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00:00In August 2020, it was announced that Coolmore Stud had purchased Wooten Basset from Harrah
00:06de Etreham to stand at their Irish base. Year in, year out, Wooten Basset sires a Group
00:12One winner and among his three-year-olds for this year is the exciting horse King of Steel
00:17who is set to have a rematch with August Rodin in the King George. As we eagerly await his
00:22first Coolmore bred crop to hit the yearling sales, Mark Byrne tells us all about Wooten
00:27Basset.
00:30It started in the summer of 2020 when we really started to take notice for him and he's basically
00:35how we can upgrade mares so well. He can get you a five furling Group One winner, he can
00:40get you a Classic winner. He's an outcross for a lot of our Galileo mares as well, which
00:44is an obvious solution for us as well. So it was so many different things that he was
00:49taking along the way. Everyone was so positive on their temperament. It was actually interesting
00:54to see the amount of Irish and English breeders that were sending mares across to him, even
00:59when he was standing at the 6, 10 and 20 grand level, like the likes of, you can see there,
01:05the Marne family bred, the River Tiber that won the Coventry this year. So you could see
01:08that these guys were going ahead of the curve and I suppose it helped us latch on eventually.
01:13If you had the manual on how to make a stallion, you may rip it up when it came to him because
01:17like Nicholas de Chambure, I'd say, when he bought him, he wasn't like the champion two-year-old
01:23in France, started off and he retired him to Harris Ettreham. He would have been, I'd
01:28say, delighted when he started a stand-in, but he didn't, how would you say, get the
01:33market support that he saw because I think he only ended up with 23 odd foals or 25 foals
01:39from his first crop. But in that first crop, there was Almanzor, who was a world champion
01:43and for the last five years, he's produced a group one winner out of the last five crops.
01:48So he just keeps upgrading mares and hopefully the best is yet to come. There's been massive
01:52investment in Goomer Australia, be it the brood mares and the stallions that they send
01:56and it's no reason why not. It's a brilliant farm, brilliant producers and in a buzzing
02:02market as well that is Australia. They sent a lot of good stallions there recently, be
02:07it American Pharaoh, Justify, who is about to be crowned the leading first season starter
02:10down there and we're going to hopefully now have Wooten Basset to follow on as well. Before
02:15we've even had a foal, or his foals were just hitting the ground, they actually were able
02:18to increase his fees, which was the positivity about him. So look, he's on a rising curve
02:24so long may it continue. He's just a brilliant horse to work with and that translates into
02:28the mind of his progeny as well. Everyone always tells me how good their minds are,
02:33you can do whatever you want with them. So I think that does translate into it and the
02:39good stallions take their chances and he's taken all his chances that he's ever got.
02:42From very, very small chances, he's taken every one of them. If you were to take King
02:47of Steel as an example, he's bred by an American farm, so you've got the international element
02:51coming back in there with him. He was very unlucky, or I'm going to say, we were delighted
02:57to get up and beat him on the day, but he looked like he hit the derby one with a far
03:00long to go and that, I'd say, was a very, very good renewal of the derby this year.
03:06He proved there was no fluke when he went on to Ascot, he won Group 2 as he wanted and
03:10now he's joint favourite for the King George. So that's going to be a really exciting race,
03:14but it's a real testament to what he's capable of because when we were looking at Wooten
03:19Bassett in the summer of 2020, actually the one thing we thought he might omit was a two-year-old,
03:25having a very good two-year-old, but luckily Zelly came along, Alrifa came along subsequently
03:30as well and I was looking at time for him yesterday, I think other than a couple of
03:34justifies, he's three of the top five highest rated two-year-olds. So it just shows you
03:39that again, what I was saying about the versatility, like we're talking about a mile and a half
03:43three-year-old, but we're also talking about six, seven furlong two-year-olds. So it's
03:48exactly what we need in Coolmore, you need to be able to get a horse that can challenge
03:52a Dewhurst or a National Stakes but at the same time win a Guineas, win a Derby and that's
03:56what we're all about here, is trying to win those classic races at three.