Silent Sovereign
Emotions ran high, amid remembrances of people and horses past, when Silent Sovereign (Dalakhani) stormed home to take Saturday’s Queen Of The South Stakes (Gr 2, 1600m) at Morphettville.
And they’ll run even higher if she can win the Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) this spring.
The five-year-old mare owes her existence to a giant of South Australian breeding, Don Moyle, who died in 2020, aged 91, two months after his chestnut became a black type winner in Adelaide’s Auraria Stakes (Gr 3, 1800m).
She’s by Dalakhani (Darshaan), the four-time Group 1 winner – including of the 2003 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr 1, 2400m) – who became the first Aga Khan-owned stallion to shuttle to Australia by standing at Sam Hayes’ Cornerstone Stud, but was retired in 2016 with terminal cancer. His only other Australian stakes-winner from three crops is Dalasan, who’s won a Group 2 and four other black type races, alongside four Group 1 placings.
And Silent Sovereign’s second dam is Biography (Rory’s Jester), thought to be the only horse owned outright by Hayes’ father Peter, when that member of the South Australian thoroughbred dynasty’s life was cut short by a light plane crash in 2001.
Go back further along the female line, and across the Tasman, you can see a very strong hint of where Silent Sovereign’s class comes from.
Her seventh dam is Dulcie (Duccio), who left four stakes winners – across 14 years, no less – with a stunning 39 stakes wins. They were headed by five-time Group 1-equivalent winner Balmerino (Trictrac), Dulcie’s second-last foal, born in 1972. And there were three brothers by Le Filou (Vatellor) – dual Group 1 winners Fileur and Fulmen, and Gay Filou, Dulcie’s first foal, born in 1958, who won once at the top level.
The three brothers had a sister, Micheline. She was handy, winning eight times, but once retired she made a strong fist of emulating her dam. She threw four stakes winners – of 29 stakes wins – making mother and daughter probably the greatest two broodmares in the rich history of New Zealand breeding.
Micheline’s second foal was Purple Patch (Pakistan), winner of nine stakes races including three modern Group 1s. Her last was Lord Hybrow, a close relative of Balmerino being by Trictrac (Le Haar), who won six times in black type company including a Doomben Cup (in the one year, 1988, when it was abominably known as the Channel Nine Cup).
And in between, aside from lone Listed winner Sovereign Parade (Sovereign Edition) came that stallion’s sister and the headliner above all others in this pedigree, Surround.
The great grey won 12 stakes races including six modern Group 1s, a Cox Plate, the Caulfield Guineas, and the AJC, VRC and Queensland Oaks among them. Like many a champion racemare she didn’t quite shine in the breeding barn – certainly not to the extent of her mum and grandma – throwing just one black type horse among six named foals in Bowral (Danzatore), winner of the 1995 STC Frank Underwood Cup (Listed, 1900m). But when you have Surround in your wider family, you might suspect you’re onto a good thing.
All this was news to Silent Sovereign’s senior part-owner Libby Creek, daughter of Don Moyle, whose response – “Oh really? Wow!” – nearly matched her excitement from trackside on Saturday.
For when we say her late father Don Moyle was a giant of breeding, that refers not to thoroughbreds but cattle.
For decades Moyle and wife Diana operated the expansive Angus stud, The Basin, north of Mount Gambier. They sold out and “retired” from station ownership and Don, well into his 70s, jumped into horses.
“Angus cattle are still my main thing,” says Creek, who was chair of national body Angus Australia, and still helps manage farms in the industry. “I know about breeding them. I go back through the generations, and it’s very easy for me. But I certainly wouldn’t pretend to know anything about horses.”
Not so her father, who ploughed this new field with great aplomb as a hobby breeder.
“I suppose there’s some sort of synergy there between breeding cattle and horses,” Creek says. “There are different bulls that stand out. There are certainly sires-of-the-moment, but there’s quite a few factors as to whether a certain sire would suit your market.
“What we all found, though, was that it’s a lot harder to breed a good racehorse than breed a good bull. So much can go wrong with horses.
“But dad really was clever. He didn’t make too many errors in his horse breeding judgement. He was a very good stud cattle breeder and I think he used the tools from that to go into breeding horses.”
Moyle’s first turf forays, in ownership, were successful. He was one of two part-owners of Silent Sophia (Fuji Kiseki), a mare who won five of her first ten starts, seven in total including five in Adelaide, and took on Group 3 class in Melbourne.
Soon came still better fortune, as one of three part-owners of Silent Surround (Face Value), a $36,000 yearling from the 2008 Adelaide Magic Millions sale. Her dam was Biography (Rory’s Jester), who won her third and fourth starts in Adelaide for Peter Hayes before an injury-enforced retirement.
Silent Surround was Biography’s fourth of five named foals (born five years after Hayes’ death), and became her sole stakes-winner, at only her fourth start, taking the SA Sires’ Produce (Gr 3, 1600m) of 2009. She was placed in four more stakes races, including a second in the Wakeful Stakes (Gr 2, 2000m) at Flemington in 2009, before Moyle bought her outright early in her breeding career.
He struck with another first go, breeding as his mare’s first foal Silent Command (Commands), who won the Morphettville Guineas (Listed, 1600m) in 2017 at his fifth start.
Moyle selected the SA-based Dalakhani for Silent Surround’s second mating, and scored his major breeding triumph, Silent Sovereign. Subsequent visits to other staying sires have yielded the now-four-year-old gelding Silent Don (Dundeel) – winner of one of three in the bush before a long lay-off – and yet-to-race fillies Silent Surrente (Fiorente) and Silent Emmy (So You Think).
Creek and brother Sandy Moyle own most of all four – with The Basin’s former auctioneer Malcolm Scroop and wife Shirley sharing in Silent Sovereign and Silent Don. Continuing the old Angus connection, the quartet’s colours include a sideways M in a circle – The Basin’s old brand – which boosts old memories of the man who bred them.
“Dad selected all the sires he bred Silent Surround to and we’re just keeping his dream alive I guess,” Creek says, mentioning other favourite memories.
In July, 2012, the family took matriarch Diana, gravely ill with cancer, to Morphettville for the last time, to watch Silent Surround. The mare hadn’t won for more than three years, but this day she did – by four lengths – coming from last on the home turn.
And a year before his passing, Creek took her father to a 2019 Murray Bridge meeting, where he cheered wins for not one but two progeny of Silent Surround he’d bred. Silent Sovereign won the first race on debut, Silent Command the fourth.
“That was just so exciting for Dad, and pretty unusual for two winners on the same card being from the same mare,” Creek says.
With racing an expensive hobby to have inherited, the current quartet might be the last owned by the Moyle family. Silent Surround’s latest foal, a Highland Reel (Galileo) colt, was sold for $29,000 at the Adelaide sale this year. The Moyles sold Silent Surround for $80,000 last year, and she was onsold for $220,000 in-foal to The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) at the Inglis Chairman’s Sale last Friday – a timely buy for trainer Michael Freedman given Silent Sovereign’s deeds the next day.
Trainer Tony McEvoy says the mare will start in Morphettville’s Centaurea Stakes (Listed, 2000m) on May 21, before a spring campaign aimed at bringing her rich family another Group 1.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing if she could qualify for the Caulfield Cup,” McEvoy told us. “You’ve got back-ups like the Matriarch Stakes or the Ballarat Cup, but mares do have a pretty good record in the Caulfield Cup, and she’d get in well at the weights.”
Silent Sovereign was balloted out of last year’s Ballarat Cup (Listed, 2000m). Instead she won a 2000-metre benchmark 84 two races earlier on the same card, in a time 1.54 seconds faster than the feature, and carrying a kilo more (58.5 kilograms) than Cup winner Zayydani (Savabeel).
“She can stay the 2400 metres of the Caulfield Cup,” McEvoy says. “She was a bit soft early on but she’s become really solid and her best racing is really ahead of her.”
If Silent Sovereign can claim a Group 1, it would also mean a great deal to Sam Hayes.
“I think of dad often when I see that family winning,” he tells us. “I think dad only owned one horse, Biography, so he must have thought she’d make a nice broodmare.
“So there’s a big sentimental attachment for me. And to get a result from Dalakhani is great. It was a big deal bringing him down from Europe when we did, and striking up a relationship with the Aga Khan’s stud was a real feather in our cap. So it’s lovely to see good horses come from those brave decisions to bring a middle-distance sire to Australia.”