How Wootton Bassett became a Coolmore asset

At the Book 1 session of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale earlier this month, M. V. Magnier representing Coolmore and Alex Elliott bidding on behalf of Kia Joorabchian’s Amo Racing traded blows over a yearling that the successful bidder Elliott described afterwards as ‘as close to perfection as you can get’. Not surprising then that it took a winning bid of 4.3 million guineas for Amo to come out on top, making lot number 332 not only the most expensive yearling colt sold in the world this year, but also setting a new European record for a yearling colt sold at auction.

But it wasn’t a Frankel or a Dubawi which Amo and Coolmore were both so keen to get their hands on but a son of Wootton Bassett whose own profile as a stallion has rocketed in much the same way as the bidding on his son in the Tattersalls ring. The most striking illustration of how far Wootton Bassett has come since going to stud is that he stood for €200,000 at Coolmore this spring – fifty times his stud fee of €4,000 just ten years earlier when he was based in France!

But before a look at his rise as a stallion, a reminder of Wootton Bassett the racehorse. The son of Godolphin’s high-class six-/seven-furlong performer Iffraaj was bought for £46,000 at Doncaster’s St Leger Yearling Sales to join Richard Fahey who already trained his useful sprinting half-brother Mister Hardy who’d begun his career winning the Brocklesby. The tall, close-coupled Wootton Bassett didn’t make his own two-year-old debut quite so early but following a successful debut at Ayr in June he remained unbeaten in five starts in his juvenile season.

After winning a novice at Doncaster, Wootton Bassett claimed two very valuable prizes, the St Leger Yearling Stakes at York and the Weatherbys Insurance £300,000 2-y-o Stakes at Doncaster which suggested that neither Group company nor the step up to seven furlongs would be beyond him. He proved as much in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at Longchamp, where he was also encountering soft ground for the first time, making all the running to provide both his trainer, and jockey Paul Hanagan (in what was to be the first of his two championship-winning seasons), with their first Group 1 successes.

There was another unbeaten two-year-old that season – Frankel – but while Wootton Bassett wasn’t champion two-year-old, with a Timeform rating of 119p his three-year-old prospects looked good and, for what it’s worth, his earnings already amounted to more than half a million pounds which was a lot more than even Frankel banked in his first season.

But whereas Frankel more than delivered on his two-year-old promise, Wootton Bassett found life considerably harder at three, failing to reach the frame in his four races, all of them Group 1 contests. After starting favourite back at Longchamp for the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and then coming up against Frankel in the St James’s Palace Stakes, he fared no better for the drop back to sprinting in either the Prix Maurice de Gheest or the Sprint Cup.

Having gained the most prestigious win of his career in France, it was a Normandy stud which secured his services when the time came for Wootton Bassett to begin his stallion career. Haras d’Etreham set his initial fee at a modest €6,000 which subsequently dropped lower still, as already mentioned, but that was before his first runners started hitting the track.

There were to be two big boosts propelling Wootton Bassett up the stallion ranks and the first of those was getting a European champion in his very first crop. With just 23 foals in that first crop, the odds appeared stacked against him but from it emerged the top-class colt Almanzor who remains Wootton Bassett’s highest-rated horse with a Timeform figure of 133. Trained by Jean-Claude Rouget, Almanzor not only trained on to become a much better three-year-old than his sire, he stayed much further too, winning the Prix du Jockey Club before completing a Champion Stakes double at Leopardstown and Ascot and in both races being chased home by Found who had won the Arc in between.

As a result, Wootton Bassett’s stud fee in 2017 leapt to €20,000 and then doubled two years later as more good horses began to emerge from his still small French crops. Wootton Bassett enjoyed a particularly good year in 2020 when The Summit, Speak of The Devil and Mageva were all placed in French classics and Wooded won the Prix de l’Abbaye. The same year, British trainers enjoyed some notable success with his offspring too, with Audarya winning the Prix Jean Romanet and Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf for James Fanshawe and two-year-old Chindit winning the Champagne Stakes at the start of what was to become a very successful career for Richard Hannon.

But most significantly, Wootton Bassett’s success was also attracting the attention of Coolmore by now. The second major boost to Wootton Bassett’s stallion career therefore came when he made the move from Normandy to County Tipperary ahead of the 2021 breeding season with a substantial increase in his stud fee to €100,000. That season was to be a pivotal one for Coolmore as in the same year it welcomed Wootton Bassett it had to say goodbye to Galileo who died that summer.

An important part of Wootton Bassett’s appeal, as far as Coolmore were concerned, was his suitability as a mate for Galileo’s daughters. ‘He strikes us as a real Classic stallion’, said Coolmore’s David McLoughlin at the time. ‘He gets a very good type and is a total outcross with his pedigree free of the major European forces like Sadler’s Wells, Galileo, Montjeu, Danehill, Green Desert, Invincible Spirit, Danehill Dancer and Dubawi. We are thrilled that he is coming to Coolmore and very excited about what he might achieve when paired with our Galileo mares.’

That excitement was well founded, it turned out, but it wasn’t until the current season that the two-year-olds resulting from Wootton Bassett’s first season at Coolmore reached the track. In the meantime, though, his reputation continued to grow and with Wootton Bassett supplying important winners for both Amo and Coolmore in 2023, it wasn’t surprising that both parties were so keen to secure his standout colt at Tattersalls recently.

Amo’s notable pair of Wootton Bassett colts last year were contrasting types, with Bucanero Fuerte, a brother to Wooded, being a smart sprinting two-year-old, winning the Phoenix Stakes, while the strapping three-year-old King of Steel went from finishing second at 66/1 in the Derby on his reappearance to winning the Champion Stakes in the autumn. The high-class King of Steel’s retirement to stud was announced recently after he failed to make it to the track as a four-year-old.

Meanwhile, whilst waiting for their own Wootton Bassett home-breds to come through the pipeline, Coolmore enjoyed two-year-old success last year with their auction purchases, with River Tiber winning the Coventry Stakes and Unquestionable the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.

There was also a hint of what was to come – he’s out of a Galileo mare - when the Joseph O’Brien-trained Al Riffa won the National Stakes in 2022. Al Riffa won again at the top level this summer in the Grosser Preis von Berlin after finishing runner-up to City of Troy in the Eclipse.

But it’s this season, with his first Coolmore-conceived two-year-olds to represent him, that Wootton Bassett has made a real breakthrough. With no fewer than 13 of his youngsters having a Timeform rating of 100 or more, it’s little wonder that he’s the leading sire of two-year-olds by prize money in Britain and Ireland as well as in Europe as a whole.

Among those winners is Camille Pissarro, Ballydoyle’s first two-year-old winner of the year, who was touched off in the same very valuable Doncaster contest won by his sire but then followed in Wootton Bassett’s footsteps by winning the Jean-Luc Lagardere.

Less than a week later, stablemate Expanded very nearly landed another top two-year-old contest when beaten a neck in the Dewhurst Stakes just seven days after making a successful debut at the Curragh. With a rating of 112p, Expanded currently shares top spot among Wootton Bassett’s two-year-olds in the Timeform rankings with Christopher Head’s hugely exciting colt Maranoa Charlie. Unbeaten in three starts, with his last two wins, including the Group 3 Prix Thomas Bryon, both gained by eight lengths, he has a first-rate chance of becoming another Group 1 winner for his sire in Sunday’s Criterium International at Saint-Cloud.

Both Expanded and Maranoa Charlie are out of Galileo mares and so too is another of Wootton Bassett’s leading two-year-olds Green Impact (111p), winner of the Group 2 KPMG Champions Juvenile Stakes at Leopardstown for Jessica Harrington. Interestingly though – and this reflects well on Wootton Bassett – the dams of all three were not that talented themselves, Maranoa Charlie’s dam being the only one to win a race and just a class 3 contest in France at that.

Henri Matisse (out of a Pivotal mare like Camille Pissarro) also ranks among Wootton Bassett’s leading two-year-olds, though after winning the Railway Stakes and Futurity Stakes at the Curragh in the summer he has been a beaten favourite since in the National Stakes and Jean-Luc Lagardere.

But Wootton Bassett has plenty of other good prospects among his leading two-year-olds, and besides Maranoa Charlie, he’ll also have Leopardstown maiden winner Twain and Goffs Million winner Apples And Bananas running for him in the Criterium International.

On a day which could cap a remarkable few weeks for Wootton Bassett, he also has a contender in the other Group 1 two-year-old contest on Sunday with Beresford Stakes runner-up Tennessee Stud contesting the Criterium de Saint-Cloud against just two rivals.

Earlier this week, Wootton Bassett set another record according to Coolmore when his daughter Whirl (another out of a Galileo mare) won the Group 3 Staffordstown Stud Stakes at the Curragh, becoming her sire’s eighth individual Group-winning two-year-old of the year, one more than either Galileo or Danehill achieved in a single season.

Whether it’s in the sale ring or on the track – the wide-margin win for his French five-year-old Topgear (earning a rating of 123) in the Challenge Stakes at Newmarket was yet another recent highlight – Wootton Bassett has had a memorable October, whatever the fate of his runners at Saint-Cloud, with the promise of considerably more success next year and, no doubt, in further seasons to come.

Published at 0910 GMT on 27/10/24

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