ENGLISH TEXTS crop conceived there has reached an average of nearly € 350,000 .
Born on February 4 th , 2008 , at the Bryce family ’ s Laundry Cottage Stud in Hertfordshire , north of London , Wootton Bassett was bought as a yearling for £ 46,000 at Goffs UK by Bobby O ’ Ryan . He finished 2010 unbeaten in five starts , including the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère , but didn ’ t win anything at 3 years old .
So , it wasn ’ t exactly a stampede , and he started his stud career at Étreham at € 6,000 . Let ’ s compare his stud career , in terms of stud fee , with three other stallions who entered stud around the same time , give or take a few years , and we get the following table with the fees offered for Siyouni , Le Havre and Zarak , who is the youngest of the four since he arrived at stud eight to six years after the others , and at a higher fee , given his pedigree . The son of Dubawi and Zarkava would certainly have fetched more than £ 46,000 at the sales if he had been presented as a yearling ... And even more than £ 460,000 !
So we start with the first year at stud for these four stallions and what do we notice ? A very similar progression for Wootton Bassett and Siyouni . The former started at € 6,000 but two years later , he had dropped to € 4,000 before bouncing back to € 6,000 in 2016 , then to € 20,000 in 2017 , when his first crop were 4-year-olds , like Almanzor . Le Havre also rose to € 20,000 after seven years but did not exceed € 60,000 , the current fee for Zarak , who had started higher in a more buoyant market than the early 2010s .
Siyouni ’ s progression was more linear than Wootton Bassett ’ s and his stud fee increased sharply from € 7,000 to € 20,000 in his fifth year at stud , while Wootton Bassett reached this fee at the end of his 7 th covering season . They were both at € 100,000 after ten years , and Wootton Bassett moved ahead a year later . Siyouni has just been raised to € 200,000 for 2025 , like Wootton Bassett this season .
Clearly , each entry into stud is a return to zero , the start of a completely new and always uncertain career .
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JOCKEY
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LIFE OF RYAN IS NOW
Two jockeys stood out at the Arc weekend . First Christophe Soumillon , of course , who remains our best in France ( Aidan O ’ Brien says so ). He won the Royallieu ( Gr1 ) at 20 / 1 and the Lagardère ( Gr1 ) with Camille Pissarro at 9 / 1 . Both for Ballydoyle . Then the Qatar Arabian World Cup ( Gr1PA ) with Al Ghadeer , for the rest of the world .
Ryan Moore is something else again . He has become so ubiquitous in the four corners of the racing world that you could mistake him for a prophet , the Beatles , or a smartphone brand . A very strange smartphone , whose volume would be stuck at a minimum ( an interesting social innovation to improve public transport , by the way ) but whose camera could detect a bad leader before you ’ re stuck behind it . Ecce the Houdini of equine prisons .
His record for the Arc weekend is three wins including a Gr1 with Kyprios , the interstellar champion of stayers , and a 3 rd place in the Arc with Los Angeles at 8.10 .
In a long and fascinating interview with Paul Hayward for TDN Europe , the calm Briton explains that this 3 rd place is a bit disappointing , because he was going there to win . He ’ s not kidding . But he ’ s not talking nonsense either .
These few lines , which we strongly encourage you to translate using the many translation aids , as graceful as Galorama , which abound today on the internet , testify to a lively and alert mind , and a sense of observation capable of exceeding the two ears pointed in front of him . Ryan Moore is the opposite of an LFI MP : he speaks little but he speaks well . And he ’ s more than often right .
Thirteen days after the Arc , this putative successor to Lester Piggott , a monster from a time when racing was still a main street feature , won a new Gr1 with Kyprios , at Ascot , in the Long Distance Cup ( Gr1 ). Again , this stainless bronze equine , this Kyprios so prodigal , returned from hell in full light and better than ever . A Greek god .
“ It ’ s always the horses ,” explains his jockey in his interview , without false modesty , without flattery , because simply , this is the reflection of his reality : in Tokyo , Melbourne and San Diego , wherever he goes , it is on horseback that he makes his way . Also because he did not become such an icon by nursing his image or dreams of better tomorrows , but only thinking about what he is doing , and which he summarizes as follows : “ to get from here to there as fast as possible .”
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