Nine Tail Cat - first SA-bred winner for Black Minnaloushe
Much-travelled Black Minnaloushe shuttled between the USA and New Zealand before being acquired to stand in South Africa and was credited with his first locally-bred winner when colt Nine Tail Cat made an emphatic winning debut over 1000m at Scottsville on Tuesday. Black Minnaloushe’s last New Zealand-bred crop included last season’s SA Gr 1 winning two-year-old Gold Onyx.
Black Minnaloushe won four races between 1200m and 1600m in the UK and Ireland, winning the Gr 1 Irish 2000 Guineas of 2001 before capturing the Gr 1 St James Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot the same year, after which he did not race again. He earned a Timeform rating of 123.
Black Minnaloushe entered stud in 2002 and has been a more than decent sire in both hemispheres. His progeny include multiple Gr 1 winner and New Zealand champion two-year-old colt Jokers Wild, American Gr 1 winner Black Mamba, Gr 2 winner Black Astor, and a host of other Stakes winning performers. His most notable achievement came after he’d already arrived in South Africa, when his son Dancing In Silks won the Gr 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint of 2009.
Black Minnaloushe is a son of Storm Cat, the world leading sire whose sons at stud include the successful Giant’s Causeway, Forestry, Harlan, and Forest Wildcat (sire of Var). Black Minnaloushe is out of the Green Dancer mare Coral Dance, who won three races and finished second at Gr 1 level in France. Coral Dance is dam of three times USA Gr 1 winner Nasr el Arab and of Pennnekamp, the champion European two-year-old of 1994 who went on to win the 2000 Guineas and earn a Timeform rating of 130. Coral Dance is the second dam of Round Pound, whose two wins at Gr 1 level in the USA included the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
Black Minnaloushe arrived in South Africa in 2007 and stands at Maine Chance Farms in the Western Cape. The thirteen-year-old stallion stood for a fee of R60 000 in 2010.
