SA Derby winner’s blueblood ancestry

ESCADO, the Casino Prince gelding who at Morphettville on May 4 annexed the Group One South Australian Derby (2500m), joins a long list of top level winners descending from Frizette, a1905 American bred mare who carried the stigma of being a half-bred and whose descendants were initially excluded from the bible of world breeding, the British Stud Book.

In much of the first half a last century many horses bred in America and Australasia were frozen out of this august register of blue blood by what was referred to as the Jersey Act. Subsequently lifted, it prohibited registration of horses in the Book unless all their ancestors had been registered.

Although Frizette was pure maternally, she was by an influential American sire, Hamburg, who was debarred. Acceptance came after Frizette became a distinguished broodmare, and in particular the third dam of Tourbillon, a French Derby winner and later an influential sire.

The paternal great grandsire of champion Australian sire Better Boy,Tourbillon was ranked as half-bred by the Stud Book until late in his life. His success is attributed to being an impetus for the lifting of the Jersey Act.

If descendants of Frizette, the mother of four good daughters, had remained out in the cold it would have cost the world dearly. One of her daughters, Frizeur, was the fifth dam in separate branches of both Mr. Prospector and Seattle Slew, while another, Princess Palatine, is the eighth dam on the bottom line in the pedigree of Escado.

Princess Palatine challenges as the strongest branch of Frizette in the world today for the production of goodness, earning a reputation as a versatile source of classic horses, top sprinters, sires and distinguished broodmares.

One of the current brigade of the Princess Palatine descendants is Elusive Quality, the Darley America – Australia shuttler who is a world class sire. His progeny include Smarty Jones, a Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, and Sepoy, a Blue Diamond and Golden Slipper winner embarking on a sire career with Darley in Australia and England.

Inbred to Frizette as he is by a son of Mr. Prospector, Elusive Quality is from an unraced daughter of Ivory Wand, a first class Sir Ivor American sprinter who is a half-sister to four others who won races at Group level. One of them, the In Reality dual Group 2 and Group 3 winner Truly Bound, is the third dam of Escado.

Bred by Kineld Thoroughbred Racing,Victoria and passed in at $55,000/$60,000 when offered by the Bombora Downs Stud at the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale, Escado, like Vinery Stud’s new sire All Too Hard, is from the first crop of the Patinack Farm located Flying Spur winner Casino Prince and is the first foal of Secret Cause, a winner in 15 starts in Victoria at Stony Creek (2100m) and Kyneton (1469m).

Secret Cause is bred on an awesome sire cross, being an Australian bred daughter of Giant’s Causeway (USA), a Storm Cat  European Horse of the Year and, from his base at Coolmore’s Ashford in Kentucky, a world leading sire, and from Secret Truth, an unraced Canadian foaled daughter of one of America’s greatest ever racehorses, Secretariat.

Giant’s Causeway visited Coolmore in the Hunter Valley in 2002, 03 and 04, leaving over 250 foals, including many females who should be valuable for breeding.

Like Elusive Quality inbred to Frizette, resulting from Flying Spur being out of a Mr. Prospector mare, Escado has had 14 starts for three wins, two
at 1400m at Cranbourne and the Oaks. Raced by ten owners and trained at Mornington by Matt Laurie, he has been tried twice at 2500m for the Derby victory and a respectable sixth of 16 in the Victoria Derby.

Story by Brian Russell

Tags: Escado

Category: Breeding