September 2022

LEZOO GIVES TWEENHILLS SIRE ZOUSTAR FIRST EUROPEAN GROUP 1 AND BIGGEST WIN FOR BREEDERS CHASEMORE FARM

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ZOUSTAR, a sensation both on the track and in the breeding shed Down Under, looks set to become a big noise among European stallions too after his daughter, LEZOO (GB), gave him his first Northern Hemisphere Group 1 success in the Juddmonte Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket Racecourses on Saturday.

Trained in Hampshire by Ralph Beckett and ridden by William Buick, Lezoo missed the break and was held up in the rear of the ten-strong field in the early stages of this prestigious £291,580 six furlong event for two-year-old fillies.

She made smooth headway soon after the halfway point and, having hit the front with 200 yards to race, pulled three-quarters of a length clear of the favourite, MEDITATE, with MAWJ a further threequarters of a length back in third.

Owned by Marc Chan (who has already teamed up with Beckett to win three Group 2 races with their seven furlong specialist, KINROSS (GB)), and Andrew Rosen, Lezoo has now won four of her five career starts.

She was avenging her solitary defeat, when unlucky-in-running before finishing second to Mawj in the Group 2 Duchess of Cambridge Stakes. Her other victories include the Listed Empress Fillies’ Stakes and, most recently, the Group 3 Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot two months ago.

Bought for €110,000 at the Arqana Breeze-Up Sales in May, she was also sold at last October’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sales Book 3 where she fetched 77,000 guineas.

Saturday’s victory continues a fantastic season for her breeders, Andrew and Jane Black, and their Surrey stud, Chasemore Farm, as it is their first taste of Group 1 glory just 11 years after they established the venture. They also bred and raced the Group 2 Greenlands Stakes winner, BRAD THE BRIEF (GB), and bred the exciting juvenile colt, NOBLE STYLE (GB), who stretched his unbeaten sequence to three by landing the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes in scintillating style at York last month.

Although the Blacks sold Lezoo’s dam, ROGER SEZ, shortly after her birth when in foal with the TERRITORIES filly who is catalogued as Lot 159 at the upcoming Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1, they have retained her PIVOTAL (GB) half-sister, BROGAN (GB), and will be offering her CAMELOT yearling colt during Book 3 of the same auction.

Lezoo is from the first Northern Hemisphere crop of Zoustar, who was a dual Group 1 scorer in Australia before doing incredible things early in his stallion career, producing three Group 1 winners and two champions in his initial crop while becoming the highest earning first season sire in Australian history.

Since 2019 he has been shuttling to Tweenhills Farm in Gloucestershire where he stands at a covering fee of £25,000.

David Redvers, owner and managing director of Tweenhills, said:

“Chasemore Farm have been exceptionally good clients of Tweenhills over the years so we are tremendously pleased to have been part of their first ever Group 1 victory thanks to Lezoo.

“Sending her dam to Zoustar was an ingenious mating based on the success that he had been having with Red Ransom mares in Australia [Lezoo’s dam’s sire, Red Clubs, is by Red Ransom]. For such a comparatively young breeding operation to break through at the top level so quickly is a magnificent achievement.

“We bought into Zoustar soon after he won the Australian equivalent of the Commonwealth Cup, the Coolmore Stud Stakes, and then brought him over to run at Royal Ascot in 2014. He was the ante post favourite for the Diamond Jubilee Stakes before a knock just a few days before the race meant that he couldn’t run.

“Given his lack of profile in this country, we felt that we had to start his stallion career in Australia, where he would get a proper level of support, but since 2019 he has been reverse shuttling back to Tweenhills.

“He arrives each year in the last week of December and returns to Australia in the first week in July to continue covering at the historic Widden Stud in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales.

“He has a much lower covering fee over here, roughly a quarter of what we charge in Australia, so breeders can see what value they are getting. We have been limiting him to 125 mares here and he has had a full book every season.

“His progenies are not terribly precocious, in Australia they tend to improve dramatically from two to three as they fill out their big frames, but as we come to the tail end of the season he has been getting lots of winners – he had a double yesterday, both with debutants.

“Lezoo looks like being very similar to SUNLIGHT, who was Champion Two-Year-Old Filly from his first crop in Australia, and to get Group 1 with his first crop here too really takes the pressure off.

“He has always produced good-looking horses who sell well. He had the sale topper at the Tattersalls Somerville Sale a couple of weeks ago and we have so much to look forward to at the big yearling sales in the coming days.”

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