When it comes to Australasian blue hen mares, Sir Patrick Hogan’s Eight Carat is at the top of the list.
The late daughter of Pieces Of Eight (GB) has a remarkable 17 individual Group 1 winners featuring as female line descendants, herself the dam of five of those, plus another 41 individual stakes winners. On Saturday the Chris Waller-trained Authentic Jewel (I Am Invincible) has a chance to add to the tally.
The 2-year-old filly lines up in the G3 Gimcrack S. at Randwick with Eight Carat featuring on her page as the fourth dam, with her third dam being Diamond Lover (NZ) (Sticks And Stones) who was Eight Carat’s second foal.
Three -time G1 winner Verry Elleegant (NZ) (Zed {NZ}), who lines up in the G1 Turnbull S. at Flemington this Saturday, features Eight Carat as her fifth dam.
Sir Patrick Hogan, the former owner of Cambridge Stud, secured Eight Carat from Robert Sangster - but said the deal would not have happened had she foaled a night early.
Sir Patrick Hogan with Zabeel
“At the time Robert Sangster of Swettenham had 15 nominations a year for Sir Tristram,” Hogan said. “He had a number of mares, including Eight Carat, at Cambridge Stud which I owned then, of course.
“I rang Robert and asked if he would be interested in selling Eight Carat and he said he would so I asked him to put a price on her, which he did, and I asked to think about it until the next day.
“He said to me ‘where is she? Is she in the foaling paddock?’ And I said ‘yes, she’s in the foaling paddock and she’s not far away.’
“He said, ‘well you have a think about until tomorrow but I’ll sell her as long as she hasn’t foaled.’ So the next day, she hadn’t foaled and I rang him and said 'I’ll buy her'."
Adding to the band
Hogan said that he was eager to purchase Eight Carat because she hailed from a family whose bloodlines he wanted to add to his Cambridge Stud broodmare band.
“In those days different thoroughbred families had different numbers to identify them by,” he said.
“Eight Carat came directly from the number nine family and the number nine family was well noted at the time for having the most speed of any other family. So I chased that family to try and buy something from it, and that’s why I chased Eight Carat because I wanted that family badly.”
"The number nine family was well noted at the time for having the most speed of any other family. So I chased that family to try and buy something from it." - Sir Patrick Hogan
Hogan had also seen Kaapstad (NZ) as a foal and was impressed and so purchased Diamond Lover.
“I had bought her daughter Diamond Lover as a yearling,” he said. “Colin Jillings trained her and he rang me one day and said ‘look, this filly is a very fast filly and I believe that if nothing goes wrong with her, she’ll win a Group 1 race.’
“And that also helped me to make the decision to buy Eight Carat because I already had the daughter.
Eight Carat (GB) with her final foal, NZ$1.6 million dollar yearling Columbia
“Previous to me buying her, she foaled a beautiful brown horse by Sir Tristram who turned out to be Kapstaad and that was another reason that I was pretty keen to buy Eight Carat, because she’d already produced two lovely looking foals, one of them being Diamond Lover and the other Kapstaad.
“And then, of course, I bred her to Zabeel and got Mouawad and Octagonal. I bred her to Gold And Ivory and got Marquise, and they all ended up being Group 1 winners.”
Today's legacy
The impact of Eight Carat on the New Zealand breeding and racing industry has been tremendous according to Hogan and he said it gives him great joy to continue seeing her legacy live on in horses still racing today.
Unbeaten colt Winning Dreamer (NZ) (Deep Field), an emerging star in Hong Kong, is inbred 6f x 3f to the blue hen mare.
Not only have her genes been passed down through a number of her daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters but so too in stallions where she was the female line ascendent such as Octagonal who left a great legacy with his Champion sire son Lonhro, plus Commands, Deep Field and Shooting To Win.
“Eight Carat at the time was the only broodmare anywhere in the world that had produced five individual Group 1 winners,” he said. “Today there’s probably a couple of other mares that have done the same but at that time she was the only one worldwide who had achieved that result.
“She had an enormous impact on the New Zealand racing industry because Octagonal was a champion 3-year-old and champion horse in Australia, Mouawad was the same in Australia as a champion sprinter.
“So those two particular foals of Eight Carat’s marketed, promoted and stimulated the interest in the New Zealand thoroughbred industry but not only that, they showed the way for Zabeel, whose progeny then became well sought after across Australasia.
“The pedigree continues today and it’s great to see that she wasn’t alone with her five individual Group 1 winners, but she has continued to pass on her genes right through each generation.”
Octagonal (NZ) when racing
Marcus Corban, former General Manager at Cambridge Stud who is now based at Yulong, said it was a privilege to work with Eight Carat and he too feels a great sense of pride seeing her descendants still performing at the races. Close to home, Yulong's G3 Gimcrack S. winner Catch Me (I Am Invincible) has the blue hen as her fourth dam.
“She was a beautiful mare, she was lovely,” Corban said. “She was a great mother and she looked after herself and she looked after her foals.
“She had a few little issues with her back legs but we looked after her and she happily retired. And then we buried her at Cambridge Stud next to Sir Tristram and Zabeel’s grave.
“You’re blessed in life to work with the likes of Sir Tristram and Zabeel but then to have a mare like Eight Carat and then Diamond Lover, one of her daughters, and see the family grow, it’s just a huge experience.
“You dream of having a mare that can leave five individual Group 1 winners and the daughters have carried it on. It’s a family that really put Sir Patrick up there in the limelight.”
Authentic Jewel (as a yearling) will step out in Saturday's G3 Gimcrack S.
