Blue Door
A large dose of intricate breeding appears to have worked wonders with Blue Door (Stay Inside), Bjorn Baker’s exciting two-year-old filly who followed a 7.63-length barrier trial romp with a debut victory in Saturday’s Kindergarten Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m).
What immediately catches the eye is that she’s inbred to one of Australia’s great blue hens in Shantha’s Choice (Canny Lad) and to the all-time king Danehill (Danzig), who’s there in triplicate.
Better still, Shantha’s Choice isn’t repeated through that fairly common doubling of her most famous son, the breed-shaping Redoute’s Choice (Danehill), but by him and one of her daughters, making for a 5m x 3f duplication.
Redoute’s is Blue Door’s fourth sire, via Not A Single Doubt, Extreme Choice and Stay Inside.
And Shantha’s Choice also comes in powerfully at the bottom as Blue Door’s third dam, via her daughter Monsoon Wedding (Danehill) and dam Notting Hill (Pierro).
Throw in a 6m, 4m, 6m x 4m of Danzig (Northern Dancer) – who’s Danehill’s sire but is also represented in the second of those spots by Stay Inside’s damsire Anabaa – and the recipe grows stronger.
And the reinforcements keep coming with a 5m x 6m of the influential Mr Prospector (Raise A Native) and a 6f x 6m, in slightly stronger locations, of Sir Tristram (Sir Ivor). He’s there as the damsire of Nothin’ Leica Dane (Danehill), who’s Stay Inside’s second damsire, and as the imported head of the sireline leading to Notting Hill, through Zabeel, Octagonal, Lonhro and Pierro.
Blue Door is the most exciting product so far from the relatively new southern operation of American Craig Bernick’s Armitage Australia. His enterprise here is entwined with Yarraman Park and is handled by bloodstock agent Will Johnson, who previously worked amongst Bernick’s European endeavours, handled by Ireland’s Hubie De Burgh.
And Blue Door has some regal, not to say expensive, female lines.
Notting Hill was the top-priced filly at the 2016 Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale, knocked down from Coolmore’s draft to De Burgh Equine and James Harron for $1.4 million.
She managed only four starts for Kris Lees, winning at Kempsey and Muswellbrook and placing at Taree and Newcastle, before her ownership decided her racetrack deeds would probably not outshine her pedigree, and retired her.
A week later, her sparse racing CV didn’t stop Newgate paying a hefty $950,000 for her as a late three-year-old at the MM National Broodmare Sale of 2018. She later found her way into Bernick’s ownership, after being shipped to America and being put in-foal to War Front (Danzig), a mating that produced a winning filly named Maroon Bells.
Blue Door’s second dam Monsoon Wedding trumped her daughter Notting Hill, money wise. Coolmore paid $2.3 million for her in the Teeley Dispersal at the MM broodmare sale of 2014.
Monsoon Wedding ran third at Group 2 and Listed level, but the greater appeal was her full sisterhood to Redoute’s Choice and his fellow elite winner Platinum Scissors.
She was also a half-sister to another Group 1 victor in Manhattan Rain (Encosta De Lago) and his Listed-winning brother Echoes Of Heaven, and dual stakes winner Sliding Cube (Rock Of Gibraltar) – who’s now best known as the sire of Group 1-producing sire Rubick (Encosta De Lago).
And then you have Shantha’s Choice as third dam. For the record, her racing career consisted of only two starts, for a win at Seymour and a second at Sandown in July, 1995. But that hardly matters, considering her subsequent breeding record – part of the reason Bernick was so keen to put her to Stay Inside.
“Craig loves inbreeding to dominant females, so we came up with Stay Inside,” Johnson told It’s In The Blood. “He’s big on that Rasmussen factor of repeating dominant females.
“You can’t have too much of a good thing, but also, even if the foal isn’t much good on the racetrack, they can often produce something good.
“Plus the physical mating looked good, and the resultant filly was a very good filly. She walked extremely well and now it appears she can gallop extremely well.
“If the physical matches up with a bit of pedigree analysis, one, you’re rewarded on the sales ground, and two, you’ll be rewarded on the track.
“First and foremost Craig is trying to breed racehorses and hence looked into the duplication of Shantha’s choice, which was more important than the three lines of Danehill.”
Johnson said it was likely he and Bernick would stick with sires with Redoute’s Choice in their pedigree to again duplicate Shantha’s Choice in Notting Hill’s next cover. Stay Inside is an obvious – and now proven – choice, but there’s also a booming sire in The Autumn Sun (Redoute’s Choice) to consider. Another son, Alabama Express, could qualify as an option.
Blue Door became Stay Inside’s third stakes winner, after colt Incognito in Randwick’s Breeders’ Plate (Gr 3, 1000m) and filly Lassified in Trentham’s Wellesley Stakes (Listed, 1100m).
After a slightly quiet start, Stay Inside has risen to second on the Australian first season sires’ table behind only Home Affairs (I Am Invincible), who’s assured of the title due to his son Guest House’s Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) win.
However, Stay Inside is first on the table by winners (four) and equal-first by black type victors (two).
The seven-year-old – who could be in for a fifth season fee bump from his 2025 mark of $66,000 (inc GST) – carries double Danehill at 4m x 4m in his pedigree. The GOAT is his fourth sire and the second sire of his second dam, via his son Nothin’ Leica Dane.
But despite many historical aversions to double Danehill, especially of the double male variety, and the great number of Australian mares with Danehill in their bloodlines (such as Notting Hill), Newgate’s Henry Field is unconcerned.
“Double Danehill isn’t an issue if you’ve got a good horse,” Field said.
Blue Door is a case in point. Since Danehill is her second damsire, she has him in triplicate at 5m, 5m x 3f. It didn’t look to have slowed her down on her debut.
Raced by John Singleton, Blue Door shapes as the earliest star performer among three to race in Australia out of Notting Hill.
All were bred by Armitage and sold at Easter sales by Yarraman Park, but it’s only Blue Door who has that doubling of Shantha’s Choice, and the tripling of Danehill, since the first two are by I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), who carries neither Shantha’s Choice nor Danehill.
Blue Door fetched $400,000, knocked down to Waterhouse-Bott and Kestrel Thoroughbreds, before finding her way to Baker’s stable in Singleton’s colours.
Her year-older half-sister was the fifth-top lot at Inglis Easter 2024, bought by Victoria’s Hilldene Farm for $1.8 million. Now known as Thalestris, the three-year-old has a Geelong placing among two starts for Anthony and Sam Freedman.
Incidentally, two spots above her on that Easter 2024 pecking order (still way behind Winx’s retired unraced $10 million filly Quinceanera) was the $2.2 million buy Plaintiff (Zoustar). While Blue Door won Randwick’s first race on Saturday, Plaintiff won the last, in the P J Bell Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m).
Notting Hill’s first Australian foal, Bella Corazon, fetched $400,000 when bought by Annabel Neasham (now Annabel Archibald). She’s won thrice from 17 starts, including once at Rosehill.
Blue Door’s pedigree has considerable quality deeper in as well.
The main female influence is the ubiquitous Natalma (Native Dancer), with 12 mentions from the sixth to the ninth removes, while another key blue hen in Lalun (Djeddah) is repeated five times, four of those in the dam’s half.
Nearco (Pharos) is the dominant stallion, with 18 appearances.
Aside from Stay Inside’s success itself, what’s also delighting Field is the consideration of who he is by – Newgate’s flagbearing sub-fertile star Extreme Choice (Not A Single Doubt).
Stay Inside is one of two sons of Extreme Choice with first crop stakes winners, with Rosemont’s Extreme Warrior having sired Eternal Warrior, who Lloyd Kennewell has trained to a debut victory in Caulfield’s Merson Cooper Stakes (Listed, 1000m), plus a third in the Blue Diamond Prelude (Gr 3, 1100m) and a 2.05-length sixth in the Blue Diamond Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
Extreme Choice – the headlining sire from last month’s Inglis Easter Yearling Sale with seven seven-figure lots – in fact has three sons in the top eight on the Australian first season sires’ table, with Newgate’s Tiger Of Malay currently third, with the dual Listed-placed filly Momentlikethese his main performer.
“Extreme Choice is looking like a sire of sires now, and that’s so important,” Field said. “He’s already had two sons produce stakes winners, and Stay Inside just couldn’t be going any better.
“So we’re just thrilled with the whole picture, the whole lineage.”