Guineas winner’s dam won over hurdles

Press, 6 May 1981, Page 31

Guineas winner’s dam won over hurdles

By

J. J. BOYLE

To-Agori-NJou, winw of the Two Thousand guineas at Newmarket on Saturday, is the product of a Mate which won over hurdles and was sired by Cracksman. “Our Cracksman?" someone phoned in to ask yesterday. The word was around that the Guineas winner’s dam. Sarah Van Fleet, was sired by the New Zealapdbred Cracksman, that talented son of Le Filou which was sold to the Northern Hemisphere after winning the Great Northern Derby, the New Zealand St Leger and other races from Ray Cotter’s Te Rapa stable. Not so. The Cracksman in the Guineas winner’s pedigree was by the St Leger

winner, Chwossaire, out of Nearly, by Nearcp out of Lost Soul, by Solarlo. out of the famous foundation mare Orlass. Cracksman was not a top class racehorse, lut wop five races including the St Leger Trial at Ripon and the July Stayers Stakes over two miles at Sandown. He was no resounding success as a sire, and ope of his best winners has been the Steeplechaser, Stopped. A feature of ihe pedigree of Tq-Agori-Mou is that his dam Sarah Van Fleet performed her best deeds in racing as a hurdler. She failed to win ! at two and three years and gained her first success in a lowly two-miler at Mallow when she was four. She won only once more on the flat but won four hurdle races in Ireland as a six-year-old. -To her. f jrst mating, with Laser Light, Sarah Van produced Van Laser, winner of five -races including -a sponsored handicap at Ascot,

La Rage, the dam of Van Fleet, never raced, and the next dam, HeJFs Fury, won only ope small race. However this is the same branch of the Pretty Polly family that produced such notabilities as the Derby winner, st Paddy, Northern Dancer’s sire Nearctic, Grundy’s sire Great Nephew, Lady Sybil, and Lucyrow. Lucyrowe’s half-brother Greek God, was fashioning a good record as a stallion in Canterbury until his untimely death. Tp-Agari-Mpu’s sire, Tudor Music was by one of the most brilliant of the sons of Tudor Minstrel • Tudor Melody. Tudor Music stood at the Irish National Stud until his death at the age of 13 in 1979. He was a talented sprinter and excelled at six furlongs, over which he wpn the Richmond Stakes and Gimcrack Stakes as a two-year-old, .and the July! Cup and the. Cork and Orrery gtakes at three years.-