3 minute read
Triple Crown winner Justify has been selected as the first stud mate for classy Redoute's Choice mare Galaxy Star following her winning finale at Belmont in Perth on Saturday.
Owner Bob Peters announced the retirement of Galaxy Star after she won the G3 Strickland Stakes for the 13th win in her 19-start career.
The winner of $1.56 million and never unplaced, Galaxy Star won five stakes races this season including the G1 Railway Stakes at Ascot last November for trainers Grant and Alana Williams.
She also won the G3 Asian Beau Stakes, G2 Ted Van Heemst Stakes and the G3 Belmont Sprint before her Strickland Stakes success.
Peters has enjoyed had another stellar season of black type success with his big Perth-based team including G1 wins by his outstanding Pierro filly Arcadia Queen.
Peters breeds the majority of his team from a top class broodmare band based at leading studs in eastern Australia.
Galaxy Star is from the five-time winner Galaxy Queen (Jeune), a daughter of the prolific winner producer Lady Ashford (Royal Academy).
Lady Ashford's seven winners include the stakes-winner Star Encounter, another Jeune mare who has produced some of the leading Peters-owned performers including two time Perth Cup winner Star Exhibit (Statue of Liberty), Perfect Jewel (Redoute's Choice) and G2 Wa Guineas winner Royal Star (Redoute's Choice).
Another of her daughters Favourite Star (More Than Ready) is the dam of the G1-placed Enticing Star, the G1 placed Testa Rossa mare who has joined Arcadia Queen in the Chris Waller stable in Sydney for a spring campaign.
The Galaxy Star family also includes the G2 winners Timbourina (Timber Country), Media (Gilded Time) and Noire (Foxwedge).
Scat Daddy's unbeaten son Justify is standing his first Australian season this spring at Coolmore Stud in NSW on a private fee with another US Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.
With his first Australian-bred 2YOs to race next season American Pharoah recorded a notable milestone over the weekend with his first European black type winner.
US trainer Wesley Ward took Maven to Chantilly on Saturday to win the G3 Prix du Bois after wet ground forced him to miss a start at Royal Ascot.
Bred and retained to race by Richard Ravin, he had been offered at the Goffs London Sale on the eve of Royal Ascot with an entry in the Norfolk Stakes but was unsold at £725,000.
Maven, winner of his only previous start at Aqueduct in New York in April, is out of the triple stakes winner Richies Party Girl (Any Given Saturday) and is a half-sister to the G3 winner Strategic Partner (Kris S.).
Another American Pharoah colt Monarch Of Egypt finished second in the G2I Railway Stakes at the Curragh on Saturday.
American Pharoah returns to Australia this spring at a fee of $66,000.
Coolmore's Irish-based stallion Australia sired his fifth stakes winner when the Lloyd Williams-owned 3YO colt Buckhurst won the GH3 International Stakes on the Irish Derby card at the Curragh.
Buckhurst, out of the Green Desert mare Artful, was purchased by his trainer Joseph O'Brien for 70,000 guineas at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale and may be destined to race in Australia next season.