NEWS
Deluxe will get chance to expand Hasili’s legacy in U.S.
Posted: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 4:58 PM
DELUXE FINISHES SECOND TO SARAFINA IN PRIX SAINT-ALARY
John Gilmore photo
by Jeff Lowe
In 2005, Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms sent its superb broodmare Hasili (Ire) to America in part for the chance to breed her to Storm Cat. The resulting foal, French stakes winner Deluxe, will race in the U.S. in 2011.
Hasili was the reigning English Broodmare of the Year when she came to Juddmonte Farms in Lexington for two seasons, visiting Storm Cat first in 2006 and Empire Maker in 2007. The Kahyasi mare had already produced champions and Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf (G1) winners Banks Hill (GB) and Intercontinental (GB), Grade 1 winners Cacique (Ire) and Heat Haze (GB), and Group 2 winner and prominent European sire Dansili (GB). All were by Danehill, with the exception of Heat Haze, by Green Desert.
Danehill died in 2003, a few months after the dynamite combination produced one more eventual star in Champs Elysees (GB), a multiple Grade 1 winner and Canadian of the Year for 2009.
Deluxe was born at the Lexington farm in February 2007, and she returned there this winter for a break before joining Racing Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott’s division in Florida.
Previously in the care of Andre Fabre, Deluxe won her first two starts and finished second to Sarafina in the Prix Saint Alary (Fr-G1) last May in her third. She followed with a fourth-place finish in the Prix de Diana (Fr-G1) (French Oaks) on soft ground on June 13 at Chantilly. Rested through the summer, Deluxe returned with a victory in the Prix de Liancourt on September 1 at Longchamp that made her the seventh stakes winner out of Hasili.
In a final start in France, Deluxe finished eighth in the Prix de Flore (Fr-G3) on soft ground at Saint-Cloud.
Garrett O’Rourke, the manager of Juddmonte in Lexington, compared Deluxe’s 2011 assignment to a recent decision to retire Special Duty (GB), a Hennessy filly from the same crop who was a European champion at two and winner of both the One Thousand Guineas (Eng-G1) and Poule d'Essai des Pouliches (Fr-G1) (French One Thousand Guineas) last year at three.
Special Duty finished seventh in the Matriarch Stakes (G1) on November 26 at Hollywood Park in her lone start in North America. She will be bred to Tapit in 2011.
“If she was a filly that needed to accomplish a lot more and had a big future in front of her, there would’ve been every reason to go on, but she was already champion two-year-old and a dual-classic-winning three-year-old,” O’Rourke said. “She had always only raced in straight races, and the Matriarch was her first time running a bend. We weren’t very encouraged by the result because she blew the first bend. For her to learn how to run bends and possibly be a bit inferior, given that she was already champion, Prince Khalid decided to start breeding her.
“In contrast to Special Duty, Deluxe hasn’t won a Grade 1 and there’s huge upside to her winning a Grade 1, and there’s every reason to believe that she’ll be better on American tracks than over there because all of her siblings were.”
In 2010, Juddmonte and Mott racked up four Grade 1 wins with the Dansili mare Proviso (GB), who has been retired and booked to Street Cry (Ire).
O’Rourke said Aviate (GB), another daughter of Dansili, has already joined Mott at Payson Park. Aviate won the Tattersalls Musidora Stakes (Eng-G3) last May at York for trainer Henry Cecil and then finished seventh and was placed sixth as the favorite in the Investec Epsom Oaks (Eng-G1).
Hasili was shipped back to England in 2008 after she produced an unraced Empire Maker filly named Very Good News. Now 20, Hasili has not had a live foal since then.
Jeff Lowe is a Thoroughbred Times staff writer
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Posted by: Lexi, WAKEFILED, MA on January 27, 2011 at 11:23 AM
Juddmonte is the number one breeding and racing operation in the world..bar none
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