Mile winner California Spangle another HKJC winner boasting pedigree links to Kilfrush Stud

THE stage was set for Golden Sixty to win his 23rd race and third Group 1 Hong Kong Mile, but the predicted result did not come off – pushed wide the Medaglia D’Oro gelding chased down California Spangle in the straight, but the line came too soon, and the Tony Cruz-trained winner gained some just revenge on Golden Sixty, the victor when the pair met last time.

Winning jockey Zac Purton said of the Starspangledbanner four-year-old: “This horse is a champ and was just coming up short, but it was his day today – I got off last time and said to Tony that we’d win next time. Tony had a plan for today, I didn’t quite execute that correctly, but it has worked out.”

California Spangle was bred in Ireland by M Enright and was sold as a yearling to MC Bloodstock for €150,000. The gelding is out of the High Chaparral mare Pearlitas Passion, who failed to place in five starts in Ireland.

Amazingly, it is a second winner at the meeting today boasting a Robert Strauss and Kilrush Stud pedigree influence – Enright purchased grand-dam Paimpolaise (Priolo), bred by Kilfrush with Geoffrey Howson Bloodstock for 65,000gns at the Tattersalls December Mares Sale 2001.

Paimpolaise, who was out of Basilea, the dam of Pont-Aven and grand-dam of Josr Alarhoud, top-rated sprinter Sante Marine and the Group class Traoud Mad, went on to bred the 2009 Solario Stakes (G3) and 2010 Hungerford Stakes (G2) winner Shakespearean (Shamardal). She produced Pearlitas Passion in 2006.

California Spangle is the mare’s seventh foal and is a half-brother to the Listed-placed and 102-rated miler Wychwood Warrior. She visited Blue Point in 2021 with out a registered foal ad revisited Starspangledbanner this spring.