STALLIONS

BLUE POINT

Darley Victoria Fee $44,000

Blue Point is the first of our new stallions from Darley and a remarkably high priced one for their Victoria base. Normally we would find the more expensive heading to NSW which has much higher broodmare numbers. The stallion is one of the world’s best sprinters winning both the Diamond Jubilee and the King’s Stand Stakes in 2019 at his last two starts before retirement. He won his last five starts, with three of these in Dubai, before heading back to the UK. This string of wins included the Grade 1 Al Quoz Sprint. He had won the King’s Stand Stakes in 2018 and it appears that the stallion improved as he aged. This is not all that surprising given he is a son of Shamardal who is not noted in Australia as a sire of our precocious 2yo types. Blue Point raced as a 2yo, having six starts at that age which included three wins and placings in both the Group 2 Qatar Richmond Stakes at Goodwood and the Group 1 Dubai Dewhurst Stakes. Blue Point completed his first season at stud in the UK this year, at a fee of 44,000 Euros, a marked increase on his Australian fee.

He is out of a mare by Royal Applause called Scarlett Rose who has also produced the Group 2 winning 2yo Formosina by Footstepsinthesand. Scarlett Rose was a half-sister to Tumbleweed Ridge who won 10 races including the Group 3 Leopardstown Ballycorus Stakes three times. This is not a family that we are all that familiar with in Australia but if we dig more deeply, we see that his fifth dam the stakes placed Hill Slipper, by Hill Gail, was a half-sister to another stakes-winner in Lovely Kate by Le Levanstell. Lovely Kate had a daughter by the Swedish stallion, Sterling Bay called Dress Rehearsal who was born in Ireland in 1976. She came to Australia and performed quite moderately at stud which may or may not be of any importance, but it is always an interesting aside to overseas families to see if branches have had success under local conditions. Delving further into the family, we do see that other lines have had significant success here with the great Rubiton and Euclase being just two family members from more distant lines that have performed at the highest level here.

The pedigree of Blue Point shows relatively little inbreeding with the closest duplication of ancestors being two lines of Northern Dancer in the fifth generation. What makes this more significant may be that these two lines appear in the direct mail lines of both his sire and dam through Northern Dancer sons Storm Bird and Try My Best. Storm Bird, we must note, appears as the grand-damsire of one of our leading stallions in Snitzel so there is little doubt that we are likely to see mares with Snitzel and his sons in their pedigree as potential mates for the stallion. In fact, the early speed we see through