Among the more remarkable international sires’ achievements of recent years, Desert King’s feat in producing an Ascot Gold Cup winner (Mr Dinos) and a Melbourne Cup winner (Makybe Diva) in his first crop takes some beating. Another great double to spring to mind is Nijinsky producing a Derby winner (Shahrastani) and a Kentucky Derby winner (Ferdinand) in the same crop. However, the recent achievement of King's Best in siring the Derby winner and the Japan Derby winner – courtesy of the victories of Workforce and Eishin Flash at Epsom and Tokyo respectively – has to rank right up there with these, particularly bearing in mind that no stallion had previously ever sired the winners of both races in a whole career, never mind just in one year alone, writes John Berry.
Although a brilliant racehorse, King’s Best was a fragile one who was not able to stay sound to enjoy a full career - and, rightly or wrongly, it is probably fair to say that hitherto he has been more regarded as a sire of horses who display potential than of horses who fulfill it. However, that perception will surely have to change now that his remarkable international Derby double has allowed his merit to be more widely appreciated.
It is easy now to say that King’s Best bears a pedigree of the very highest order. At the outset of his career, however, the full splendour of his lineage was not fully apparent, notwithstanding the fact that he was very closely related to a Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner. Conceived and foaled in America, King’s Best was born in January 1997, at which stage his sire Kingmambo was aged seven and had yet to sire a runner. We now know that Kingmambo has proved a very dominant sire, but at that stage all we could do was guess – although the horse’s racing record (he had won three Group One races as a three-year-old in 1993) and pedigree (he was by Mr Prospector from the champion racemare Miesque, whose next foal, East Of The Moon, won three Group One races as a three-year-old in 1994) allowed one to suspect that Kingmambo would prove to be a very good stallion.
Aside from being a son of what seemed likely to be a good stallion, the young King’s Best was principally notable for being a three-parts brother to the 1993 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe victrix Urban Sea. She had been a surprising winner of Europe’s premier weight-for-age race (at 37/1) and hailed from a family which at the time was not regarded as being from Europe’s mainstream: she was from a line of high-class German stayers (most notably her fifth dam Asterblute, a champion filly in 1949) although her dam, the Lombard mare Allegretta, had been trained in England (where she was placed in the Lingfield Oaks Trial) before spending her time at stud in America. Of the many foals which Allegretta produced in the States, her Miswaki filly Urban Sea was the first celebrity and King’s Best (also the product of a Mr Prospector stallion) was the second.
This was clearly, therefore, a good pedigree – but now one can say a lot more about it than that. Since King’s Best’s racing days, Urban Sea has been represented by seven stakes horses, four of whom have won Group/Grade One races and two of whom (Galileo and Sea The Stars) have been Derby-winning champions. Furthermore, another of Allegretta’s daughters (the Group-winning Riverman mare Allez Les Trois) has bred both the Prix du Jockey-Club winner Anabaa Blue and the dam of the dual Group One-winning miler Tamayuz. Further laurels for the family had been garnered by two Group Three winners who raced shortly before King’s Best (the half-brothers Tertullian and Terek, both sons of Allegretta’s Trempolino daughter Turbaine) while King’s Best’s contemporary Anzillero (another grandson of Allegretta) landed a Group One weight-for-age victory in Germany over 2400m as a four-year-old during King’s Best’s first year at stud.
Unsurprisingly, bearing in mind that he complements his pedigree with stunning good looks, King’s Best proved popular as a yearling, fetching 2.3 million francs at Deauville’s August Yearling Sale in 1998, where he was bought by Charlie Gordon-Watson on behalf of Saeed Suhail, who put the colt into training in Newmarket with Sir Michael Stoute. It did not take long for King’s Best to show that he was a talented horse and, when he lined up for a seven-furlong two-year-old maiden at Newmarket’s July Course in the first week of August 1999, he did so as the 6/4 favourite. He duly won comfortably before heading to York’s Ebor Meeting eleven days later for the Acomb Stakes. He was due to face an interesting runner from Aidan O’Brien’s stable in this Listed contest, but Giant's Causeway was a non-runner, meaning that a clash between these two mighty colts would have to wait for another day. As it was, King’s Best started at 4/7 and won comfortably, again ridden by the American jockey Gary Stevens, who was at the time nearing the end of a short-lived stint as Stoute’s stable jockey.
Having looked very straightforward in his first two starts, King’s Best seemed to have undergone a character change before tackling the Dewhurst Stakes two months later. Ridden for the first time by Kieren Fallon, King’s Best pulled far too hard in the first half of the race before weakening into last place behind Distant Music. It was not a satisfactory way for his season to end – and his three-year-old campaign began similarly worryingly as he again over-raced in the Craven Stakes, shooting clear at the Bushes before inevitably weakening in the final furlong and losing the lead close home. In the two and a half weeks between the Craven Stakes and the 2,000 Guineas, however, Fallon and Stoute managed to solve the problem: in a 27-runner field for the season’s first Classic, Fallon seemingly put King’s Best to sleep in the pack before bringing him with an explosive run in the closing stages, passing Giant’s Causeway in the final furlong to win, going away, by three and a half lengths. It was a scintillating performance which looked outstanding – and subsequently was made to look even better once Giant’s Causeway had gone on to win five consecutive Group One races through the summer before ending the year with an excellent, narrow and luckless second to Tiznow in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
Sadly, while Giant’s Causeway’s career continued in the ascendant after the 2,000 Guineas, King’s Best’s fortunes waned. He missed the Derby because of apparent hind leg lameness and his problems intensified thereafter: he was pulled up midrace in the Irish Derby, seriously lame with a fractured front cannon bone. Happily, this injury, although-career ending, was not terminal and he was able to join the Darley stallion roster, taking up stud duties in the spring of 2001 at Kildangan Stud in Ireland at a fee of 25,000 Irish pounds.
In retrospect, it is hard to understand why it has taken so long for King’s Best to be recognized as a top-class sire. We can assume that he is now recognized as such, but we can also assume that until recently such recognition had not been forthcoming: he was relocated within the Darley operation to Haras du Logis at the start of last year, a move which it was fair to regard as relegation. Quite why he should have been deemed no longer wprthy of a place on the roster at either Kildangan or Dalham Hall is not clear. His first crop results were very good, with two members of that vintage (Proclamation and Dubai Surprise) winning Group One races at three. The same crop also included the Group Two winners Notability and Oiseau Rare and the Group One place-getter Runaway. King’s Best’s second crop also contained a few stars: Best Alibi and Best Name were both Classic-placed Group winners and Queen's Best won at Group Three level. Two more Group One winners came from his third crop – Creachadoir, winner of the Lockinge Stakes over a mile as a four-year-old, and King's Apostle, who landed the Prix Maurice de Gheest over 1300m as a five-year-old – but by the time these horses had reached maturity it was clear that King’s Best was no longer regarded as a major league sire.
King’s Best has, deservedly, proved very popular in France, where his fee this season has been 15,000 Euros. While it should be borne in mind that he was blessed with very good books of mares from the outset and that his current three-year-olds were conceived in the spring of 2006 (after his popularity had received a boost from the previous summer’s successes of his first-crop son Proclamation and when he was thus blessed with another book of very good mares) it is no longer possible to stick to the mantra that King’s Best horses do not often live up to expectations. This year King’s Best’s offspring have been doing at least as well as one might expect because his results have been first-class. Leaving aside the top-class wins of Workforce and Eishin Preston, good sons of King’s Best currently racing include Allybar (beaten inches in this year’s Dubai World Cup), Simon De Montfort (whose impressive victories this spring in both the Prix La Force and the Prix Francois Mathet came at the expense of subsequent Prix du Jockey-Club place-getter Pain Perdu) and Calming Influence (winner of the Group Two Godolphin Mile on Dubai World Cup night).
King’s Best was a magnificent racehorse, a top-class colt from a top-class family. He rightly began his stud career highly esteemed and, if his status did at one stage decline, he must surely now be recognized for what he is: a very good stallion.
