Progressive Spinner gives Black Sam Bellamy a maiden Grade 1 winner

It was a day of firsts at Ascot on Saturday as Sam Spinner not only supplied trainer Jedd O'Keeffe and jockey Joe Colliver with maiden Grade 1 victories, but he also gave Shade Oak Stud stalwart Black Sam Bellamy his first top-level winner over jumps when running out an impressive winner of the JLT Reve De Sivola Long Walk Hurdle.

The five-year-old made all over the 3m½f trip and kept finding from two out to put two and three quarter lengths between himself and the strong-travelling runner-up L'Ami Serge.

Bred by Wriggle Valley Thoroughbreds and R Eccleshall, Sam Spinner is the 11th and final foal produced by the bumper winner Dawn Spinner, an Arctic Lord half-sister to smart jumper The Tsarevich and to the dam of smart staying chaser Gungadu. Sam Spinner is a half-brother to three winners, namely Floral Spinner, Carys's Lad and Misty Dawn.

Sam Spinner has twice been through the sales ring, fetching a mere £6,000 as a foal before bringing £12,000 from Caron and Paul Chapman at the 2015 DBS Spring Stores Sale.

"For us to breed a Grade 1 winner is just huge," said Doug Proctor, who formerly operated under the Wriggle Valley Thoroughbreds banner. "We'd have 20 mares on the place, breeding and boarding, and I had to sell him at the time because he was my only colt that year and that was the way the market was.

"We bought Dawn Spinner from her owner Judy Maitland-Jones. Sam Spinner was the dam's last foal but thankfully we have got his Alflora half-sister called Tsarinova and we've put her in foal to Black Sam Bellamy. Hopefully we can sell the foal for a bit more than £6,000 now!"

Sam Spinner may have provided his sire with a first top-flight winner in the National Hunt sphere, but Black Sam Bellamy has already supplied a Group 1 winner on the Flat in the shape of Earl Of Tinsdal. The nine-year-old, who now resides at Gestut Helenenhof in Germany, won the Gran Premio Del Jockey Club and the Gran Premio Di Milano, both at San Siro, as well as the Rheinland-Pokal at Cologne.

Black Sam Bellamy's prowess in the breeding shed comes as no surprise, as the rising 19-year-old son of Sadler's Wells is a brother to none other than perennial champion sire Galileo. He was a top-class 12f perform for Aidan O'Brien and the Coolmore partners, with his four victories including Group 1 successes in the 2003 Tattersalls Gold Cup and the 2002 Gran Premio del Jockey Club e Coppa d'Oro.

He is perhaps best known as the sire of The Giant Bolster, the high-class chaser who finished in the frame in three runnings of the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

He began life at stud at Gestut Fahrhof in 2004 before transferring to Shade Oak Stud in Shropshire in 2009. He has stood the last three covering seasons at £3,000, a fee that remains unchanged in 2018.

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