It takes a special horse to become a dual Classic winner, but to sire the winner of the same two Classics in his very first crop, it takes Shamardal.
Winner of the Poule d’Essai des Poulains and Prix du Jockey-Club as two legs of a back-to-back Group One hat-trick in 2005, Shamardal’s example was followed by his son Lope De Vega at Longchamp and Chantilly just five years later.
Trained in France, carrying an Irish suffix for his German owner/breeder Gestut Ammerland, Lope De Vega is just one of five Group One winners for his sire, who was responsible for the highest percentage of Group winners to runners of any stallion in Europe in 2009-2010. His mark of 7% narrowly outpoints his fellow Darley stallion Dubawi, on 6.9%.
In 2010, Shamardal, whose eldest runners were then only three, also shared top billing alongside the established elite sire Danehill Dancer in the rankings for number of Stakes winners, with each claiming 23. Again, he only just held sway over Dubawi on 22.
Shamardal’s early forays down under have also garnered success, with two of his top-flight winners having come on Australian soil, where he is the sire of VRC Oaks winner Faint Perfume and crack miler Captain Sonador.
Since 2009 he has amassed seven Group-winners, a figure not bettered in the Northern Hemisphere with the great Galileo sharing this mark. Having been leading first-season sire in Britain and Ireland in 2009, and second in the table for overall sires of two-year-olds to Danehill Dancer, Shamardal unsurprisingly has been responsible for plenty of smart juveniles, including the G1 Racing Post Trophy winner Casamento, G3 Solario Stakes winner Shakespearean, who went on to win the G2 Hungerford Stakes, and the speedy grey Arctic, who won the G3 Go And Go Round Tower Stakes on only his third start.
Storm Cat and Mr Prospector have been two of the most successful stallions in the US in recent times and they come together in the pedigree of Shamardal who is by Storm Cat’s son Giant’s Causeway, the multiple American champion sire.
Shamardal’s dam Helsinki is by the Mr Prospector stallion Machiavellian and she is a full-sister to one of America’s hottest stallions of the moment, Street Cry.
The two influential lines have combined to create not only a top-class racehorse but one who will become a conduit for other great racehorses down the line.
