Breaking new ground

ONELINER STABLES is a new name on the pages of Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1, but the story of the Lowry family’s journey from Tipperary to this year’s sale is 15 years in the making.

Siblings Gerard and Michelle, and father Jimmy Lowry, are familiar faces on the NH sale circuit where they have developed a successful business over the past 15 years.

Buyers of the Oneliner stock include David Minton, Anthony Bromley, Henrietta Knight and Nicky Richards. In just its third year, the Lowrys sold an Oscar gelding at Tattersalls Ireland – subsequently named Oscars Well he became a dual Grade 1-winning novice hurdler for Jessica Harrington and was placed in six more top level races.

The connection with top-class horses goes back even further as Jimmy managed the mares at Moygaddy Stud in Maynooth, County Kildare when the champion sprinter Habibti was foaled and raised.

“Our father bred Oneliner. He was trained by Neville Callaghan and won a couple of races, ridden by Willie Carson and Frankie Dettori, so that’s where the name comes from.

“It’s a conversation starter at the sales, people ask the question and think it’s because our father is known for witty phrase or oneliners,” smiles Gerard Lowry.

The new chapter in the story of Oneliner Stables begins on Tuesday, October 8, when Lot 146 becomes the first horse consigned by the team to sell in Book 1.

A son of Exceed And Excel, he was purchased at Goffs November Foal Sale for €100,000 and is a half-brother to three winners, all by sons of Danehill, which was a strong motivator for his purchase.

The mare is a half-sister to Strategic Prince, who is by Dansili, so the Danehill line has worked with two generations of the family. The third dam bred the champion Ramruma. Exceed And Excel is Darley’s most successful shuttle sire with 12 individual Group 1 winners and over 150 stakes winners.

The colt’s damsire is Dubai Destination and the success of the son of Kingmambo, and indeed Kingmambo himself, in that role formed another piece of an attractive puzzle: Exceed And Excel over Dubai Destination has already produced the Group 1 winner Thunder Snow, who is a son of Helmet (Exceed And Excel).

Dubai Destination is also the broodmare sire of Golden Horn, Postponed and Dutch Connection, while Buratino, whose first yearlings are selling this year, is by Exceed And Excel out of a Kingmambo mare so the cross has worked that way too.

“Physically the colt has matured in the intervening ten months and I am pleased with his development. He is very typical of his sire in that he is a strong, precocious horse but he also moves very well,” says Lowry.

His expensive price tag is readily explained by both his sire, who continues to add glory to his incredible family’s legacy as a stallion, his damsire and the strong Aga Khan family from which he springs.

Sea The Stars is now the sire of 12 individual Group 1 winners and he added Irish Oaks heroine Star Catcher to his role of honour this summer.

Trained by John Gosden she was one of the three 2019 Royal Ascot Group winners for the Giltown Stud resident – the others being the brilliant stayer Stradivarius and Crystal Ocean, who won his deserved first Group 1 in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

This particular son of Sea The Stars is a half-brother to two winners, both Listed-placed, out of Emreliya, a daughter of Danehill Dancer. He is an influential broodmare sire with champion Minding, The Gurkha, Alice Springs, Circus Maximus and Sovereign all produced by his daughters and sired by Sea The Stars’s half-brother Galileo.

The dual Group 2 winner Sir Dancealot also has Danehill Dancer as his sire and he is by Sir Prancealot, a son of Tamayuz who is descended, like Galileo and Sea The Stars, from Allegretta.

“Danehill Dancer is a fantastic broodmare sire and that was a big factor, as was how well Danehill Dancer has worked with Galileo,” remarks Lowry. “That cross is a proven source of Group 1 winners and there is no reason to think that it wouldn’t work with Galileo’s half-brother. It has worked out well as this year Lavender’s Blue has come out and won the Group 3 Atalanta Stakes.”

There is evidence to back up that theory as Sea The Stars has sired the Group 1-placed Stellar Mass, Star Terms and My Titania out of mares by Danehill and the French Listed winner and Group 1-placed filly Hebah out of a daughter of Desert King.

The colt’s dam line is equally important and Emreliya hails from one of the Aga Khan’s most famous families, that of the Group 1-winning half-sisters Enzeli, Estimate and Edabiya, with Ebadiyla, a champion three-year-old and winner of the Irish Oaks, this colt’s third dam.

The bay colt is the only Sea The Stars colt in Book 1 out of a Danehill Dancer mare and comes from the outstanding Aga Khan pedigree that seems to come up with a good horse every year.

The mare has produced two black-type horses from her first two runners so she has made the right start at stud and there are few Sea The Stars yearlings in the catalogue out of black-type-producing mares.

The family keeps on producing and its latest good horse is recent Jockey Club Oaks Invitational (G1) winner Edisa, while it is, of course the family of Sea The Stars’s first-crop dual Group 1 winner and champion, the talented Taghrooda.