Group 2-winning juvenile colt Lightsaber, a son of one of Australia’s premier stallions Zoustar (Northern Meteor), went agonisingly close to Group 1 glory; but while trainer Peter Moody and connections were left to lament what could have been, Western Australian studmaster Brent Atwell is glad the four-year-old entire narrowly missed at the top level.
The Darling View Thoroughbreds principal and his breeding partners have purchased Lightsaber, the 2021 VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes (Gr 2, 1400m) winner, to stand at stud in 2023 and beyond, bringing an end his 19-start race career.
The depth of Lightsaber’s form – he won a Caulfield Guineas Prelude (Gr 2, 1400m) as a spring three-year-old, ran fourth in the Caulfield Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) later that campaign, and finish runner-up to Hitotsu (Maurice) in the Australian Guineas (Gr 1, 1600m) the following autumn – had the breeder look long and hard at the stallion prospect.
“For us, first and foremost, it’s always difficult to find horses of any sort of level to come to Perth because they’re so expensive, so we’ve got to look far and wide, but he does stack up,” Atwell said this week.
“He won three of his first four starts as a two-year-old [and] in that Group 2 he defeated eventual Group 1 winners in Paulele, who won the Group 1 Winterbottom in November, and Hitotsu who is a Derby champion.
“He’s got good form at two and in his three-year-old season he went on to race against one of the best in my opinion in Anamoe and finish just in behind another Group 1 horse in Captivant, who is now standing at [Kia Ora] stud, and he has been quite successful in his first year as far as coverings go, so the form around him is pretty good.
“He raced on to just be beaten in the Australian Guineas by Hitotsu, beaten a long neck there, and beating horses like Tiger Of Malay who is at stud at Newgate. This conversation wouldn’t be happening if he was a long neck better in that race.”
Atwell had been considering multiple potential first season stallion options available on the open market to follow on from the momentum generated by Darling View’s 2022 freshman Splintex (Snitzel), who covered 118 mares in his maiden season. He was convinced Lightsaber was the best candidate.
“We’ve got plenty of Danehill-line horses over here, so I was looking for that out-cross to come to Perth and Zoustar’s obviously a champion in his own right and doing big things in the northern hemisphere as well, so he was a horse we were trying to find the next one by,” the breeder said.
“Zousain, to me, looks like he could be the ‘next one’ on the east coast by Zoustar. As far as types go, I thought they were outstanding at all the weanling sales last year that I went to, so if Lightsaber can throw a type like Zousain, then we’re on our way.”
The stallion’s former trainer Moody said from the Gold Coast yesterday that if Lightsaber had not been snapped up by Darling View Thoroughbreds, a deal which was finalised on Wednesday after it was brokered by Premium Bloodstock Services’ Grant Burns, the rising five-year-old would have raced on “in top company”.
“He was a good type of horse, a Group 2-winning two-year-old, who was dreadfully unlucky not to have won the [Australian] Guineas at three due to having a very awkward preparation,” Moody told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“He got to the stage where he was hamstrung by rock-hard tracks and then the tracks were too wet, but his two- and three-year-old form was exceptional and I think he would be a nice horse wherever he went and, for the sake of a short-half head in an Australian Guineas, he’s off to Western Australia.”
Purchased by Blueblood Thoroughbreds for $100,000 from the 2020 Inglis Ready2Race Sale, Lightsaber is out of the unraced Dream Ahead (Diktat) mare Dream Cirque, a half-sister to the stakes-placed four-time winner Distant Rock (Medaglia D’Oro) while there is stallion power on his dam side, with champion Fastnet Rock (Danehill) featuring in his pedigree.
Blueblood Thoroughbreds racing manager David Mourad said Lightsaber had proven to be a horse who handled the workload required to compete at a high level as a two-year-old, a belief endorsed by Moody yesterday. Mourad said he was delighted for the horse’s owners that he had found a home at stud.
“He is a lovely horse and he did a damn good job on the track and he deserves a place at stud, so we are very proud of that,” Mourad said.
“We bought him from the Inglis Ready2Race Sale and we thought he might have been one who might have run early, so we just put him straight into work, we didn’t give him a break after the sale, he went into pre-training and then he went straight into Peter’s stables and he went on with it from there.
“It’s obviously very tough to handle a full breeze-up preparation and a full racing preparation, which is what he did.”
Lightsaber, who won four races and earned $822,500 in prize-money, has been syndicated to existing and new breeding partners of Darling View Thoroughbreds, which has Atwell confident that the stallion will get every chance of serving a big book of mares when the 2023 season starts on September 1.
A service fee for Lightsaber will be announced at a later date.