It’s pretty hard to sell a yearling for six or seven million dollars, unless you’re Winx.
“For her at seven it’s one run at a time. The plan at the start of spring was to run in four races. The fourth one is coming up, then we’ll regroup. Ciaron has been talking about going to Royal Ascot. That’s a little pie-in-the-sky at the moment, but with a mare like her, who knows where we’ll end up?”
While Bella Nipotina’s dam Bella Orfana (Star Witness) died from sinus cancer in April, aged 12, Christian’s Saconi Thoroughbreds will retain and race her half-sister by Trapeze Artist (Snitzel), who they bred in tandem with Streamline Thoroughbreds.
Meanwhile, Maher told ANZ he was delighted to have won his first Everest, extending his collection of Australian majors on a $10m-plus day when he also took his second Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) with Duke De Sessa (Lope De Vega).
“It’s definitely right up there. The Everest is one of the biggest races on the calendar now. To knock it off, I’m pretty proud of the team,” said the laconic Maher, who revisited his Irish roots to describe his typically restrained celebrations.
“I had a few beers with a few mates,” he said. “We had a bit of a hooley but that’s about all.”