Former Tate-trained son of Dark Angel dead-heats for Group 1 down under

The former James Tate-trained Top Ranked forced a dead-heat in Saturday’s Epsom Handicap at Randwick, providing Yeomanstown Stud stallion Dark Angel with a 13th Group 1 winner.

Top Ranked, bred by Wicklow Bloodstock, was consigned to the Tattersalls October Book 3 Sale of 2017 by Cooneen Stud and bought by Rabbah Bloodstock for 26,000gns.

Dam Countess Ferrama, by Authorized, was a half-sister to Classic hero Indian Haven and juvenile Group 1 winner Count Dubois, and while it's easy to say with hindsight he appears well bought at that price.

Top Ranked, or Top Rank as he was then, climbed through the ranks with Tate, winning three races on the spin as a three- and four-year-old, and shortly after won the Group 3 Superior Mile Stakes at Haydock. He won a Listed race at Doncaster the following spring at five, while his last run in Britain came in the 2021 Summer Mile at Ascot, in which he was fourth to Tilsit.

Now trained by Annabel Neasham, he was ridden by Hugh Bowman on Saturday and followed up his breakthrough success in the Group 3 Bill Ritchie Handicap the time before, coming home strongly on the near side of a three-horse bunch to force the close finish with rival Ellsberg.

"We were waiting for long enough and I didn't think we had got it," said Neasham. "I saw Sterling [Alexiou, co-trainer of Ellsberg] and he said, 'I wonder if I am going to have to share my first Group 1' and I said, 'I hope so'.

"The two of us were together in a classroom for a trainer's trainee day on Wednesday and Thursday. If we had known a couple of days later we would be sharing an Epsom, I don't think we would have believed it."

Dark Angel stood the 2022 breeding season for €60,000.

On the same card, Tweenhills' Zoustar, who bagged his first northern hemisphere Group 1 winner when Lezoo won the Cheveley Park Stakes, gained a fifth top-level winner in all when three-year-old daughter Zougotcha took the Darley Flight Stakes.

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