Botti's South American star set to take Doncaster to another league

Doncaster and Sao Paolo would appear to have little in common, but for Nao Da Mais the South Yorkshire course could be on the list of tracks where the Brazilian champion has won come Thursday night.

Marco Botti's recent Kempton winner is part of the East team for this year's Racing League and the now six-year-old entire is set to contest the 1m4f handicap at Doncaster on the opening evening of the 2022 competition, as he builds towards a Group 2 in Italy in October.

A homebred for Benjamin Steinbruch's Haras Phillipson, which has farms in Steinbruch's native Brazil as well as Uruguay, Nao Da Mais was a brilliant two- and three-year-old in Brazil, winning the Group 1 Grande Premio Juliano Martins as a juvenile at Sao Paolo.

The following season he added a pair of Brazilian Group 1s to his CV before travelling to Argentina and taking on his elders for the first time in the Group 1 Gran Premio Carlos Pellegrini. That resulted in a fourth win at the highest level for Nao Da Mais before his owner-breeder decided that a new challenge was required for the son of T H Approval, an American-bred son of With Approval who stands at Haras Phillipson.

Botti took up the story on Monday, saying: "Nao Da Mais was sent by Mr Steinbruch to France, along with Namasse, who was also a Group 1 winner in Brazil, and Nuble.

"They were in training there last year and Nao Da Mais won, but the ground there was not suitable for them so Mr Steinbruch decided to send them to England. Through a friend in Brazil, he got in touch with me and he asked me to take them."

The well-travelled trio switched to Botti's Newmarket yard last autumn and in no time at all Nuble, who was bred in Uruguay and is a daughter of Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes winner Brilliant Speed, showed a liking for Britain and the all-weather, racking up a four-timer during December and January.

Given a break in the spring and freshened up for a turf campaign, the six-year-old won a fillies' handicap at Newmarket last Friday evening.

"Nuble is a good filly and could go abroad towards the end of the year to get black type," Botti said of the granddaughter of Dynaformer.

A stud career beckons for Nuble and, more pressingly, for Nao Da Mais, for whom Steinbruch would like the added cachet of a European Group success to include on his page in the glossy stallion brochure.

"I know the plan is eventually to send him back to Haras Phillipson and have him as a stallion," said Botti. "He will probably stay here until the end of the season and go back to either Brazil or Uruguay for his stud career.

"Nao Da Mais is a nice horse and he won well last time. We're trying to get black type with him before he goes to stud."

Namasse, like Nao Da Mais, is a Phillipson homebred Group 1 winner by T H Approval, but, unlike him, the seven-year-old mare was retired to stud this spring, in a move designed to add a transatlantic dimension to Haras Phillipson's breeding programme.

"We decided not to race Namasse in England and we retired her," said Botti. "She's in foal to Ulysses and might stay in Europe for breeding, and her progeny could race here too. I think that is the plan at the moment. Nuble will probably be covered next year."

Steinbruch's operation, which also encompasses the United States, is spreading its wings globally and introducing new stallions and bloodlines to throughbred breeding in Brazil and Uruguay.

Last year Haras Phillipson stood Eclipse Award winners Midshipman and Will Take Charge for the southern hemisphere breeding season, and their Uruguay base plays host to Grade 1 Norfolk Stakes winner and Santa Anita Derby and Preakness Stakes-placed Creative Cause, as well as Heart To Heart, a son of English Channel whose Grade 1 successes included the Maker's Mile.

Steinbruch expanded Haras Phillipson into Uruguay only in 2014 but the operation was crowned breeder of the year and owner of the year there for last season, mainly through the exploits of homebred four-year-old filly Princess Leca, one of five individual top-level winners by T H Approval.

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