Miss Roumbini

Miss Roumbini (Zoustar) showed her class again by scorching over the Gold Coast turf to win last Friday night’s Magic Millions Fillies & Mares (1300m), to make it five wins from nine starts and sound a loud warning of even better things to come.
In her career so far, she’s not only proving an exciting sprinting mare, but she’s providing more proof for a particularly potent nick, whilst also showing that some of the things you hear in breeding might need closer examination.
That nick is Zoustar (Northern Meteor) over Fastnet Rock (Danehill). It has yielded 45 winners from 56 starters, at a winners-to-runners ratio of 80 per cent.
The next most prolific damsires for Widden’s flagbearer are are More Than Ready (Southern Halo) and Exceed And Excel (Danehill), with identical figures of 20 winners at 66 per cent.
Zoustar over Fastnet Rock has produced six stakes winners, at ten per cent of runners, which is well short of the best stakes-winners-to-runners figure among Zoustar’s nicks. That gong should probably go to Snitzel (Redoute’s Choice), with four stakes winners from 16 runners at 25 per cent, though from a smaller sample size Charge Forward (Red Ransom) has three from nine at 33 per cent.
But Zoustar and Fastnet Rock are a lethal combination at the elite end. Out of Zoustar’s seven Australian Group 1 winners, three are from Fastnet Rock mares – Zougotcha, Joliestar and Climbing Star.
No other damsire has more than one, and Snitzel has none, though he does have burgeoning star Growing Empire.
Fastnet Rock is also Zoustar’s most populous nick by far – with 66 foals born that way ahead of second-best Exceed And Excel on 37. It’s not just because of the high number of Fastnet Rock mares out there, but because breeders have cottoned on to the combination’s great promise.
And the interesting thing about that is that the nick laughs in the face of one of the most oft-repeated axioms in Australian breeding – that duplicating Danehill is a dicey business, especially when it’s double male.
Putting Zoustar over Fastnet Rock brings a double-male duplication of Danehill relatively closely, at 4m x 3m.
The chances of this working remain slim, statistically, as with the odds against all Danehill double-ups. The best way to duplicate Danehill is gender-balanced, and even that has only a 3.48 per cent rate of stakes winners to runners. The figure for double female duplications is 3.29 per cent, and for male 2.48 per cent.
But according to the man who knows Zoustar better than anyone, Antony Thompson, the important part is that Danehill comes through Zoustar’s female half, not his sireline. (The above stats don’t differentiate between which parts of the pedigree Danehill is found).
“People say avoid double Danehill at all costs,” the Widden owner tells It’s In The Blood, “but, when it’s not a direct Danehill line stallion through the top line, you seem to be able to get away with it.
“Duplicating it with a stallion who’s by a Danehill line horse doesn’t work, but if Danehill’s coming in through the stallion’s female side, putting him with a mare from the Danehill line really seems to work.”
Those three aforementioned Group 1 winners – plus Miss Roumbini and many others – back that up. Zoustar has also had success with dual Group 2 winning sprinting mare Haut Brion Her, who not only had double male Danehill at 4m x 3m but through the very same male – Redoute’s Choice.
Other evidence comes from the fact another of Zoustar’s best nicks – with three stakes winners from 26 runners – is Danehill son Flying Spur, while a Danehill grandson in Not A Single Doubt (Redoute’s Choice) is the damsire of two stakes winners from 16 Zoustar runners.
Thompson also points out duplicating Danehill achieved success with two other Widden sires who had that GOAT as their second damsire – Sebring (More Than Ready) and Star Witness (Starcraft).
“They’re a couple of other stallions who’ve been able to really nick with Danehill since he comes through their bottom line not the bottom line,” Thompson said.
So why does it work with Zoustar?
As with so many things in breeding, it all goes back to Natalma (Native Dancer).
Putting Zoustar over Danehill immediately brings five appearances by the greatest of all blue hens in the first seven generations. Putting him over Fastnet Rock makes it six, neatly with three in each half – at 6m, 7m, 7f x 6m, 6f, 7m.
In Zoustar, Natalma is the dam of his fourth sire Northern Dancer (Nearctic), and comes in twice more through Danehill – as his third dam and the mother of his grandsire Northern Dancer.
Fastnet Rock has those two Danehill mentions, plus Northern Dancer is the third sire of his dam.
“Natalma is the obvious answer,” says Thompson. “By breeding Zoustar back to anything with Danehill, you’re matching the three strains of Natalma that Zoustar carries back to the two Danehill has, plus any others that damsire has in his female half.”
Sam Fairgray, CEO of Yulong Stud, which bred Miss Roumbini, agrees the mare was a shining example of how doubling Danehill can work.
“It’s interesting – everyone was probably against that early on, but now it seems to be quite a popular cross that has worked quite well,” says Fairgray.
Fairgray believes other aspects of Miss Roumbini’s pedigree have also worked a little magic, such as Nijinsky (Northern Dancer) being doubled at 6f x 5m. That’s achieved via influential daughter Dancing Show – the second dam of Zoustar’s damsire Redoute’s Choice – and Fastnet Rock’s sire Royal Academy.
There’s also another son of Northern Dancer proven to work well with Nijinsky in Fairy King, Zoustar’s fourth sire.
Throw in a 6f, 5m x 5m of Mr. Prospector (Raise A Native) through three different offspring, and Miss Roumbini’s pedigree starts to twinkle.
Trained by Mick Price and Michael Kent, the four-year-old is the first foal out of Bleu Roche, who Yulong bought for $600,000 at the Magic Millions National Broodmare Sale of 2019.
Bleu Roche hails from a reasonably obscure US female family, but Fairgray says a couple of leads from Sunlight were followed when she was booked in for a first mating with Zoustar.
“Zoustar was obviously a proven stallion, and Sunlight was running around at the time, and she had a few things in her pedigree similar to Bleu Roche,” Fairgray says.
The most obvious one was American stallion Valid Appeal (In Reality). He’s close up in the female family of Sunlight’s damsire Charge Forward (Red Ransom), and the grandsire of Bleu Roche’s dam, Esprit De Bleu (Little Expectations).
Plus, Sunlight’s female side is also heavily imbued with Danehill, her second damsire.
The fact Miss Roumbini is from a female line of three stakes-winning mares has also no doubt contributed to her looking like becoming one herself.
Bleu Roche won two of her nine starts, including Flemington’s Red Roses (Gr 3, 1100m) on VRC Oaks day.
Her dam Esprit De Bleu (Littleexpectations) won two of nine, including a Listed 1200-metre sprint at Canterbury Park – the one in Minnesota, not Sydney’s inner west.
And her dam, Bleu’s Apparition scored five wins, including in another Listed sprint at that Minnesota Canterbury, and threw another stakes winner aside from Esprit De Bleu.
Miss Roumbini was bought for $550,000 by Price and ARJB Racing at Magic Millions Gold Coast 2022. The following year her half-sister by Blue Point was knocked down to Spicer Thoroughbreds for $360,000. Now called La Vie En, she won her second start at Warrnambool for Lindsay Smith on New Year’s Eve by three lengths.
A half-brother by Yulong’s Written Tycoon fetched $425,000 at Inglis Easter last year, bought by Goldfinder Equine, Colin Equine and trainer Blake Ryan. He’s now called Just Awesome and is awaiting his first start, while Bleu Roche now has an Alabama Express (Redoute’s Choice) weanling filly and is in foal to another Yulong stallion in Tagaloa (Lord Kanaloa).
“Miss Roumbini was always a lovely foal and weanling,” Fairgray says. “She’s just taken a little bit of time, they’ve been very patient with her, and it looks like she’s going to repay everybody for their patience.
“We had to front up to buy Bleu Roche, but she was just a lovely, good looking mare, with a good shape, and was a fast Group 3 winner. We had to pay a bit more than what we thought we would but looking back now, she was a very good buy.
“She’s medium sized, well proportioned, with a lovely head on her. Sometimes the Fastnet Rock mares can be a bit bigger and on the plain side, but she’s got a lot of quality about her.
“And having three stakes winners as her first three dams shows each generation has been able to pass on that ability.
“One thing Mick Price says about Miss Roumbini is that she’s so genuine. That can be a family trait, where they’re easy horses to train, try hard and give their best, and that’s what Miss Roumbini is. She’s a very genuine racehorse.”