ENGLISH TEXTS
first trained by Jean-Claude Rouget and raced under the colors of Bertrand Bélinguier. She was a solid handicapper. Her owner at the time placed her with me. I kept Diamond Carl’ s dam because one day, Guy Cherel told me‘ she’ s no superstar, but keep her.’” A lifetime of work rewarded. After more than 1,200 births at Haras des Éclos, Laurence Gagneux still has the same energy and ambition: to breed champions like Diamond Carl, and others such as Terrefort( Gr. 1), Penny’ s Picnic( Gr. 2), Vieno Griego, Tangaspeed, and Taruma( Listed), to name just a few.
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BREEDING
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Par Jocelyn de Moubray
THE GREY DYNASTY
Field of Gold, Juddmonte’ s brilliant three year old son of Kingman, was without any doubt the equine star of Royal Ascot. The grey colt’ s 3 ½ length victory in the Group 1 S t James’ s Palace Stakes established him as the best of his generation in Europe, and he is assured of a place as a stallion at his owner’ s Banstead Manor Stud where he will join his sire and Frankel.
Juddmonte have had other Champions and Kingman too has other top racehorse sons retire to stud but what will make Field of Gold a little different is the fact that he is grey. There have been other grey stallions in Britain and Ireland in recent decades, the most successful current ones are Yeomanstown Stud’ s Dark Angel and Whitsbury Manor’ s Havana Grey, who is out of a Dark Angel mare, but it is has been in France and the United States that greys or grays have played a major role in racing and breeding. Grey skin colour in horses is a autosomal dominant gene, which means that there is a 50 % chance that the progeny of a grey horse will be grey, and those who carry two grey genes are, like the stallion Linamix, pure grey breeders, Jean Luc Lagardere’ s champion produced only grey horses. It also means that every grey horse has at least one grey parent, and so it is easy to see where any grey horse’ s coat colour comes from. Over the last fifty years almost without exception the best grey horses in Europe and the United States are descended from one of two European bred stallions; either Mahmoud, the Aga Khan III’ s 1936 Derby winner who stood first in England and then from 1941 at Whitney Farm, Kentucky, known today as Gainesway, or Grey Sovereign, who retired to stud in England in 1953. Both Mahmoud and Grey Sovereign were themselves descendants of Mumtaz Mahal, the brilliant daughter of The Tetrarch a champion two year old and sprinter in England who the Aga Khan III had purchased as a yearling in 1922 for the crazy price of 9,100 Guineas, about 600,000 Guineas in today’ s money. In Field of Gold’ s case his second dam, the grey mare Princess Serena is a daughter of the gray stallion Unbridled Song, himself out of a Caro mare. Caro was a champion in France, the winner of the Poule d’ Essai des Poulains, the Ispahan and the Ganay and then a hugely successful stallion first in France, where he produced the Classic winners Crystal Palace and Madelia as well as the German Champion Nebos, and in the United States where he stood at Spendthrift from 1978 and was sire of the Derby winner Winning Colors as well as Cozzene, Siberian Express and many others. Caro himself was a grandson of Grey Sovereign and son of Fortino who won the Prix de l’ Abbaye de Longchamp in 1962 in the colours of Francois Dupre trained by Francois Mathet. Grey Sovereign was bred in England by the bookmaker William Hill and offered for sale as a yearling in 1949, the year after his half-brother Nimbus had won the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby. The grey colt was sold for only 6,700 Guineas,( 200,000 Guineas in 2025 terms) with potential buyers having been put off by the temperament he showed in the walking ring before the sale.
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