It all points to another vintage year for 'ingenious' Tally-Ho Stud

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It’s been all of about three weeks since I last wrote about the brilliance of Tally-Ho Stud, but this week’s Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale has prompted me to return to this frequently visited topic yet again.

The family run operation in County Westmeath was the leading consignor at the auction by total receipts, with eight lots sold for 1,787,000gns, and to show that there was quality as well as quantity in the draft they also came out third-best by average on 223,375gns, behind only Gaybrook Lodge Stud, whose sole offering sold for 270,000gns, and Native Trail’s vendor Oak Tree Farm, who had three sell for a mean figure of 246,667gns.

Tally-Ho supplied the two top lots, both by their own iconic sire Kodiac – the colt out of Lily Agnes Stakes winner No Lippy knocked down to Dave Loughnane and Omnihorse for 525,000gns, and the half-sister to Italian Listed scorer Evil Spell sold to Amo Racing and partners for 460,000gns.

Take a closer look at the profiles of both two-year-olds and it becomes readily apparent just how ingenious the stud can be when it comes to finding the raw material for producing their trademark sharp and speedy graduates.

For instance, I find it quite astonishing that they were able to buy No Lippy as a breeding prospect at the end of her two-year-old season for the far from princely sum of 20,000gns.

That was around half of what she had cost as a yearling just over a year earlier, and in the intervening period she had won three races, including two hotly contested conditions stakes in the spring. She hadn’t been beaten far in Listed company, either, and had achieved a peak Racing Post Rating of 87.

No Lippy is also by Oasis Dream, a leading sire whose daughters have long been proven to be excellent producers, and she is out of Prix de Pomone winner Freedonia, from a pedigree still being farmed by the Niarchos family. Lo and behold, while the mare was carrying this week’s Craven Breeze-Up sale-topper in her first pregnancy, her half-sister Albigna came out and won the Airlie Stud Stakes and Prix Marcel Boussac.

It’s difficult to see how the filly had depreciated in value, then, even allowing for the fact that other buyers might have thought her best racing days were behind her at two, and that she was one of 1,098 lots in a catalogue for the Tattersalls December Mares Sale of 2018 that wasn’t exactly short on quality.

Easy for us to say now with the benefit of hindsight, of course. If only we all had the far more useful gift of foresight that Tally-Ho seem to possess in spades, along with crack horsemanship and commercial nous.

Yajala, the dam of the second highest priced lot at Park Paddocks this week, appears to have entered Tally-Ho’s ownership in a private arrangement some time after Azienda Agricola Rosati Colarieti bred the dual Premio Carlo Chiesa winner Evil Spell from her.

The Listed-placed daughter of Fasliyev has since produced three offspring of racing age for the operation, all by home sires, and each and every one of them has hit a home run in the sales ring.

The Kodiac filly out of Yajala who made 460,000gns to Michael Callaghan and Amo RacingCredit: Laura Green

Society Power, her 2015 son by Society Rock, was sold at the Goresbridge Breeze-Up Sale for €160,000 and went on to win five races and to finish second in the Jersey Stakes before being sold to race in Hong Kong, and Aysar, her 2017 son by Sir Prancealot, was sold at Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale for 160,000gns.

And now her two-year-old filly by Kodiac has also made a six-figure sum – albeit a much heftier one – to a bid from Michael O’Callaghan, who is already dreaming of Royal Ascot with his gleaming new purchase.

Tally-Ho’s ingenuity was also on show in some of their other transactions at Tattersalls this week, such as the half-sister to the farm’s homebred Phoenix Stakes winner Ebro River by their exciting young sire Mehmas sold to Peter and Ross Doyle for 300,000gns, or the Night Of Thunder colt pinhooked for €77,000 and resold to Blandford Bloodstock for 225,000gns.

Compelling evidence that it is going to be another vintage year for the operation is rapidly accumulating on the track, too.

Rousing Encore, a two-year-old Acclamation colt with Richard Fahey, was actually a loss-making foal-to-yearling pinhook for Tally-Ho last autumn but suggested that hit was undeserved when winning in good fashion at Beverley on Wednesday, while Malavath, a daughter of Mehmas bred by the stud from a mare bought for just €15,000, advertised her Classic claims with a convincing victory in the Prix Imprudence last week.

And, stop the presses, even as I was writing this on Thursday, Tally-Ho’s latest sire to have juvenile runners, Kodiac’s son Kessaar, was represented by the highly exciting Newmarket debut winner Tajalla. And who pinhooked the Roger Varian-trained colt as a foal for €55,000 and resold him as a yearling for 90,000gns? Who else but Tally-Ho themselves.

This isn’t the first time that Good Morning Bloodstock has been dedicated to Tally-Ho’s triumphs this year, and I have a strong feeling it will be far from the last.

What do you think?

Share your thoughts with other Good Morning Bloodstock readers by emailing gmb@racingpost.com

Must-read story

“He was the only horse we bought for Godolphin at that sale as we really thought he was the one,” says Anthony Stroud as he tells James Thomas why he purchased champion two-year-old and Craven Stakes hero Native Trail, and more about his approach to buying breezers.

Pedigree pick

Some of the All-Weather Championships races at Newcastle today look hotter than a malcontented Montjeu mare thanks to the generous prize-money on offer, so My Dubawi is no more than a sporting each-way choice in the six-furlong three-year-old conditions stakes at 3.10.

The Charlie and Mark Johnston-trained gelding has plenty to find on official ratings, but he has won three of his four last starts and is entitled to find a little more improvement, being by Dubawi out of his owner-breeder Saeed Suhail’s Rockfel Stakes winner Cape Dollar.

My Dubawi’s siblings have also proved to be remarkably proficient on the all-weather, with Deal A Dollar clocking three-figure RPRs at Chelmsford, Kempton, Newcastle and Wolverhampton, Dollar Reward winning his maiden at Wolverhampton and later thriving on artificial surfaces in Hong Kong, and Chase The Dollar and Dollar Bid both also scoring on Polytrack and/or Tapeta.

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Good Morning Bloodstock is our latest email newsletter. Martin Stevens, a doyen among bloodstock journalists, provides his take and insight on the biggest stories every morning from Monday to Friday