The Autumn Sun shines on Redoute’s Choice
The Autumn Sun has reached the Group 1 winner's circle at only his third start. (PHOTO: Mark Gatt)
Eighteen years into his extraordinary stud career, Redoute’s Choice has little to prove, whether as a sire of stakeswinners and Group 1 winners, sensational sire sons and valuable broodmare daughters or profitable yearlings.
He also has little time for lingering in the past tense, and on Saturday he demonstrated yet again the permanence of his class.
This time it was unbeaten 2YO colt The Autumn Sun who updated the Redoute’s Choice record when he and jockey Kerrin McEvoy overcame a testing run to win the $600,000 BRC J.J. Atkins Plate 1600m G1 by a long neck and 1.5 lengths from Zousain and Fundamentalist.
Watch The Autumn Sun win the BRC J.J. Atkins Plate G1.
In fact, Redoute’s Choice appears in the pedigrees of all three horses. He’s also the damsire of Zousain’s sire Zoustar, and his son Not A Single Doubt is responsible for the filly Fundamentalist, who fought hard to add a Group 1 placing to her Adelaide Listed win in April.
The result was notable for champion trainer Chris Waller who prepares both The Autumn Sun and Zousain.
He said of The Autumn Sun, “It was only his third race start and just to see him dig so deep and pull away from the third and fourth horses, it showed how smart he is….Only certain people and horses can take that step so quick and excel.” The Caulfield Guineas, won by Redoute’s Choice himself in 1999, will be the colt’s major Spring target.
The Autumn Sun is Stakeswinner No. 158 for Redoute’s Choice, his 33rd Group 1 winner, 38th 2YO stakeswinner and his 9th Group 1 winner at two. The three-time Champion Sire has posted at least one Group 1 winner every season since 2004/05 and his lifetime Stakeswinners/Runners strike rate is just over 12%.
Bred by the partnership of the Aga Khan Studs & Arrowfield, The Autumn Sun is out of the beautifully bred Galileo mare Azmiyna, an unraced half-sister of European champion and four-time Group 1 winner Azamour.
The colt was offered alongside Golden Slipper G1 winner Estijaab in the Arrowfield draft at the 2017 Inglis Easter Sale and bought for $700,000 by trainer Chris Waller, agent Guy Mulcaster & owner Hermitage Thoroughbreds. The Dark Green & Red Hermitage silks are also carried by Group 1 winners Summer Passage & Egg Tart.
The Waller-Mulcaster team returned to Inglis Easter this year to purchase the stunning Snitzel-Azmiyna filly for $1.3 million. Azmiyna has a weanling colt by Not A Single Doubt and is again in foal to Snitzel.
The Autumn Sun is the second Group 1 winner bred by the Aga Khan Studs-Arrowfield partnership, after Whisky Baron, last season’s Champion Middle Distance Horse in South Africa.
