Airlie Stud Stakes winner Matrika another feather in the cap of Barronstown Stud's top-class producer Muravka

Matrika's rise to Group 2 honours in Saturday's Airlie Stud Stakes at the Curragh was yet another feather in the cap of her dam, the unraced High Chaparral mare Muravka.

Bred by the Nagle family's Barronstown Stud, who have had a long association with Coolmore, the daughter of No Nay Never was making up for a half-length defeat to Porta Fortuna in the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot only eight days earlier.

The Aidan O'Brien-trained juvenile showed a fine aptitude on her third start, and this Curragh success provided her dam with a fourth black type winner from six winners overall. 

Most notable among her half-siblings is the ill-fated Prix Morny and Coventry Stakes winner The Wow Signal, whose success as a sire at Haras de Bouquetot included the 2021 Poule d'Essai des Pouliches heroine Coeursamba. Bred by the Stack family, he sadly died in March 2018 due to a bout of laminitis aged just six.  

The son of Starspangledbanner is not Matrika's only high-class sibling, as her No Nay Never brother in Japan, Unicorn Lion, is a dual Grade 3 winner. Bought for 850,000gns by Japanese interests at Tattersalls Book 2 in 2017, he has been a huge money-earner for Yoshito Yahagi's stable, most recently finishing down the field behind the mighty Equinox in last month's Takarazuka Kinen.

The trio can also count the French Listed winner Miss Infinity, by Rock Of Gibraltar, among their immediate relations, while O'Brien also won with her Caravaggio daughter, Madonnadelrosario. Muravka, now 15 years old, produced a colt by Coolmore's St Mark's Basilica this term.

Muravka, a half-sister to dual Listed winner Tolpuddle, is out of Shadwell's stakes-winning Topsider mare Tabdea, herself a sibling of the 1996 French Guineas heroine Ta Rib. She sold to Barronstown Stud from The Castlebridge Consignment after the arrival of The Wow Signal, for €950,000 at the 2017 Goffs November Mares Sale.

Matrika is one of 29 individual Group/Graded winners for No Nay Never, who stood this year at Coolmore for a joint career-high fee of €175,000.

Jamie Spencer and Via Sistina land the Yulong Pretty Polly Stakes, a one-two for stallion Fastnet RockCredit: Alan Crowhurst

A member of Coolmore's global operation, and formerly a regular shuttler from Australia to Ireland, was responsible for the impressive one-two in the Group 1 Yulong Matron Stakes. Fastnet Rock, now 22 and still on the books in New South Wales, sired his 43rd top-level winner in the shape of the remarkable Laundry Cottage Stud-bred Via Sistina, who kept on two lengths ahead of the Arbib family homebred Stay Alert.

Stephen and Becky Hillen had bought Via Sistina, out of the unraced Galileo mare Nigh, for just 5,000gns at the Tattersalls December Yearling Sale in 2019.

Stephen Hillen was modest about the achievement, telling Racing TV: "She was big and gangly, pretty weak - I didn’t do anything clever, it’s a very good cross and she just needed a lot of time. Jamie Magee broke her in and said, 'This could be a breeze-up horse', we didn’t go there but Joe Tuite did a wonderful job nurturing her along. We always buy a few to race every year, we knew that cross is close to 10 per cent Group 1, the stats don’t lie."

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