Champion Stakes 2016: Bassett's allsorts include a champion

While the possibility that recent Arc winner Found could run in the Champion Stakes at Ascot on Saturday en route to defending her Breeders’ Cup Turf crown has undoubtedly added extra spice to the race, she won’t be the highest rated runner on Timeform ratings. That honour will belong to Almanzor who is now rated 133 after Found, the filly he beat into second when winning arguably the best ever renewal of the Irish Champion Stakes at the Curragh in September, pushed her rating up to 129 at Chantilly.

While Almanzor’s giant strides might not have come as a surprise to those closest to him—his trainer Jean-Claude Rouget apparently said Almanzor was his "Jockey Club horse for next year" in September 2015—they very much have to the wider racing public. He was beaten on his return, before winning a four-runner Group 3 at Chantilly, and was sent off at 20/1 when coming hard and fast to land the Prix du Jockey Club in June. Given Almanzor’s perfect record at Chantilly, allied to the fact he’s stayed on strongly to win his three races over a mile and a quarter (or a bit further in the case of the Jockey Club), it was significant that Rouget shunned the Arc for the Champion Stakes a while ago. It’s even more interesting when you consider the trainer, a Frenchman, is yet to win the Arc but has already won the Champion Stakes with Literato in 2007 (when the race was run at Newmarket).

After finishing only seventh of eight to Johannes Vermeer in the Group 1 Criterium International at Saint-Cloud last November on his final outing at two, Almanzor was unheralded at the start of this year. His breeding hardly offered a pointer to things to come, either. Granted, he’d cost €100,000 as a yearling, but he was from the first crop of €6,000 stallion Wootton Bassett out of an unraced mare. What’s more, Wootton Bassett, a son of Iffraaj trained by Richard Fahey, failed to win any of his four starts (and also failed to improve) as a three-year-old after winning all five of his outing as a two-year-old, including the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. Wootton Bassett’s connections had even sent him back sprinting in a bid to rekindle the flame. How strange then, that Almanzor’s progress this year has been is in stark contrast to his sire’s own career.

Wootton Bassett has stood at the Haras d’Etreham in the Normandy region of north-western France since his retirement in 2011, when he was purchased by the then twenty-six-year-old Nicolas de Chambure, whose family have owned Etreham since just after World War II. As it happens, it’s a place I know well as I worked there for the summer of 2006, helping prepare yearlings for the sales. At that time they stood the likes of Poliglote, sire of the shock 2012 Arc winner Solemia, but perhaps better known as a jumps stallion, and their current roster includes Djakadam’s sire Saint des Saints and 2011 St Leger winner Masked Marvel, surely a jumps sire in the making. Nicolas de Chambure purchased several mares in order to give Wootton Bassett a helping hand, among them Darkova, whose first son would be consigned by the stud at the Arqana Deauville August Yearlings Sale in 2014. He was purchased by Rouget and would become Almanzor.

The Timeform database shows just 11 progeny produced by Wootton Bassett, and Almanzor is in a different parish to any of the others, with the next two highest-rated being the 91-rated two-year-old Hakeem and the 75-rated three-year-old Teba Mateba. It’s a distinct possibility that Wootton Bassett will never producer another horse as good as Almanzor—the likes of Dubawi, Pivotal and Dark Angel are all yet to sire a horse rated 133—but he surely must have good claims of fathering another smart performer or two. So, where could the next good one come from?

Well, it seems unlikely that another of the other Wootton Bassett’s on the Timeform database are going to develop into pattern-race winners, certainly not any time soon. Wootton Bassett has only had two other progeny aside from Almanzor sell for six figures at auction, both of them yearling fillies, one in 2014 along with Almanzor’s full-sister in 2015. The filly now three is named Elide and remains a maiden after six starts for Pascal Bary. Almanzor’s sister is named Troarn and could be Wootton Bassett’s best chance of being responsible for another black-type performer in the near future, though that’s pure speculation as she’s yet to make her debut for the same connections as Almanzor, which is a slight concern. The next two most expensive of Wootton Bassett’s progeny to go through the sales-ring after Elide, Troarn, and Almanzor were the aforementioned Teba Mateba and Hakeem.

Just 19 Wootton Bassett yearlings have been entered at public auctions in Europe so far this year, with the top-priced being a filly out of the nine-race French maiden Ciranna who sold to Jeremy Brummitt for €70,000 at the second (and therefore less prestigious) version of Arqana’s Deauville August Yearling Sale. The sire had no representatives at either the Tattersalls Book 1 or Book 2 October Yearling Sales. If Wootton Bassett is to have another star, it may be that he or she doesn’t actually emerge until at least 2020 as Wootton Bassett will presumably cover his best/biggest book of mares in 2017 on the back of Almanzor's success this season—will he have already been written off as a one-hit wonder by then?

If Wootton Bassett is a one-trick pony, it’s still an excellent trick. Almanzor has improved out of all recognition this year, producing one of the best performances from a three-year-old seen anywhere in the world in the Irish Champion. Oh, and given his form on the track, imposing physique and the fact he fails from an Aga Khan family on his dams’ side, Almanzor will surely hold solid claims of making a success in his next career as a stallion. Even if Wootton Bassett himself should fall out of favour, he’s already given himself the best possible chance of continuing his sire line by siring a champion.