Coolmore's Breeders' Cup ambition: Storm Cat, Scat Daddy and City of Troy

By John Ingles

10:07 · MON September 02, 2024

Storm Cat sire line to the fore again in Coolmore's next Breeders' Cup Classic bid with City of Troy.

Going down a Storm (Cat)

City of Troy, Aidan O’Brien’s current Breeders’ Cup Classic contender, has plenty in common with Giant’s Causeway, the trainer’s very first runner in the race in 2000 who went so close to winning it. As well as being Group 1-winning two-year-olds, both lost unbeaten records when sent off favourite for the 2000 Guineas, both won the Eclipse and Juddmonte International (among other races) and City of Troy, like Giant’s Causeway at Churchill Downs 24 years earlier, will be having his first taste of American dirt at Del Mar in November. With that in mind, later in September, City of Troy will have a gallop at Southwell, just as Giant’s Causeway did before his Breeders’ Cup bid. City of Troy even races in the same colours as Giant’s Causeway, the dark blue of Sue Magnier.

But perhaps the most intriguing connection between Giant’s Causeway and City of Troy is their shared male bloodline. Giant’s Causeway was a son of Storm Cat who’s on the top line of City of Troy’s pedigree too, albeit five generations back now. That might seem quite a distant relationship, but the Storm Cat connection is clearly still very relevant to Coolmore and, in the long run, has eventually delivered them perhaps their best chance of a Breeders’ Cup Classic winner since Giant’s Causeway was beaten a neck by Tiznow in the millennium year.

Coolmore’s attachment to this sire-line dates back further still, however, to Storm Cat’s sire Storm Bird. Trained at Ballydoyle by Vincent O’Brien and owned by Robert Sangster, Storm Bird, like City of Troy years later, was a champion at two and ended an unbeaten first season with victory in the Dewhurst Stakes. For various reasons, Storm Bird ran only once more at three and was retired to Ashford Stud in Kentucky, a few years before it was bought by the Coolmore partners, where he ended up siring a much more influential stallion than himself in Storm Cat.

An American dirt performer, Storm Cat was a Grade 1 winner at two, when also second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and began his stud career in 1988 at a modest fee of $30,000. But once two members of that small first crop had become Grade 1 winners, Storm Cat’s reputation as a stallion began to build, especially as a sire of two-year-olds. By 1995, his fee had risen to $100,000 and, given his sire’s success on turf in Ireland and Britain, he began attracting attention from the biggest owners in Europe.

It was actually Godolphin who were the first to achieve Group 1 success with Storm Cat in Europe thanks to Aljabr who won the Prix de La Salamandre (as Giant’s Causeway was to do a year later) at two, the Sussex Stakes at three and the Lockinge Stakes at four when he also finished fifth behind Giant’s Causeway when contesting the Sussex again.

But Coolmore were already on to Storm Cat too by now, and at Keeneland in November 1996 they had gone to $2.6m to buy the broodmare Mariah’s Storm who was carrying a Storm Cat foal. That foal turned out to be the top-class Giant’s Causeway whose success on turf in Europe, along with the likes of Cat Thief on dirt in the USA, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic the year before Giant’s Causeway’s near-miss, helped create a boom in Storm Cat’s stud fee – which quickly rose by $100,000 a year to peak at $500,000 – as well as in the demand for his yearlings from both sides of the Atlantic.

Through the purchase of both breeding rights and yearlings, Coolmore invested heavily in Storm Cat’s offspring, notably in the case of Tasmanian Tiger and Van Nistelrooy – at $6.8m and $6.4m respectively they were the world’s most expensive yearlings in 2000 and 2001. While neither came close to living up to those price tags, Coolmore did have Group 1 success with other offspring of Storm Cat such as One Cool Cat, Sophisticat, Black Minnaloushe and Hold That Tiger. The latter pair also contested the Breeders’ Cup Classic but none of Coolmore’s other Storm Cats proved as good as Giant’s Causeway. Nor did any of Storm Cat’s other sons which Coolmore sent to stud match Giant’s Causeway’s achievements as a stallion; he was leading sire in North America three times which was once more than Storm Cat.

But it wasn’t Giant’s Causeway who perpetuated the sire-line which leads down to City of Troy. Instead, it was another of Storm Cat’s sons Hennessy. Like his sire, he was a Grade 1-winning two-year-old and runner-up in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and while he didn’t race for Coolmore, like Giant’s Causeway he became another of their Ashford Stud stallions.

In the same year that Giant’s Causeway retired to stud, Ballydoyle’s fresh intake of two-year-olds in 2001 included Johannesburg, a $200,000 yearling from Hennessy’s second crop. He made plenty of appeal to Coolmore on pedigree as his dam was not only a half-sister to another Ashford stallion Tale of The Cat (also by Storm Cat) but also to Minardi, winner of the previous season’s Phoenix Stakes and Middle Park Stakes for Ballydoyle.

Johannesburg would go on to win the same two races himself in an unbeaten seven-race campaign at two which also included wins in the Norfolk Stakes and Prix Morny and culminated with a successful switch to dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. While Johannesburg had been retired by the time of the following year’s Breeders’ Cup, he did contest the Kentucky Derby (finishing eighth), arguably an even more coveted dirt prize than the Breeders’ Cup Classic given its longer history and classic status.

But with Johannesburg siring relatively few winners of note and eventually being let go to Japan, it was looking as though the Storm Cat well was beginning to run dry.

Coolmore turned to Danehill for a time for some of their Breeders’ Cup Classic runners but whilst he was an excellent turf sire, the likes of Oratorio, George Washington and Duke of Marmalade failed to make an impact on the dirt.

Tiznow just gets the better of Giant's Causeway in 2000

On the Front foot

More promising, perhaps, was another son of Danzig, War Front, a smart US dirt performer who, following Danehill’s demise, also had the potential to supply Coolmore’s growing need for a stallion to complement their band of Sadler’s Wells and Galileo broodmares.

War Front delivered Ballydoyle three winners of the Dewhurst in the space of five years – War Command, Air Force Blue and U S Navy Flag – but while the last-named went on to win the July Cup, the other two were disappointments at three. Two other sons of War Front, Declaration of War and War Decree, represented the stable in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, with the former, after winning the Queen Anne Stakes and Juddmonte International earlier in 2013, being beaten just a nose and a head in third behind Mucho Macho Man at Santa Anita.

But while War Front had rather mixed results, the Storm Cat line was coming alive again. Scat Daddy was one of Johannesburg’s best sons on dirt in the USA, winning the Champagne Stakes at two and the Florida Derby at three and earning a Timeform rating of 120. With Coolmore partner Michael Tabor buying a share in him as a two-year-old, he was retired to Ashford Stud at the end of his racing career, though with little indication of the impact he was to make.

Scat Daddy’s fee dipped to a low of $10,000 at one point but such was his subsequent success that he was about to stand for ten times that amount when he died suddenly at the end of 2015, a year when his nine juvenile stakes winners in North America broke a record previously held by his great grandsire Storm Cat.

Scat Daddy had quickly made his mark on turf in Europe too, with the O’Brien-trained Daddy Long Legs, from his first crop, winning the Royal Lodge Stakes, though he was another of his stable’s Kentucky Derby disappointments after winning the UAE Derby beforehand. Coolmore’s support for Scat Daddy was undimmed, however, and after the Wesley Ward-trained No Nay Never won the Norfolk Stakes in 2013, he appeared next in Sue Magnier’s colours when following up in the Prix Morny.

Another son of Scat Daddy, Sioux Nation, completed the same Norfolk-Phoenix double for Ballydoyle as his grandsire Johannesburg, and with both Sioux Nation and No Nay Never, along with the latter’s sons Arizona, Blackbeard, Little Big Bear and Ten Sovereigns – all of them Royal Ascot and/or Group 1-winning two-year-olds – all standing at Coolmore in Ireland this year, it’s clear how important Scat Daddy’s legacy is to the stud’s current stallion roster.

Scat Daddy is also the sire of Ballydoyle’s most recent Breeders’ Cup Classic runner Mendelssohn, who finished fifth at Churchill Downs in 2018. The winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at two, Mendelssohn had a mainly dirt campaign at three but he was another Kentucky Derby let-down for his stable after he’d run away with the UAE Derby.

In Europe we’ve come to associate Scat Daddy mainly with speedy two-year-olds but from his penultimate crop came Justify, who was unraced at two but in a brief but unbeaten six-race career at three in 2018 became America’s latest Triple Crown winner. Inevitably, he too was snapped up by Coolmore for a stallion career when the time came in a deal which valued him between $60m and $75m according to different reports. Justify stood his first season at Ashford at $150,000 but such has been his early success that he was listed as ‘private’ this covering season.

Justify, whose dam is by a Breeders’ Cup Classic winner in Ghostzapper, is therefore a second Triple Crown winner at Ashford, already home to American Pharoah who landed the Breeders’ Cup Classic in addition to the Triple Crown just three years before Justify. But his stud fee tells a different story, one which started out at $200,000 but now stands at just $50,000, and it’s pretty clear which of the two will receive most support from Coolmore from now on.

For all kinds of reasons, a Breeders’ Cup Classic would be hugely significant for Justify’s son City of Troy. He’d be a first winner of the race for his trainer and for the Coolmore partners and the first Derby winner to win it – Galileo, who sired his dam, is the only other one to try. As we’ve seen, Aidan O’Brien has been trying to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic for almost a quarter of a century now, his attempts to do also being part of the still longer story of Coolmore’s American stallions bound up in City of Troy’s pedigree going right back to the days of Robert Sangster’s million-dollar yearling purchase Storm Bird.

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