Star-crossed sire Kingsbarns beats the odds to supply a Grade 1 winner

The sad tale of star-crossed sire Kingsbarns took another turn on Saturday when, despite racecourse representation severely restricted by subfertility, he managed to put a Grade 1 winner on the board in South Africa.

Gabor, who hails from a crop of just 14 foals that resulted from Kingsbarns' first season at Gaynor Rupert's Drakenstein Stud on the Western Cape, justified favouritism in the Thekwini Stakes for two-year-old fillies over a mile at Greyville with a three-quarter length victory over Mill Queen (by Querari).

Owned and bred by Drakenstein Stud – and trained by Gavin Van Zyl, who was celebrating his 60th birthday on Saturday – Gabor had finished third to Cockney Pride in the Grade 2 Golden Slipper at the track this month. Cockney Pride, another by Querari, was beaten into eighth in the rematch.

Gabor is out of the Listed-placed Trippi mare Se Agabor, a half-sister to an earlier Thekwini Stakes winner in Roxanne, and the dam is out of Roxy Cafe, a daughter of Royal Chalice and dual South African Grade 2 scorer Jungle Class.

Kingsbarns, a son of Galileo bred by Annemarie O'Brien, was saddled by husband Aidan to win both his starts at two including the Racing Post Trophy under the breeder and trainer's son Joseph.

The colt was naturally considered a leading fancy for the Classics but he suffered a setback in the spring and didn't run again until the autumn, when he was a fair third to Olympic Glory in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.

He failed to recapture his best form at four and was retired to Coolmore at five, where he spent one season before his departure to South Africa. Weatherbys lists only four three-year-olds by the sire who were conceived in Ireland that year, one of whom is recorded as already having died.

Kingsbarns was getting only around 50 per cent of his mares pregnant at Drakenstein Stud but Rupert was so taken with the sire's early stock that she told the Racing Post in 2017 that she would send mares to him to northern hemisphere time to maximise her chances of breeding foals by him.

But Rupert was delivered another bitter blow last year when she lost the stallion – the first Group/Grade 1 winner by Galileo to stand in South Africa – to colic.

Despite those trials and tribulations, Kingsbarns has posthumously joined a lengthy list of sons of Coolmore phenomenon Galileo to sire a top-level winner around the world that includes Frankel, Heliostatic, Intello, Nathaniel, New Approach, Rip Van Winkle, Roderic O'Connor, Ruler Of The World, Soldier Of Fortune and Teofilo.

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