STARSPANGLEDBANNER finishes in elite company at Royal Ascot

23 Jun 14

Although Australia was without an Australian trained runner at Royal Ascot for the first time in a decade, the impact of the Australian-bred stallion Starspangledbanner on the 2014 meeting should not be understated.

STARSPANGLEDBANNER running in his paddock at Stud

Starspangledbanner, a dual Gr1 winner in Australia and then also in England, became a Royal Ascot sprint champion.

STARSPANGLEDBANNER - when racing at Royal Ascot

He defied extreme odds to become the first-season sire sensation of the world’s most prestigious race carnival.

OUR FILLY - Starspangledbanner ex Vaziri

Dynamic Syndications purchased a spectacular yearling filly by STARSPANGLEDBANNER at the Magic Millions this year and announced last week that she would be heading into the Randwick stables of SNOWDEN RACING.

PETER & PAUL SNOWDEN

Peter and Paul Snowden have hit the ground running since they broke away from the Darley organisation to train on their own.

With 32 Runners for 11 Winners, 5 seconds and 2 thirds, for a winning strike rate of 35.48% and a placed strike rate of 56.25%. The boys have quickly established themselves as becoming a force to take on the powerful Waller and Waterhouse stables in the coming seasons.

At Royal Ascot, six races amongst 30 events over five days of champagne racing were restricted to two-year-olds and it is to Starspangledbanner’s credit that from three runners he claimed two key juvenile races — the colt named The Wow Signal won the Gr2 Coventry Stakes (1207m) and the filly named Anthem Alexander won the Gr2 Queen Mary Stakes (1006m).

THE WOW SIGNAL ANTHEM ALEXANDER

Moreover, Starspangledbanner was in the elite company. Along with his former two stud colleagues High Chaparral and Montjeu, they joined fellow sires Authorized, Dansili and Dutch Art as the only six stallions to sire more than one winner at Royal Ascot carnival in 2014.

However the rare achievement by a first crop sire is made more special for Starspangledbanner who is well documented as being beset with fertility problems. He struck his Royal Ascot double from a foal crop numbering just 33 in foal mares producing only 26 live foals and in doing so, he has added to the incredible four-generation family record being built at Royal Ascot.

Starspangledbanner himself won the Gr1 Golden Jubilee Stakes (1200m) at Royal Ascot when in the ownership of the powerhouse international breeding organisation Coolmore Stud which had bought the horse as already the winner of the Gr1 Caulfield Guineas in Australia and then raced him on to win the Gr1 Oakleigh Plate (1100m).

Sent to Ireland to be trained by Coolmore Stud’s own trainer Aidan O’Brien, Starspangledbanner ran six times to win the 2010 Gr1 Golden Jubilee Stakes and Gr1 July Cup before going down in the Gr1 Nunthorpe Stakes (1000m) to Sole Power, who was a winner again of this year’s Gr1 King’s Stand Stakes (1000m).

Starspangledbanner was retired and stood at Coolmore Stud in Ireland and then in Australia as a shuttle stallion in 2011

His low fertility was a disaster. He returned to Ireland in 2012 for his second season and after 22 mares were negative, it was decided he would be returned to training with Aidan O’Brien for the autumn of 2012. Unfortunately that long away from training and having changed shape into a heavy forequartered stallion, he was not the same sprinting force as he was on younger legs, placing just once in six starts.

Coolmore didn’t want to stand the stallion again due to his low fertility so an agreement was struck with fellow shareholder Rosemount Stud to relocate Starspangledbanner back to them in Victoria. The horse had come the full circle since he was bred and raised at Rosemount Stud. His fertility issues are being managed as best as possible using the best techniques available. However he will always have issues as the vet reports confirm that a genetic flaw creates deformed sperm that do not live long and have limited movement making them extremely difficult to reach the target.

Starspangledbanner is a son of Choisir, which Coolmore bought as a stallion prospect after the Australian sprinter recorded his Royal Ascot double of the King’s Stand-Golden Jubilee Stakes in 2003.

Choisir is, in turn a son of Danehill Dancer, a Coolmore stallion of high merit. He gave Dynamic Syndications great joy as the sire of our own dual Gr1 Winning sprint sensation Atomic Force.

Danehill Dancer is a son of Danehill, the Danzig horse who reshaped the Australian breeding industry in the 1990s and early 2000s through a record nine stallions championships.

Danehill too was a 1989 Royal Ascot winner, taking the then Gr2 Cork & Orrery Stakes ¬before it was renamed as the Golden Jubilee Stakes and then again as the Diamond Jubilee Stakes.

Danehill Dancer was Danehill’s first Gr1winner of his Northern Hemisphere seasons when he stood at their famed Irish stud, winning twice at the highest level as a two-year-old but sadly he did not compete at Royal Ascot meeting at three, his only other season to race.

Apart from Choisir, Danehill Dancer’s Royal Ascot roll of honour includes the 2009 Gr1 St James’s Palace Stakes winner Mastercraftsman who was crowned European first-season premier sire in 2013 and is the sire of the 2014 dual Gr1 winning three-year-old The Grey Gatsby.

Danehill Dancer, was retired from stallion duty at age 21 this year. Like his own sire Danehill did, he is fast establishing himself now as a sire of sires.