South African Champion Legal Eagle Wins Second Queen’s Plate
This was the five-year-old gelding’s ninth win in 15 starts in which he has also placed four times so only twice has he missed a place.
Legal Eagle faced a top class field last Saturday, defeating runner up Captain America (Captain Al) by two and a quarter lengths with Sail South (Sail From Seattle) in third.
As a three-year-old Legal Eagle had emulated his sire Greys Inn (Zabeel) by winning the South African Derby (Gr 1, 2450m).
From an Australasian viewpoint it is exciting to find that Legal Eagle has pedigree links to our part of the world through his sire Greys Inn, a South African champion foaled in the United States but conceived in New Zealand from a mating between the great sire Zabeel (Sir Tristram) and the Australian mare Great Verdict (Christmas Tree), a daughter of renowned producer Summoned (Crowned Prince), dam of five stakes winners, most notable of them the sires Zeditave (The Judge) and Alannon (Noalcoholic).
Zeditave, of the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) as a two-year-old, went on to win four more Group One sprints before becoming a highly successful sire and broodmare sire at Newhaven Park Stud in NSW while Alannon, who died young, is best remembered as the sire of Falvelon, a top sprinter and sire to date of ten stakes winners.
Greys Inn was South Africa’s champion three-year-old of 2003/04, winning the South African Derby and the coveted Durban July Handicap (Gr 1, 2200m). Some readers may recall he campaigned briefly but unsuccessfully in Melbourne in the spring of 2005 when down the track behind champion Makybe Diva (Desert King) in both the Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m) and the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).
At stud in South Africa Greys Inn has a total of six stakes winners and while Legal Eagle is his standout runner he has two other Group One winners, South African Derby winner Royal Bencher and King Of Pain.
Legal Eagle is far the best of two winners produced by his stakes-placed dam Young Sensation (National Emblem), a winner of six races whose Group One-winning sire National Emblem (National Assembly) is a grandson of Danzig (Northern Dancer) and best known as the father of international performer Shea Shea.
Legal Eagle’s second dam Fair Model (Model Man) was a Group One winner in South Africa where she foaled four winners in addition to stakes-placed Young Warrior (Complete Warrior) and Young Sensation.
This is one of South Africa’s best female families over a long period and perhaps the only one to achieve international attention through the deeds of Hawaii (Utrillo) whose dam Ethane (Mehrali) is a half-sister to Entrance (Netherwood), Legal Eagle’s fourth dam.
Stakes winner Entrance is a sister to Ethylwood (Netherwood), champion two-year-old filly in South Africa, and to stakes winning sire William Penn (Netherwood) but it was the racing and later stud successes of their half-brother Hawaii which made the thoroughbred world take notice of South African breeding back in the late 1960s.
Raced by Nijinsky’s American owner Charles Englehard, Hawaii (1964) proved himself the champion in South Africa both at two years and three years. His dominant performances encouraged Englehard to send him to race in the United States as a four-year-old where he became champion grass horse of 1969, winning a string of important races before retiring to the famous Claiborne Farm in Kentucky as the winner of 21 of his 28 career starts.
Hawaii left 35 stakes winners, among them Henbit, winner of the 1980 Derby (Gr 1, 1m4f) at Epsom, Hawaiian Sound, narrowly beaten by Shirley Heights (Mill Reef) in the same classic in 1978, and the influential producer Kilavea (out of Special, by Forli).
Legal Eagle possesses an outcross pedigree with the closest linebreeding to Northern Dancer (Nearctic) and Princequillo (Prince Rose) coming in the fifth and sixth generations and all via sons of those sires.