Varsfontein Stud is having a season to remember. Consistently ranked amongst the country’s leading breeders, the nursery of champions currently finds itself in third spot on the breeders log, trailing only Drakenstein and Wilgerbosdrift/Mauritzfontein.
A nursery of champions – the magnificent Varsfontein Stud in Paarl (Pic – Jeremy Nelson)
The stud also boasts a stallion roster which is arguably the envy of every breeding outfit in South Africa, for standing alongside reigning champion Gimmethegreenlight are perennial top five stallion
Master Of My Fate and his close relative Erik The Red, who is having a fine time of it right now with his first crop runners.
Remarkably, both hail from a female family which Varsfontein has nurtured since its purchase of the Bush Telegraph mare Secret Pact in 1998 for a whopping R750,000, a South African record price for a broodmare at the time. That came as no surprise, given that she was a multiple Gr1-placed stakes winning own sister to Horse of the Year London News.
Secret Pact features as the grandam of both Master Of My Fate and Erik The Red, the former being out of her champion daughter Promisefrommyheart, whose Gr1 winning half-sister Covenant is the dam of Erik The Red.
Captain Al’s exciting son Erik The Red – champion freshman sire elect (Pic – Jeremy Nelson)
Master Of My Fate currently occupies third spot behind Vercingetorix and Gimmethegreenlight on the General Sires List, whilst Erik The Red has made a cracking start to his stud career with 13 individual first crop winners to his name.
Yet it is a maiden, the filly Reigning Alice, who became her sire’s first black type performer when she ran a close-up third in the Listed Storm Bird Stakes in her only start to date.
As a racehorse, Erik The Red rattled off four consecutive wins at two, three of which at stakes level.
After cracking his maiden by five lengths second time out, he claimed the Listed Summer Juvenile Stakes, graduated to Gr3 winner with a game victory in the Cape of Good Hope Nursery and sauntered home in the Listed Somerset 1200.
That winning streak came to an end when he finished fourth in the Gr1 Gold Medallion and after running third in the Gr3 Golden Horseshoe, he redeemed himself with a hard-fought win in the Gr2 Umkhomazi Stakes.
Three months later, the colt became the first three-year-old in 22 years to claim the Gr2 Cape Merchants at Kenilworth.
Erik The Red in race action (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
A coveted Gr1 success eluded him when he could only finish sixth behind Run Fox Run in the Cape Flying Championship, which proved to be his swan song, with the announcement soon thereafter that he would return to birthplace Varsfontein for stallion duties.
Notwithstanding the lack of a Gr1 win on his resume, he was quickly syndicated, and such was his popularity that he covered a three-figure book of mares, which ensured he had plenty of ammunition to go to war with.
Remarkably, it wasn’t until mid-February that Erik The Red celebrated his first winner with the Varsfontein-bred colt Tenjiku, who broke his maiden over 1400m at Turffontein in his fourth start, having chased home subsequent Gr3 winner Elegantrix in his previous outing.
Now a gelding, he has since followed up with a facile two-length victory over 1500m at the Vaal.
It is interesting to note that Tenjiku’s dam Kawakami is a daughter of Master Of My Fate, which gives inbreeding to Secret Pact.
The cross was again validated when fellow Varsfontein-bred filly North Star romped to an almost five-length win on debut. She too is out of a Master Of My Fate mare, as are the placed duo of Magnus The Good and Red Wave.
That most of Erik The Red’s winners have hit their straps in the second half of the racing season shows they should reach their full powers as three-year-olds.
As for now, he is sure to be crowned Champion first-season sire, a feat similarly achieved by paternal half-brother One World last season.
It’s certainly a feather in the cap of their sire Captain Al, who led the juvenile sires list for eight straight years and had no peer as a source of precocious two-year-olds.
He has single-handedly established a flourishing sire line that looks set to endure in the immediate future, especially as he has another exciting stallion son waiting in the wings, the Ridgemont-based Triple Crown winner Malmoos, who just happens to be out of Promisefrommyheart’s stakes winning daughter Justthewayyouare.
He too, is a product of the Varsfontein paddocks and will be represented by his first runners next season.
