Parisal/Cylinder
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel,
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
The lyrics could evoke the ever-surging continuum of one of the greatest families in the rich history of Darley/Godolphin, and its predecessor Woodlands, which was on show in force last weekend.
The Windmills of Your Mind, the song’s title, may also aptly describe the churning and turning, through myriad thoroughbred generations, in the designing of matings to roll out racing’s next hero. But the mills didn’t have to churn so hard for Darley to hatch the family’s latest two stakes winners; no revolutions of breeding science or reinvented wheels, just a reliance on what’s been proven so spectacularly before, round there.
At 4.45pm on Saturday, Godolphin’s Cylinder (Exceed And Excel) ran a superb second in the world’s richest two-year-old race, the breed-shaping Golden Slipper (Gr 1, 1200m) at Rosehill, having already won two Group 2s on the way.
Fifteen minutes later at Moonee Valley, his year-older half-sister Parisal (Astern) carried the royal blue to her black type breakthrough, at her fifth start, in the Typhoon Tracy (Gr 3, 1200m) Stakes.
Parisal is named – by Godolphin’s title-bestowing maven Suzanne Philcox – for the round boats made from woven bamboo found commonly in India and southeast Asia, and known for making occupants dizzy when stuck spinning around in certain currents, like a whirlpool.
Before her came Cylinder’s full brother, Wheel (Exceed And Excel), who started this latest rotisserie of names as the first foal of the mare Circular.
A daughter of one of Darley’s most colossal stallions worldwide, Street Cry (Machiavellian), the sire of Winx, Circular is performing a powerful job as a broodmare continuing one of Darley’s strongest families, with two stakes winners from three named foals. She now has a weanling filly from the first crop of another son of Exceed And Excel (Danehill), triple Group 1 winner Bivouac, and is in foal to Brazen Beau (I Am Invincible).
To go back, Circular – who won the 2017 Matron Stakes (Gr 3, 1600m) on Newmarket day at Flemington – is out of Hexameter, who was two-parts “short” of her sire, Octagonal (Zabeel), and who was bought by Darley in their 2008 purchase of the Ingham brothers’ Woodlands operation.
Hexameter – it’s a line of lyrics or poetry with six beats – was a city-winner of four starts from 19 for Woodlands’ successive trainers John Hawkes and Peter Snowden. She threw Hexagonal (Shamardal) as her first foal before her one stakes winner in Circular.
With Hexameter, all this shapely naming stops, having had its root in her dad Octagonal, who got his many facets from his dam Eight Carat, the great British-bred New Zealand blue hen, whose name derived from her sire, Pieces Of Eight (Relic).
Hexameter was out of Sibylline (Chief’s Crown), who won only once and threw nothing of note but had something to write home about in the shape of some famous Woodlands relatives. Her mother – the fourth dam of Cylinder and Parisal – was Shadea (Straight Strike).
Foaled in 1988, the New Zealand-bred Shadea was top-class. In the second half of her first season in 1991, she was fourth in the Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m), won the Sweet Embrace Stakes (Gr 3, 1200m), then was beaten only by the outstanding Tierce (Victory Prince) in the last two legs of his Group 1 Triple Crown, the AJC Sires’ Produce (Gr 1, 1400m) and Champagne Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m).
At stud, Shadea fared even better – once she’d had a few turns. She was put to the best but best hopes were dashed, when Danehill (Danzig) and Last Tycoon (Try My Best) sired her first three foals for a non-winner, an unraced, and a three-time bush victor.
Next out came the equally unremarkable Sibylline, in 1997. But a few weeks after her birth, Woodlands sent her to their new stallion Octagonal – for the first of eight straight times – and the sparks flew.
In 1998, their first date produced both the sire and the dam’s greatest son, Lonhro. He needs no introduction here, of course, but recorded 25 stakes wins including 11 Group 1s, and as a Darley cornerstone has sired 95 stakes winners, including 13 Group 1 victors, who in turn include two more Group 1-winning sires in Pierro and Denman.
And when Cylinder and Parisal were representing the line on Saturday, their 24-year-old ancestor Lonhro was still in the thick of it. Lindermann – a product of his 17th crop of 19 so far (for 1,623 live foals) – won the Rosehill Guineas (Gr 1, 2000m) for breeder Debbie Kepitis, the daughter of Bob Ingham continuing her own gilt-edged breeding dynasty.
After a year off for Shadea in 1999, in 2000 she and Octagonal produced Niello, the triple Group 1 winner of the Canterbury Stakes (Gr 1, 1300m), Rosehill Guineas, and the Spring Champion Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m). He went on to sire three lower-level stakes winners, in an ill-fated stud career cut short at six crops.
And for their last twirl-around, in 2006 the 18-year-old Shadea and Octagonal, then 14, produced their third stakes winner in Shannara, who took two Listed races, including Scone’s Dark Jewel Classic (Listed, 1400m).
Back two more generations, Parisal and Cylinder’s sixth dam is the great New Zealand mare My Tricia (Hermes), who threw no fewer than five stakes winners, including champion three-year-old Grosvenor (Sir Tristram), himself a Group 1-producing sire.
Little wonder Darley, like Woodlands before them, has fared so well from this female line. With Circular still only ten, and with only four foals on the ground, it seems a fair bet that more is still to come.
“When we initially bought the Inghams’ racing operation, that family would’ve been the best family they had, considering Lonhro and Niello,” Darley’s Alastair Pulford told It’s In The Blood.
“It was an extremely valuable family and we were anxious to maintain it. It sort of dipped for a generation or two, but with the addition of a top stallion in Street Cry, it produced a good runner in Circular, and now she looks like being a very good broodmare. In fact, she’s already a very valuable broodmare.”
The matings that yielded Cylinder and Parisal may have been no-brainers, but also followed some standard Darley procedure.
First, a new mare went to a proven stallion, in Circular and Exceed And Excel. The aforementioned product, Wheel, is now racing in Singapore as Fortune Wheel. He’s still a maiden after 13 starts, but just six days before Saturday’s Cylinder-Parisal dynamics, he at least came closer than he’d ever been to joining them as a winner, placing second in a maiden.
Next, mating Circular with Astern – who’s by Medaglia D’Oro (El Prado) but out of an Exceed And Excel mare – fitted Darley’s bill of a new stallion over a class racemare, before the return to Exceed And Excel that produced Cylinder.
“Exceed loves mares who could run themselves, so that was the thinking behind putting Circular to him,” Pulford said. “And with Astern being out of an Exceed And Excel mare, we were thinking along the same lines, while also wanting to give Astern a decent, stakes-class mare for one of his early crops to help get him going.”
Astern, who stopped shuttling to the USA last year after a quiet start to his stud career – albeit getting louder through Aft Cabin and Golden Mile last spring – now has eight stakes winners, from 229 runners, with his overall winners’ rate at 51 per cent. He sits fifth among Australia’s third-year sires this season.
The seemingly ageless Exceed And Excel (Danehill) sits second on the two-year-old sires’ table behind Snitzel, producer of the Slipper winner, Shinzo.
And while Cylinder may have just missed out to Shinzo (Snitzel) on Saturday, Godolphin will be hoping that’s a positive omen.
The stable had the runner-up, by a similar margin, in the race two years ago. His name was Anamoe (Street Boss).