A rare case of close in-breeding in one of the weekend's most admirable winners

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Here, Martin takes a deep dive into the pedigree of Veterans' Chase Series Final winner Wishing And Hoping. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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I wouldn’t usually devote an article to the breeding of a non black-type handicap winner, but the sight of the teenager Wishing And Hoping merrily popping over fences while making most to win the Veterans’ Chase Series Final at Sandown on Saturday brought so much cheer I thought I’d take a closer look at his family.

As it happens, the Mel Rowley-trained 13-year-old is in possession of rather a fascinating pedigree, featuring as it does a rare 2x3 duplication of Top Ville. In fact, he is a living monument to the popularity of the Aga Khan’s Prix du Jockey Club winner of 1979 as a National Hunt ‘sire of sires’ around the turn of the millennium.

Wishing And Hoping (pictured below) is by one son of Top Ville in Beneficial – the late Knockhouse Stud resident who got the likes of Benefficient, Cloth Cap, Cooldine, More Of That and Realt Dubh, and became champion jumps stallion a decade ago this year – and he is out of a mare by another son of Top Ville in Un Desperado, who wrote himself into turf history by siring triple Cheltenham Gold Cup hero Best Mate after joining Old Meadow Stud from France.

Top Ville’s sire sons really had the knack of coming up with celebrated performers over jumps. Pistolet Bleu’s sole season as a Coolmore National Hunt stallion before his untimely death produced the versatile Sizing Europe; Toulon is remembered as the sire of the remarkably prolific mare Solerina; and Norwich delivered Newmill, who won the Champion Chase in which Kauto Star fell when a warm favourite.

However, like his sire High Top before him, Top Ville was generally more effective as a broodmare sire, even though his daughters were often noted for exhibiting a certain hotness.

The exceptional Montjeu, out of Prix du Lutece winner Floripedes, was the best maternal grandchild of Top Ville, and incidentally was also known for siring fillies who could be quirky, to put it kindly.

One of the supreme sources of middle-distance and staying horses of recent times, he has inevitably made his presence felt in National Hunt breeding, primarily through sons such as Authorized, Fame And Glory, Masked Marvel, Montmartre, Scorpion and Walk In The Park

Not forgetting Montjeu’s unraced full-brother Gold Well and Group 3-placed half-brother Le Fou, either; both have sired their fair share of useful jumpers.

Record-breaking stayer Yeats, like Montjeu a son of Sadler’s Wells out of a Top Ville mare, meanwhile gained a first National Hunt sire title last year and is leading the field again this season thanks to the likes of Conflated and Noble Yeats.

Montjeu winning the Arc at Longchamp in 1999Credit: Edward Whitaker

Heron Island (sire of Black Hercules, Otago Trail, Rathvinden etc), Voix Du Nord (Defi Du Seuil, Kemboy, Espoir D’Allen etc) and Winged Love (Bostons Angel, Hunt Ball, Twist Magic etc) are among the other accomplished jumps sires out of Top Ville mares.

Evidently, if his daughters did inherit temperament issues and had the capacity to pass them on, the other attributes they possessed, such as outstanding class and stamina, were ample compensation.

Producing close inbreeding in a mating is a risky business, but if it had to be done in the jumps arena it might as well have been with as brilliant an influence as Top Ville.

Wishing And Hoping’s pedigree isn’t otherwise the deepest in the stud book, but it does tend to come up with a star every now and then. Bred by Brendan Murphy, he is a half-brother to two modest rules winners out of Desperately Hoping, whose best effort in five outings was a distant third in a Kilbeggan handicap hurdle.

The dam is, however, a full-sister to Drinmore Novice Chase hero Nil Desperandum and a half-sister to the dam of Cheltenham Festival winner Willoughby Court.

She is out of Still Hoping, a point-to-point winner by Kambalda and half-sister to Tip The Gold, the great-granddam of Double Shuffle, who went down by only a length to Might Bite when second in the King George VI Chase, and his Grade 2 novice chase-winning half-brother Rocky’s Treasure.

Perhaps the next smart performer to emerge from the family could be Clody Flyer, who is a six-year-old by Sholokhov out of Murphys Filly, a Flemensfirth half-sister to Wishing And Hoping who scored between the flags at Toomebridge.

He was saddled by Colin Bowe to win a five-year-old geldings’ maiden at Borris House last month and in spite of officially not selling on a Tattersalls online sale a few days later, has switched stables to Donald McCain.

Connections can only hope he is half as game as the gallant Wishing And Hoping.

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Pedigree pick

Richard Hannon has already enjoyed plenty of success with progeny of Mehmas, including the high-earning full-brothers Gubbass and Persian Force and St James’s Palace Stakes runner-up Lusail, and he unleashes another by the sire in the six-furlong novice stakes at Lingfield on Wednesday (1.45).

The three-year-old Hawajes is a half-brother to two winners with peak RPRs in excess of 80, out of the Listed-placed Diamond Green mare Strange Magic, a distant relative of triple Oaks heroine Diminuendo.

Like Mehmas himself, as well as Lusail, Hawajes will carry the silks of Al Shaqab Racing, having been purchased by Charlie Gordon-Watson Bloodstock for 125,000gns at Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale in 2021.

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Good Morning Bloodstock is our latest email newsletter. Martin Stevens, a doyen among bloodstock journalists, provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday