Wootton Bassett: could he be a new Mr. Prospector?

International Thoroughbred and the Weatherbys Stallion Scene

By Jocelyn de Moubray

IN this week's edition

🔸 Wootton Bassett – breaking all the rules
🔸 His black-type and Group 1 progeny results have remained impressively consistent as his crop size has increased
🔸 His first Irish-bred three-year-olds have won two Classics and picked up three Classic places
🔸 His variety of top level success is giving him a profile remarkably similar to that of former champion US sire Mr. Prospector, Wootton Bassett's own ancestor
🔸 This week's Xtra-ordinary winner: Nahraan, a three-year-old by Make Believe and an impressive winner on his career debut

🎬 Watch: Wootton Bassett's story so far, Xtra video

The success or failure of any stallion is always difficult to predict and, once the truth has emerged, hard to explain. However, in the 21^st century, no stallion, in Europe at least, has confounded all reasonable expectations to quite the degree Wootton Bassett has succeeded in doing – and this year is already looking a standout for him with his three-year-olds having secured two Classic victories and three Classic placings.

Wootton Bassett has produced progeny who have succeeded at the highest level as two-year-olds, but he is now also building himself a fine portfolio of middle-distance Classic horses.

Bred by Laundry Cottage Stud, Wootton Bassett was sold for £46,000 as a Doncaster St Leger yearling. The son of Iffraaj went on to win his first five starts, including the 7f Group 1 Prix Jean Luc Lagardere, and was unbeaten in his juvenile year.

As a three-year-old, Wootton Bassett was then unplaced on all four starts. His best efforts came when fifth, some 5l behind Moonlight Cloud, in the 6½f Prix Maurice de Gheest (G1) at Deauville, and when also fifth some 4l behind Tin Horse in the 8f Poule d’Essai des Poulains (G1).

He was sold after his racing career to the Haras d’Etreham, and he started at stud at a fee of €6,000 in 2012.

To begin with, Wootton Bassett was neither fashionable nor popular and produced only a total of 39 foals in his first two crops. His first foals made a bit of an impression at the 2013 Arqana December Sale with the four offered averaging nearly ten times his covering fee.

With his third and fourth year fees reduced to €4,000, Etreham managed to get him a book of around 50 mares in both 2014 and 2015.

The first Wootton Bassett yearlings offered for sale included a colt out of Darkova, bought by Jean-Claude Rouget for €100,000.

Almanzor, as Darkova’s son was subsequently named, won a Listed race at two and then became his sire’s first Classic winner when taking the 2016 Prix du Jockey-Club before proving to be an outstanding international champion with Group 1 victories in Ireland and England.

For 2016, Etreham increased Wootton Bassett’s fee to €6,000 and then to €20,000 in 2017 and, for his last two years in France, to €40,000 for 2019 and 2020. His book size also became much larger.

Not everybody was convinced Wootton Bassett would be able to make a mark at a higher fee with far more horses to run for him; he was, after all, still a two-year-old sprinter by a stallion who had become disappointing and was out of a Primo Dominie mare, who had been sold for less than 30,000gns.

But Wootton Bassett continued to prove the doubters wrong and his 2017 crop, bred off that €6,000 fee, included top international performers Speak Of The Devil and Ilaraab, as well as the Group 1-winning sprinter Wooded. Importantly, by that summer of 2020, he had also attracted the attention of Coolmore, the farm then looking for a proven stallion.

Coolmore went ahead and purchased Wootton Bassett at an eight-figure price – and that has already turned out to be a bargain

In his first year at Coolmore, Wootton Bassett produced 199 foals from a €100,000 fee and, just at the beginning of their three-year-old season, they already include four Group 1 winners – the two Classic winners Henri Matisse and Camille Pissarro, and the top-level-winning two-year-olds Twain and Tennessee Stud (see Weatherbys pedigree references using the red links).

He has also had three Classic placings this year thanks to Whirl (Epsom Oaks), Tennessee Stud (Epsom Derby) and Camille Pissarro (Poule d'Essai des Poulains), and at the time of writing, the crop has produced a total of 26 black-type performers.

After Whirl's strong second in the Epsom Oaks, trainer Aidan O'Brien said in the press conference: "You think of Wootton Bassett's progeny as speed horses, but Whirl got the 1m4f really well and was staying on at the end."

Wootton Bassett's second Irish crop of 136 foals bred off a fee of €150,000, include two of the highest-rated two-year-olds in Ireland – Albert Einstein and Brussels – and he covered at a fee of €300,000 in 2025.

Wootton Bassett’s success is astonishing on many levels. The table below shows that, apart from his second crop, which included only 17 foals, he has consistently produced a similar percentage of black-type horses and Group 1 performers year after year regardless of whether he was standing at €4,000 or €100,000.

Over his nine seasons at Etreham, Wootton Bassett produced 13 per cent stakes horses to foals and 4.2 per cent Group 1 performers, and his first Coolmore crop has similar figures again – by the end of the season, it will no doubt be better still.

Over his career to date, the average winning distance of Wootton Bassett’s progeny is 8.34f (Weatherbys Global Stallion App) and he has produced eight Group 1-winning two-year-olds, while at the same time, from Almanzor in his first crop onwards, he has also produced top-class middle-distance horses, two Jockey-Club winners, a Derby runner-up and third, an Oaks runner-up, and a horse such as Presage Nocturne, who is a Group 1 performer over two miles.

🎬 Watch: Wootton Bassett's Classic double: France 2025

Is Wootton Bassett the new Mr. Prospector?

It is beginning to look as though Coolmore has bought itself the 21^st century’s equivalent of Mr. Prospector, from whom he is descended via Gone West, Zafonic and Iffraaj.

Mr. Prospector’s only stakes wins came at 6f and his lack of a big race success meant that he started his stud career covering for four seasons at Aisco Farm in Florida. Those early crops included top two-year-olds in the US and Europe, Its In The Air and Miswaki, as well as the top miler Fappiano, sprinter Gold Beauty and the Belmont Stakes (G1) winner and the champion three-year-old Conquistador Cielo.

When he moved to Claiborne in 1980, Mr. Prospector proved to be one of the world’s top sires and continued to produce top two-year-olds, Coup De Genie, Kingmambo amongst others, while also getting middle-distance Classic horses such as Fusaichi Pegasus, Forty Niner and Seeking The Gold.

Just why Wootton Bassett is able to produce so consistently well and produce such a variety of different types of horses is, of course, impossible to say.

He is an outcross to many European mares with no Sadler’s Wells or Danehill in his pedigree, but many of his best runners so far are out of mares from different lines, too, being out of daughters of stallions such as Pivotal, Verglas, Elusive City, Azamour, Green Tune and Maria’s Mon.

The best explanation is that Wootton Bassett is an outlier.

Could he, like Mr. Prospector before him, change the future of thoroughbred breeding?

XTRA WINNER

Nahraan
2022 c
Make Believe-First Kingdom (Frankel) 
Owner: Prince Faisal
Trainer: John & Thady Gosden.

Nahraan was only a 12-1 shot for his career debut in a conditions race over an extended mile on Wolverhampton’s All-Weather track on May 27, and his 12 rivals included his stable companion Cajole, a previous winner and a short-priced favourite.

Things did not start well either, Nahraan missed the break and, by the time his jockey Oisin Murphy was able to get a position on the rail, he had only one or two behind him and was some 10l off the leaders.

Nahraan was in the same place at the top of the short straight and was only then pulled out to make his effort. He looked as though he was going to run on to finish a promising third or fourth until Murphy gave his mount one small tap – the son of Make Believe took off and ran down Cajole before winning by a going-away length.

His sire Make Believe stands at Ballylinch Stud at €8,000 in 2025 having started his stud career at €20,000 in 2016.

The son of Makfi won the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Poulains and the Prix de la Foret (G1), but has produced several horses who stay further, including the Prix du Jockey-Club winner Mishriff a member of his sire's first crop.

Thanks to Mishriff, Make Believe covered his largest book in 2021 and his 87 three-year-olds already include four stakes winners. At 3.45 per cent this is a figure that places him among the top 20 sires in Europe, with his best so far this year being the Italian Group 3 Classic-winning filly Klaynn.

Nahraan’s dam is a half-sister to the Group-winning sprinter Sajir, another high-class son of Make Believe bred by Prince Faisal.

🎧 LISTEN... Sally Flatt of the historic Childwickbury Stud chats with Nick Luck