Three classic races this weekend with diverse stories abounding and here we’ve taken more than the 280 social characters to take a longer look at the first of them, 2000 Guineas winner Poetic Flare.
The Jim Bolger-trained Poetic Flare just edged Master Of The Seas to emulate his sire Dawn Approach and land his first Group 1 victory at Newmarket, (pic: HRI).
A cracking good runner winning the Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes it’s easy to forget that the Bolger-bred and trained Dawn Approach was the Champion Two-Year-Old of 2012 when he won at Royal Ascot and ended his season with Group 1 wins in the National and Dewhurst Stakes.
As a son of Galileo’s champion son New Approach he understandably retired to stud amidst much fanfare however, it is fair to say his performance at stud has not remotely matched his race record.
From a first-crop of 111 conceived at Kildangan Stud at a fee of €35,000 he got four stakes performers in 2017 – Masaya, Mary Tudor, Dawn Delivers and Fast Approach – but failed to get a stakes winner and currently has 14 stakes winners from 475 runners although to be fair he does have another 12 stakes-placed runners.
Dawn Approach covered just 32 mares in 2020 and he will now cover at Bolger’s own Redmondstown Stud in Ireland alongside Parish Hall and Vocalised.
While she is by the sprinter Phone Trick, Dawn Approach’s female family has plenty of middle-distance markers with his granddam by the Champion Kentucky Derby winner and stamina influence Pleasant Colony with his third-dam the winning Alydar mare Kittihawk Miss, a sister to six-time Gr1 winner Miss Oceana.
His fourth dam Kittiwake won the 1973 Gr2 Columbiana Handicap and is by Epsom Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Sea Bird.
Given the obvious attraction of sending Danehill-line mares to Dawn Approach he only has three stakes winner bred this way, the Australian Gr3 winner Paulele, Listed winner Tahitian Dancer and Poetic Flare.
Poetic Flare is a Bolger product on both sides of his pedigree.
He is a three-quarter brother the English and Irish Listed winner Glamorous Approach, also placed in the Gr3 Munster Oaks.
His granddam Elida is a Royal Academy half-sister to Derrinstown 1000 Guineas Trial Stakes winner Speirbhean (Danehill), the dam of another Bolger-trained Champion in Teofilo (Galileo) while fourth dam is the Champion Canadian Older Mare of 1975 in Victorian Queen.