The 2013 Crop #1: No.187

Courtesy Sunday TC

As this horse has yet to be named, for now, we'll refer to her as No.187, which is her Sunday Thoroughbred Club catalogue number. Like the Vermilion kid, this one was also heavily oversubscribed, so I feel very lucky to have got a share in this particular filly.

Why was she so popular? Well, there was a certain horse we waved goodbye to the other day called Clave Secreta. She had won 12 races when she retired, including a good few big ones, and was a true heroine in NAR circles. No.187 is a full sister to Clave, meaning she has the same mother and father...

Her sire is Wild Rush, an American-registered horse with G1 wins in amongst his eight total victories. He was fathered by Wild Again, with an 8-7-4 record, and a win in the Breeders' Cup Classic behind him. In his bloodlines, we have Icecapade (13 wins), who was out of Shenanigans, the mother of Ruffian, and Khaled in the dam line - the Aga Khan's horse that sired Swaps. On Wild Rush's dam side, we have Rose Park (4-3-10) by multiple G1 winner, Plugged Nickle, out of Hardship. She, like her mother before her, had a strong record (ten wins between them), and carried on the DNA of Drone, who had four wins from four starts and became an excellent broodmare sire, or BMS.

The dam of No.187 is Secret Room, who picked up a 2-4-3 record from 24 JRA starts. Her father was Taiki Shuttle - a horse that won all manner of sprint races in Japan, and is by the unbeaten Devil's Bag, a combination of fiery Halo (Hail To Reason) DNA, and that of Herbager, who won the French Derby. There is also a trace of Nijinsky blood via Caerleon and Welsh Muffin, the latter seeming to crop up quite often in the Long family line-up. Secret Room's mother was G3 runner Ribot's Secret (I love that name!) by Prince Khalid Abdullah's famous horse, Danehill, while Damascus is also brought into the equation - a US Hall of Fame member that won 21 races, bagging the Preakness and Belmont Stakes along the way, but only managing a third place in the Kentucky Derby and narrowly missing out on the Triple Crown as a result.

This beauty will eventually make her way to Funabashi, and while there's no guarantees, if she's only half as good as Clave was, I shall be a happy bunny...