John Ingles looks at the pedigree of Coolmore's latest Oaks winner which owes plenty to another breeding powerhouse.
Jan Brueghel’s gutsy win in Friday’s Coronation Cup when holding off odds-on favourite Calandagan was a reminder that the Galileo era isn’t over just yet. The four-year-old winner who comes from Galileo’s penultimate crop and became his late sire’s 101st individual Group/Grade 1 winner in last year’s St Leger.
But some of Galileo’s sons are well-established at the highest level now and Calandagan is himself by one such stallion, Gleneagles, while another of his sons Australia supplied the Derby winner Lambourn. As far as the Epsom classics are concerned, though, it’s Frankel who has become his sire’s natural successor, and, later on Friday afternoon, Minnie Hauk became Frankel’s third winner of the Oaks (replay below), following Anapurna in 2019 and Soul Sister in 2023. Galileo sired five Oaks winners, all for Ballydoyle, but Frankel is now on course to rival that achievement, while 2021 winner Adayar is far from certain to be Frankel’s only Derby winner by the time his stallion career is over.
Unlike some of Aidan O’Brien’s previous Oaks winners, Minnie Hauk isn’t a Coolmore homebred. She cost €1,850,000 as a yearling and was bred by Ben Sangster, but you don’t have to go any further back in her pedigree than her parents to realise that to all intents and purposes Minnie Hauk is very much a Juddmonte creation. Her dam as well as her sire were Juddmonte homebreds. Her dam Multilingual showed promise when sixth on her sole start at Newbury for John Gosden, though her rider that day Ryan Moore surely couldn’t have imagined he’d be riding her daughter to victory in an Oaks ten years later!
Multilingual is by Dansili, who also sired the dam of Frankel’s 2023 Oaks winner Soul Sister, and she’s out of Zenda who won the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (French 1000 Guineas). But going further back in Minnie Hauk’s pedigree, her great grandam Bahamian also contested the Oaks, having won the Oaks Trial at Lingfield beforehand. Bahamian found things tougher at Epsom, though, finishing fifth behind the Henry Cecil-trained favourite Diminuendo.
Coincidentally, Bahamian’s daughter Wemyss Bight, trained by Andre Fabre, also finished fifth in the Oaks but gained some compensation later that summer when winning the Irish version. But above all, Bahamian has founded a terrific stallion-producing family, with two of her descendants currently standing alongside Frankel at Juddmonte’s Banstead Manor Stud. High-class sprinter Oasis Dream is in the twilight of his stallion career these days but has enjoyed a very successful time at stud – he’s a half-brother to Minnie Hauk’s grandam – while top-class miler Kingman, a half-brother to Multilingual, has made his mark in a classic this season as the sire of Field of Gold who emulated his father by winning the Irish 2000 Guineas.
Bahamian is also the grandam of New Bay, sire of Dante winner Pride of Arras who disappointed in the Derby, but also New Ground who stayed on well for fourth behind Lambourn. And from sprinter Oasis Dream at one end of the spectrum, Bahamian is also the grandam of the much more stoutly-bred half-brothers Martaline and Coastal Path who have enjoyed very successful careers as French-based jumps stallions. Given some of the mares in Bahamian’s family have had such success in producing stallions, maybe Minnie Hauk will herself deliver a sire son for Coolmore when the time comes for her to go to stud.
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