Bengali's Super success keeps up Clodovil's Indian summer

The Weatherbys Super Sprint is firmly established as one of the most competitive juvenile heats of the calendar, putting a premium as it does on speed and precocity. A sire well versed in passing on both of those qualities is Rathasker Stud stalwart Clodovil, whose son Bengali Boys duly turned this year's running of the Super Sprint into a procession when powering six lengths clear of Declarationoflove at Newbury on Saturday.

Having landed the lucrative pot, Bengali Boys' personal haul of £128,631 has meant Clodovil has leapfrogged big names such as War Front, Exceed And Excel, Dark Angel and Scat Daddy into fourth place in the two-year-old sires' list by prize-money in Britain and Ireland, with only the big-hitters Choisir, Galileo and Kodiac ahead of him at this stage of the season.

Clodovil's 2015 crop, this year's two-year-olds, conceived at a fee of €12,000, numbered just 41 foals, which suggests he won't quite have the weight of numbers required to maintain his position towards the head of table. But nevertheless, his appearance among such heavyweights serves to shine the spotlight on a sire whose juveniles have made a habit of quietly going about their business in a manner many would be enviable of.

A shortage of numbers, relative to most stallions, has been a running theme of Clodovil's career. In his ten full crops to date his largest two-year-old representation in Britain and Ireland came in 2011, when he had 39 runners.

But while big numbers have never been Clodovil's thing, one thing he has never been short of is winners, operating at a ratio of 64 per cent lifetime winners to runners, with ten per cent of his runners going on to be stakes performers.

From his ten full crops to have raced his juvenile winners-to-runners ratio has never dipped below 20 per cent, a figure he hit with his third crop - typically a soft point in any stallion's career - in 2009. And during the 2014 campaign his strike rate reached a career-high of 52 per cent, with 12 of his 23 runners passing the winning post in front, including the Listed-winning Tigrilla.

Moreover, the Richard Fahey trained Bengali Boys is by no means the only success story of Clodovil's current juvenile crop, with six of his ten runners across Britain and Ireland having hit the board for a typically admirable winners-to-runners ratio of 60 per cent - comfortably the highest among the sires with a double-figure number of representatives.

That number is completed by Too Familiar, who won her first two starts for Johnny Murtagh before finishing a creditable fourth to Churchill's sister, Clemmie, in the Group 3 Grangecon Stud Stakes, the Rathasker-bred Connery, Yarmouth novice stakes scorer Viscount Loftus, Haydock winner Albishr, and Bengali Boy's stablemate Danehill Desert.

While a shortage of numbers may be what ultimately holds Clodovil back from appearing among the upper echelons of the two-year-old sire ranks come the end of 2017, a look through the pedigrees of his unraced juveniles does at least give optimism that he can maintain his winners-to-runners strike rate.

Among that number are the likes of Fashion Sense, a sister to Cambridgeshire handicap winner Third Time Lucky, who cost Dan Tunmore £22,000 at the Goffs UK Premier Sale and is now in training with the excellent Clive Cox.

White Turf, meanwhile, is a half-brother to Middleton Stakes scorer Blond Me who cost Kern/Lillingston €58,000, and is registered as being in training with his talented sibling's handler Andrew Balding.

And Goodnight Girl, a three-parts sister to the Listed-placed Kodiac Gal, has presumably already displayed her share of athleticism, having cost Stroud Coleman Bloodstock and trainer Jonathan Portman €97,000 at the Goresbridge Breeze-Up Sale this year.

There is also a precedent when it comes to six-length winners of the Super Sprint that could give Clodovil and Bengali Boys' connections hope of further big days to come. The last horse to win the race by such a margin was subsequent Group 1 winner Tiggy Wiggy. No pressure then, Bengali Boys.

A pitch towards the head of the two-year-old sires' table is not entirely uncharted territory for Clodovil, who finished fourth by winnings in 2011 having supplied the likes of Listed and sales race winner Coup De Ville and Princess Margaret Stakes third Miss Lahar.

And should he remain towards the head of affairs this year it would be just reward for a stallion who has all too frequently flown under the radar of many.