Farewell to a fruitful broodmare who made her name the hard way

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Here he speaks to Ed Player about the remarkable broodmare Our Poppet, who passed away this month aged 25. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday.

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Ed Player was at Tattersalls for the final session of the December Mares Sale last Thursday, overseeing the last few lots from his family’s Whatton Manor Stud to go under the hammer, when he received a call from his mother Catherine and found her in floods of tears.

“I was rather concerned, as you can imagine,” recalls Ed a week later. “I thought a close family member had died.”

It transpired that it wasn’t a human relation who had passed away, but an equine resident of the stud to whom the Players understandably felt a deep familial attachment: the stalwart winner-machine mare Our Poppet.

“It was very sad,” continues Ed. “She’d been looking great despite being 25, and my mother had been enjoying going to see her and feeding her Polo mints, but she’d just fallen asleep in the field and hadn’t woken up.

“We’ll miss her terribly but she had a lovely retirement and was very well looked after, and going peacefully like that has to be better than going downhill during a nasty, wet winter and having to be put down.”

Our Poppet, by Warning, was bred by Whatton Manor Stud from their St Simon Stakes and Galtres Stakes winner Upend, a close relation to dual-purpose star Royal Gait who also produced Falmouth Stakes third Musicanna.

Ed Player: 'It’s such a great winner-producing family, and one that’s been very lucky for us'Credit: Laura Green/Tattersalls

She was sold as a yearling to Rae Guest for 16,000gns and carried the colours of retired Wolverhampton businessman Graham Robinson. She finished a promising sixth in a Lingfield maiden on debut, but that turned out to be her only run as she sustained an injury.

Thanks to a twist of fate, she returned home to Nottinghamshire.

“Rae and his team always thought she had lots of ability, and so Graham decided to keep her as a broodmare to see if she could pass it on, and Rae kindly put our name forward to board her,” says Ed. “Graham and his wife Diane came to visit us, and liked what they saw, and so the mare came here.

“The Robinsons eventually decided to cut back on their bloodstock, and so we bred the mare’s last two foals, Daisy Warwick and Roseberry Topping, but even then they often came to see her and we would show them the foals and give them updates, so they were still very much involved until the end.”

Our Poppet distinguished herself as a broodmare by producing an extraordinary 11 winners and two other placed performers from 13 runners.

She achieved Europe-wide fame for producing the Hungarian-trained 2,000gns Tattersalls December yearling graduate Overdose, who was dubbed the ‘Budapest Bullet’ after blitzing his rivals to win 16 races including an Italian Group 3 contest by ten lengths and a German Listed heat by nine.

The son of Starborough also finished a close fourth behind Prohibit in the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot, and broke the track record when spreadeagling the field in the Prix de l’Abbaye, only for the race to be voided after a farcical false start.

Our Poppet is also the dam of Listed winner Majestic Mount (by Exceed And Excel), Listed-placed Poppet’s Treasure (by Dansili) and five-time scorer Roberto Mount (by Lethal Force), who struck again at Chantilly on Tuesday.

Roberto Mount actually happened to win on the same card as his ‘niece’ Shyamala, who is, along with her stakes-placed siblings Lord Tennyson and Mubaalegh, out of his placed Clodovil half-sister Poppet’s Passion.

Our Poppet is also the maternal granddam of Grade 2-placed Patentar, who is out of the winning Foxhound mare Poppets Sweetlove, and Group/Grade 3-placed Make Time and Secret Stash, who are out of the winning Lomitas mare Poppet’s Lovein.

We can say now, only with the benefit of hindsight, that Our Poppet was not always sent to the most successful sires in her early years at stud, and yet she still managed to produce winners from the matings. She could be said to be that rare beast, a mare who upgrades certain sires.

“We can’t blame some of those matings on Graham, as we were always part of the discussions,” says Ed with a laugh. “But that’s the way it is; sometimes you get mares like her, who you look back on and wonder what she’d have done with different covers.

“To breed a champion three-year-old sprinter in Europe in Overdose from Starborough was no mean feat, and she also got good winners by the likes of Foxhound and Muhtarram in those early years, so she did it the hard way.

“What was nice, though, was that she did so well when sent to better or more expensive sires later in her career, and so she got a Listed winner by Exceed And Excel and a Listed-placed horse by Dansili.”

Our Poppet might be gone, but her influence will still be keenly felt at Whatton Manor Stud, as it is home to four of her daughters – Poppets Sweetlove, Poppet’s Passion, the unraced Daisy Warwick and her final foal Roseberry Topping, who won convincingly on her last start for Andrew Balding in April and looked to have more victories in her, but had to be retired after she fractured a sesamoid.

Alligator Alley: recent winner a descendant of Our Poppet and her half-sister OverturnedCredit: Patrick McCann

“It’s such a great winner-producing family, and one that’s been very lucky for us,” says Ed. “Our Poppet herself was one of ten winners we bred out of Upend. We have two branches of the family here now, through Our Poppet and her half-sister Overturned. Funnily enough, Overturned’s son Alligator Alley also won on Tuesday, in a good Southwell handicap.

“It’s also been a very good-looking family, generally speaking. Upend was beautiful and most of her progeny sold well. Our Poppet was 16 hands and half an inch, a lovely, decent size and a roomy mare – the kind we all like breeding from, as they give you a chance of breeding a good-looking individual that will end up with the better trainers and hopefully enhance the dam's record and make her other progeny sell well.”

The freakish – in the nicest sense of the word – Overdose was not exactly a pretty boy, but then it was only the lack of domestic interest in him as a yearling at Tattersalls that set in motion the chain of events that led to him becoming an international sprint sensation.

“Yes, funnily enough Overdose was one of her least good-looking foals, and we have to admit to saying to the Robinsons that he was probably one to move on, and so he was sold very cheaply,” says Ed. “But they were fantastic about it and thoroughly enjoyed the whole ride with him.

"Of course it might have been nicer if he’d done what he did in his breeder’s colours, but then I genuinely do think that if he hadn’t started in those smaller races he might not have ended up winning Group races.

“And I still think he was unlucky not to be a Group 1 winner. If it hadn’t been for bad feet he would’ve done more, and he really was the rightful winner of the Prix de l’Abbaye that year. That was a shame.”

Our Poppet might not have an elite-level winner on her record, thanks to the starters and stewards at Longchamp, but as the dam of 11 winners of more than 40 races – all by different sires, not all of them top-notch ones – and granddam of five black-type horses and counting, she certainly qualifies for an affectionate obituary in Good Morning Bloodstock.

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