Zoukerette
Zoukerette became I Am Invincible’s latest black type winner in the Listed Tatts Life Member Stakes (1400m) at Eagle Farm on Saturday, sending her sire further clear in quest of his first treble of titles: earnings, winners and stakes winners.
The rising 19-year-old won his maiden general sires’ prize last season, but while taking earnings and winners honours he was just one behind four-time champion Snitzel’s 18 in the stakes winners column.
This time around, with only quiet July ahead, he’s a comfortable $3.5 million clear of So You Think in the decisive category, has 181 winners to Zoustar’s second-best 170, and is panels ahead on stakes winners, with 22 to Snitzel’s 15.
It’s striking to see only three sires in double figures for that third category this season – So You Think being third with 11 – compared with seven for the full 2021-22, and nine for the season before.
Those spoils have spread further and wider this season, with a handful of stallions emerging. Frankel sits fourth by stakes winners after gobbling up nine for himself this term, having ranked only 30th in 2021-22 with four.
Seven stallions have eight apiece, mostly usual suspects but with rises up the table this year for Toronado, who had six stakes winners last season, and Capitalist, who’s shot from 24th with four to tenth now.
Three more sit just behind with seven: Dundeel, from 20th with five stakes winners last term to 12th now, Pride Of Dubai (from 26th with four to 13th), and Russian Revolution, who’s impressive early strides have continued in his second season after two stakes winners in his first.
We digress somewhat, off that initial point about a certain Yarraman Park stallion living up to his name.
But in the case of Zoukerette – the two-year-old who’s been racing out of Ciaron Maher and David Eustace’s Warwick Farm stable and has now won two from six – there’s a strong case to be made that it’s a mare who’s mostly behind the talent. And that also goes to show why Maher and Suman Hedge Bloodstock parted with $800,000 to buy her from last year’s Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
There are just two duplications in Zoukerette’s first five generations. One is Danzig, not surprisingly, since his ubiquitous son Danehill is near the bottom, and I Am Invincible-Invincible Spirit-Green Desert flows along the top.
Perhaps of greater importance is the 4×4, via two outstanding daughters, of an Irish mare who deserves all the accolades she can get: Eljazzi. All you need to know is she was so good, she was imported to Australia in 2002 – when she was 21 – time enough for just one last mating, before her passing three years later.
Foaled in Ireland in 1981, and bred by Sonia Rogers of Airlie Stud near Dublin, Eljazzi was by moderate American sire Artaius (Round Table) out of the stakes-placed Border Bounty (Bounteous).
Eljazzi had just four starts for one win before retiring to do her best work.
After her first foal didn’t receive a name, her second made a rather large one for herself, becoming a Group 1 winner. Rafha (Kris) took the Prix de Diane at Chantilly, winning also a Group 3 and two Listed races in England.
Rafha went to stud and achieved more rare glory, throwing four stakes winners from 14 runners. They were topped by her representative in Zoukerette’s pedigree – Invincible Spirit – with his five black type wins including the Group 1 Haydock Sprint Cup in 2002, and who of course became a super sire of 146 stakes winners, 22 at the apex.
Four foals after him, Rafha threw an entire who managed only a Group 3 placing, but who’s become an outstanding progenitor, Kodiac (Danehill), sire of 86 stakes winners including six on the highest rung.
In 1990, a few weeks before Rafha brought her first Group 1 as a broodmare, Eljazzi bore her fourth foal to race in Fayfa. She managed just a Listed placing amongst six starts, but again, would play a role in some storied stud success, this time in Australia.
Imported by Coolmore in-foal to American dual Breeders Cup Mile winner Lure (Danzig), Fayfa threw just one stakes winner amid nine winners and 13 runners, but it was Zoukerette’s second dam, the previously alluded to daughter of Danehill, Hillfa.
Hillfa bore, as her second foal, Walk With Attitude (Hussonet). Retained by Gerry Ryan’s Limerick Lane Thoroughbreds, Walk With Attitude won the Listed VRC Desirable Stakes (1400m) in 2012. She was later sold privately to John Muir’s Milburn Creek. Zoukerette is her fifth foal to race, and their quality – and that impressive family – have ensured high-priced yearlings.
Her first try with I Am Invincible in 2014 produced the unraced filly Pose, before a cover from Snitzel yielded Spend, a $1.55m colt at Inglis Easter in 2018, bought by Spendthrift Farm. He wound up Group 3 placed, while his year-younger half-brother Elliot Ness (Written Tycoon), sold for $675,000 to China Horse Club/Newgate and is a dual winner in Singapore.
Walk With Attitude returned to I Am Invincible to produce Isolyfe, a $360,000 buy by Mulcaster Bloodstock who’s not worked out as well as his younger full sister, with just a maiden win for Chris Waller.
Hedge then paid $500,000 for Walk With Attitude’s 2019 throw Zoukerino (Snitzel). This made him comfortably the sale-topper at the 2021 Gold Coast National Sale, where he’d gone after illness forced him out of Inglis Easter. Hedge believes he’d have fetched closer to the $800,000 paid for Zoukerette if presented at Riverside.
In any case, Zoukerino became his dam’s first stakes winner, in Listed class at Rosehill last August, while Hedge’s faith in the breed was also followed up with his joint ownership of his half-sister, Zoukerette.
“She was just a beautiful filly and from a great farm in Milburn Creek, which is very important to me,” Hedge tells It’s In The Blood.
“She also has only a little bit of Danehill in her, which makes her a valuable breeding commodity. And I liked that she’s out of a Hussonet mare,” he said, referencing one of I Am Invincible’s strongest nicks, with 13 winners and three stakes winners from 16 runners.
So far, the duplication of Eljazzi appears to have worked better in Zoukerette than in Isolyfe and Pose. It’s perhaps a breeding mystery, but supports a theory taught to Hedge from his years as trainer John O’Shea’s racing manager.
“Sometimes, people are quick to dismiss horses and brand them,” Hedge says. “But John always said you’ve got to do a mating a minimum of two or three times to even consider if it works or not, and never dismiss it off one failure. Sometimes full siblings are chalk and cheese. I’ve tried to be more forgiving in that area recently.”
Of his two half-siblings, Hedge is inclined to feel the younger is the better.
“Both Zoukerino and Zoukerette are extremely well balanced and athletic,” he says. “Zoukerino has got this great, flashy colouring, but Zoukerette has a bit more scope and has that gorgeous, aristocratic, I Am Invincible head on her.
“Zoukerino, like Spend, might lack a bit of intestinal fortitude. Zoukerette is the opposite. She lifts when she’s challenged. She’ll run the same race for you every time, whether she’s got the run of the race or she’s caught three wide the trip.”
Meanwhile, that’s still not the end of the Eljazzi story.
After Rafha, her second-highest achiever was Chiang Mai (Sadler’s Wells), who won a Group 3 for Aiden O’Brien in 2000 before throwing yet another Group 1 winner in Chinese White (Dalakhani), who took the 2010 Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh.
And when imported here in 2002, Eljazzi was in-foal to Danehill. She bore the filly Al Anood.
Sold as a yearling by Riverslea Farm at Magic Millions 2005 for a hefty $490,000 to Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Maktoum, Al Anood won twice and was Listed placed for David Hayes before continuing Eljazzi’s legacy in style.
Her first three named foals were stakes winners, the third being Pride Of Dubai (Street Cry), the dual Group 1 victor who’s now left two top-tier winners himself.
The second, incidentally, was Enaad (High Chaparral), who after taking a Group 2 and Group 3 in South Africa found lasting fame in Mauritius as a dual winner of the island’s most prestigious – if perversely named – race, the Maiden Cup, in 2017 and 2018. Fittingly, he was ridden by Australians in those wins, in Steven Arnold and Daniel Stackhouse.
All in all, not a bad legacy for Eljazzi, with such quality thoroughbreds and/or breed-shapers as Invincible Spirit, Kodiac, Pride Of Dubai, Rafha and Chinese White just some of those amongst her more direct brood, and others such as I Am Invincible and Kingman (Invincible Spirit) plus their offspring, and Dubai Honour (Pride Of Dubai) warranting mention.
Zoukerette has some potent bloodlines behind her, and some hard acts to follow. At least her first steps have sparked strong hopes that she can live up to the model cast by her glorious fourth dam.