Top billing at Raheen for Epsom winner Top Ranked
Dark Angel’s outcross stallion to stand at Nolan family’s Queensland stud
Epsom Handicap (Gr 1, 1600m) winner Top Ranked (Dark Angel), whose career was cut short due to injury before last year’s Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m), will stand at Raheen in Queensland, making him the second freshman sire to go to stud in the state in 2023.
Basil Nolan has received many offers for stallions to reside at his family’s long-standing thoroughbred stud in recent years, but until now he’d remained steadfast in his decision to move away from standing a new sire at Raheen.
“I have had a lot of stallions come across my table, really, and obviously I didn’t take them, but I just thought this was an opportunity for Raheen and for Queensland that we can stand a horse like this,” Nolan told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“We need some new blood in Australia and we need even more new blood in Queensland – he’s a total outcross. He was unbeaten as a two-year-old and unbeaten as a three-year-old.
“He was obviously a very good racehorse.”
The impressive grey stallion Top Ranked, who also won the Bill Ritchie Handicap (Gr 3, 1400m) last spring for trainer Annabel Neasham, will stand for an introductory fee of $7,700 (inc GST and free return).
He joins Aquis Farm’s Hong Kong Group 1 winner Stronger (Not A Single Doubt) as a first–season sire marketed to Queensland breeders.
By Dark Angel (Acclamation) – the same sire as exciting young Darley shuttler Harry Angel and four-time Group 1-winning European sprinter Battaash as well as 98 other stakes winners – Top Ranked is out of the well-bred winner Countess Ferrama (Authorized), herself a half-sister to Irish 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1, 1m) winner Indian Haven (Indian Ridge) and Italy’s champion two-year-old Count Dubois (Zafonic), the latter the sire of 25 individual stakes winners.
Nolan believes Top Ranked’s pedigree and race performance will suit Queensland’s pool of speed-dominant broodmares, in a state where the QTIS scheme plays such a pivotal role in owners’ and trainers’ return on investment.
“It probably sounds like a strange thing to say, particularly given he won an Epsom and a Bill Ritchie at his last two starts, but I reckon we didn’t get to see the best of Top Ranked here in Australia,” Nolan said.
“Annabel, Hugh Bowman and his owners, Australian Bloodstock, all had huge opinions of the horse and considered him a super chance in the Cox Plate before [he suffered] a career-ending injury in a track gallop.
“Annabel has made the statement that Top Ranked is the best horse she’s ever had – better than Zaaki – so that speaks volumes.”
He was a winner of six of his first eight starts in Europe, two of them at Group 3 level for trainer James Tate. Top Ranked was also placed in the Lockinge Stakes (Gr 1, 1m) at Newbury and he was sixth in the 2021 Queen Anne Stakes (Gr 1, 1m) at Royal Ascot, which was won by Palace Pier (Kingman), before Australian Bloodstock’s Luke Murrell and Jamie Lovett bought the entire to target Australia’s premier weight-for-age races.
“On talent and class, Top Ranked was the best horse we’ve ever purchased,” Murrell said.
“It’s such a shame that we only saw him at 80 per cent in Australia as this horse had a turn of foot that was just freakish.
“The one thing I have noticed in these Dark Angels is that they not only run at two, but they all train on.
“What I think is very important is that Top Ranked retires with a Timeform rating of 122.”
The only stallions to retire this season in Australia with a higher rating are Darley’s Anamoe (Street Boss) ($121,000 fee inc GST) and Newgate Farm’s State Of Rest (Starspangledbanner) ($44,000 inc GST).
Heroic Valour (Fastnet Rock), the sire of 32 individual winners from three crops of racing age so far, will once again stand at Raheen Stud for a fee of $7,700 (inc GST) this year just as his biggest crop of yearlings (103 live foals) are on the ground.
Meanwhile, Ellsberg (Spill The Beans), who dead-heated with Top Ranked in last year’s Epsom Handicap, will stand at Murrulla Stud in the Hunter Valley this year at a fee of $11,000 (inc GST).