Lower Street putting Dukes Stud firmly on the map in 2022

Lower Street's arrival in the nick of time in the Coral Winter Oaks will be enough to secure her breeding future back at Dukes Stud near Newmarket, where there are hopes that the long-term investment in a timeless stock is beginning to produce dividends.

David Simcock's Kingman filly has won four of her five starts since October, scoring at Wolverhampton six days before she appeared in Lingfield's valuable handicap, where she defied a tardy start and a wide draw to weave through the field under Martin Dwyer and come home a comfortable length clear.

She was bred under owner Major Michael Wyatt's Dunchurch Lodge Stud, a family offshoot of a business which is overseen by his son, Charlie.

Lower Street is out of the Dansili mare Upper Street, who signed off her own career by winning over the same course and distance at Lingfield but has greater significance as a daughter of the brilliant Breeders' Cup and dual Yorkshire Oaks winner Islington, part of a celebrated Ballymacoll line which came up for sale in stages at Tattersalls.

"Richard Brown from Blandford Bloodstock bought Upper Street at the December Sale and it's been quite a slow-developing family," explained Charlie Wyatt.

"David Simcock has been super patient and kept saying, 'Listen, I really think there's something about this horse', but it certainly didn't happen at two and it didn't start happening until the end of her three-year-old career. She's not really had a break, he said he was going to keep her going all winter and had eyed up this race from a while back.

"She's just improving big time, she's going to come back and have a little holiday now. She wants the firm ground during the summer and then hopefully she'll join the broodmare band for next year."

Islington is a grand-daughter of the brilliant racemare Islington (right)Credit: Edward Whitaker

There are no particular targets but one obvious objective. Wyatt continued: "I had a long chat with trainer and jockey the other day and in a perfect world, as she's now rated 87, we'd love to pick up a Listed race with her, but if it didn't happen she's done her bit and we'll still breed from her.

"It's a lovely family; Islington herself wasn't a particularly great broodmare but sometimes the daughters come good, and obviously with Lower Street being a Kingman there's quite a bit of residual value there."

Lower Street is Upper Street's third foal and the mare, who has just turned 11, is pencilled in to visit Kildangan Stud's Space Blues in due course.

"There'a a nice Night Of Thunder two-year-old that Ed Dunlop has been given and we'll see what happens there," Wyatt explained.

"There's a little more to come, the mare is also overdue to Showcasing at the moment. Things weren't looking so good with her but you just need one like this and a trainer with a lot of patience, like David has, and things start to happen."

Wyatt's father, a long-serving steward and member of racing officialdom who has the family's smart black and pink silks, took on the stud in the 1960s and still maintains an interest, as does his brother William, the chairman of Newmarket Racecourses.

After boarding mares for the likes of Lady Bamford and Jeff Smith for many years and having a dozen or so of its own, Dukes is again becoming a more private and streamlined venture.

"My brother and I decided we probably had too many," said Wyatt.

"The idea at some stage will be to have fewer, although the last couple of years we've got lucky, we bought a couple of mares from Juddmonte, and we're trying to get into some really nice families, use proper stallions and see where are in four or five years' time.

"We do try to sell colts but the idea is we're trying to breed a nice racehorse to come back to stud, much like Lower Street.

"I've very much stripped back the stud now, I board for very few clients and we're almost trying to reinvent ourselves a little bit."

There will be as many as nine Wyatt horses running this year, spread between old ally Henry Candy, Simcock, Dunlop and Harry Eustace and, thanks to the efforts of Upper Street already, the family are already in a position to easily exceed their best annual statistics.

"There are a couple of other nice horses to get excited about for this year and David Simcock has got a very nice one called Folk Dance, who romped in at Newmarket but promptly broke down," said Wyatt.

"We gave her a year off and she's gone back to him, so we'll see how we go. If you had told us we'd have had two winners in January I would have laughed, and I know it's not quite the Oaks, but I'll take it."

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