'A heart the size of a house' - Kyprios maintains the Moyglare magic with Gold Cup triumph

One of the most famous modern families in the stud book continues to deliver joy to the present and hope for the future, with Kyprios adding his own fifth Group 1 in a seemingly never-ending stream from Moyglare Stud’s Polished Gem.

Returning from the injury which not only prevented him from defending his Gold Cup title last year but threatened his entire career, Kyprios is now the highest earner among an astonishing seven black-type winners for his dam Polished Gem including Prince Of Wales’s Stakes winner and sire Free Eagle and dual Irish St Leger queen Search For A Song.

The Haefner family’s Moyglare own the Aidan O'Brien-trained six-year-old with the Coolmore partners, the team responsible for Kyprios’s sire, the exceptional Galileo.

"Somebody said to me, 'You bred him', and I said 'Yeah but it wasn’t genius sending the mare to Galileo all those years ago," said Fiona Craig, the long-serving Moyglare bloodstock advisor.

"It’s what’s meant to happen, they’re meant to end up doing this. So many times they don’t, and ever so rarely you get one that comes up with the goods."

Fiona Craig (in pink) representing Moyglare among the winning connections Credit: Edward Whitaker

Kyprios had swept through the Goodwood Cup, Irish Leger and Prix du Cadran after opening his Group 1 account here in 2022 but did not re-emerge until last year’s Irish St Leger, running acceptably behind Eldar Eldarov and then coming off second best to Trawlerman on British Champions Day in a similarly gripping encounter to the one waged here with the Godolphin stalwart.

"That was down to Aidan and the horse," Craig said of his recovery. "I saw him all the way through and I thought he wouldn’t be here now.

"The horse has a heart the size of a house. He battled to live and he battled to go on. Aidan never lost confidence; he said just give him time."

She added: "There’s lots of other people involved, all the guys on the farm and the guys in the yards and everything else, they deserve the most congratulations. It’s their job that got him back."

Kyprios, still an entire, surely deserves a place at stud some day but Moyglare’s future hopes rest upon his remaining sisters.

"The best thing out of all is Search [For A Song] had a filly this year," Craig said. "The first foal was a Baaeed filly, so we have a filly to go on. Sapphire [Group 2-winning half-sister] is gone, Polished is gone, there are bits and pieces in there but for Search to have a filly is a bit of a result."

Craig admitted that Search For A Song, like Kyprios himself, had a bit of unpredictability about her, which was what swayed her to suggesting Shadwell’s Baaeed for her mating.

"I saw him here at Ascot in the paddock and thought firstly he was the most beautiful physical and the most beautiful mover but he seemed to have a very equal temperament.

Leger star Search For A Song is keeping the family goingCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

"Her temperament was her brilliance but in order for it to be practical we had to mellow that. It’s not chestnut with white socks but it’s nice, and that’ll do. Now we go on and just dream about them in the future."

The dreaming can, of course, still apply to Kyprios.

"I just said to Michael Tabor, 'We’ll see you here next year', he was sort of laughing at me," said Craig. "He doesn’t have that much mileage on the clock and his two runs last year were just stunning. He wasn’t ridden until the beginning of July and he ran in the Irish Leger. It just shows that’s the horse."

Polished Gem's deeds cover up the entire page of a catalogue but she was a winning Danehill sister to Sun Chariot and Matriarch Stakes winner Dress To Thrill, out of the 1988 Irish Guineas heroine Trusted Partner.

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