Brilliantly bred Vatican City set for debut at Newmarket on Saturday

Aidan O'Brien is set to take the wraps off one of the most regally bred two-year-olds in training in Europe at Newmarket on Saturday.

Vatican City has been declared for the Weatherbys Design and Print Novice Stakes over seven furlongs on the Rowley Mile at 4pm.

What qualifies the Coolmore homebred to be hailed as having one of the very best pedigrees in the stud book?

Newmarket 4.00 racecard

Well, for starters, he is by perennial champion sire Galileo and is a brother to three individual Group 1 winners – Marvellous and Gleneagles, who both struck in mile Classics, and Happily, who took the Moyglare Stud Stakes at two and finished third in the British and Irish 1,000 Guineas at three.

Vatican City is the sixth foal out of the remarkable producer You'resothrilling, with the preceding five all having won black-type races and achieved Group 1 placings. Besides Marvellous, Gleneagles and Happily, there was Coolmore, successful in the Group 3 Weld Park Stakes and third in the Belmont Oaks, and Taj Mahal, a Listed winner who was runner-up in the Secretariat Stakes.

Cherry Hinton Stakes winner You'resothrilling – who also has yearling and foal fillies by Galileo, having been mated to him every year at paddocks – is out of an exceptional producer herself, in Mariah's Storm.

The Grade 2-winning daughter of Rahy was bought by Coolmore supremo John Magnier for $2.6 million at the Keeneland November Breeding-Stock Sale in 1996 carrying a Storm Cat foal who would turn out to be none other than the late iron horse Giant's Causeway, a six-time Group 1 winner and a multiple champion sire in North America.

Mariah's Storm was regularly mated with Storm Cat in the early years of her stud career, and also produced You'resothrilling and the stakes-placed Freud, Roar Of The Tiger, Tiger Dance and Tumblebrutus to him.

She later came to Ireland to be paired with Sadler's Wells and then his son Galileo, with the latter mating coming up with Group 3-placed pair Butterflies and Hanky Panky.

Another daughter of Storm Cat and Mariah's Storm, Pearling, produced three-time Group 1 winner Decorated Knight, while the mare's liaison with Sadler's Wells resulted in Love Me Only, subsequently the dam of Irish Derby runner-up and Derby third Storm The Stars.

Vatican City will have few rivals in the best-bred stakes at Newmarket, but he is not the only debutant in the race with a fine pedigree.

For example Al Qaqaa, trained by William Haggas for Hamdan Al Maktoum, is a War Front colt out of Pin Up, a Listed-placed half-sister to ill-fated dual Royal Ascot winner Thomas Chippendale by Lookin At Lucky. He was a $1.2m Keeneland September yearling purchase.

There is also Kinross, a Kingman colt trained by Ralph Beckett for Julian Richmond-Watson. He is out of the owner-breeder's Listed-winning Selkirk mare Ceilidh House.

Earlier on the Newmarket card, the Lettergold British EBF Novice Stakes for two-year-olds over a mile at 2.50 also holds plenty of intrigue for pedigree buffs as it features three siblings to Classic winners.

Eshaasy, a winning Oasis Dream half-brother to Galileo Gold trained by John Gosden for Hamdan Al Maktoum, takes on Never Alone, a twice-placed Dubawi half-brother to Legatissimo trained by Charlie Appleby for Godolphin, while Emissary, a Kingman half-brother to Workforce, makes his debut for Hugo Palmer.

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