This is an extract from the Racing Post’s Good Morning Bloodstock article from 3rd June 2026.
Breeders and buyers on small budgets watching the Classics at this time of year must feel like children pushing their noses against the window of a toy shop at Christmas time, admiring all the goodies contained within but being unable to afford any of them.
How they must fantasise about making use of a sire of the stature of Wootton Bassett, who was responsible for Prix du Jockey Club one-two Constitution River and Hawk Mountain on Sunday.
But, unfortunately for them, his covering fee had risen to €150,000 by the time those colts were conceived and his yearlings last season sold for a blockbuster average of around 400,000gns.
Here, then, is something to ease the frustration of those horsemen at the pointy end of the industry in a week when blueblooded homebreds will probably be hogging the headlines: a statistically credible sire whose covering fee and yearling averages should be well within their means.
In the UK, Ubettabelieveit did okay with his debut two-year-olds last year without causing much of a stir, but is doing a darn sight better now.
The Flying Childers Stakes winner by Kodiac, who stands at Mickley Stud in Shropshire at a fee of £4,000, currently boasts the second best black-type winners to runners ratio among the sophomores, with two from 57 giving him a score of 3.51 per cent.
That pair of stakes-winners by the sire are fine adverts for the profits available to those who invest in him. Hilitany, who won the Listed Spring Cup at Lingfield in February, was bred by Peter Balding and bought by Hamish Macauley as a yearling for 70,000gns and resold by Tally-Ho Stud as a breezer for £300,000, while Tokaido, who took the Listed Prix La Fleche at Chantilly on Sunday, was bred by Mickley Stud with Tim and Miranda Johnson and sold to Matt Coleman and Amy Murphy as a yearling for £58,000.
Incidentally, Hilitany is out of a daughter of Royal Applause and Tokaido is out of a daughter of Royal Applause’s grandson Dark Angel. But, then again, it is hardly breaking news that Kodiac and his sons and the Royal Applause-Acclamation-Dark Angel sire-line blend so well. Champion miler Charyn rather put that beyond doubt.
Ubettabelieveit (pictured above) is also the source of Del Mar Grade 3 runner-up Iriseach, close Sirenia Stakes fifth Sayidah Hard Spun, another smart filly in Three Non Blondes, the fairly useful triple winner Tricky Tel and Saturday’s Beverley Two-Year-Old Trophy short-head second Ronson. All bar the homebred Ronson were bought for reasonable sums.
Magnesium, a fluent winner for John Butler at Kempton on her second outing last month, is typical of the fun that can be had with a relatively low-stakes gamble on the sire, for both breeder and buyer. She was bred by Mickley Stud principal Richard Kent with his daughter Nell from the speedily bred Equiano mare Dharwa, who was acquired at a cost of just €7,000, and bought as a yearling by Ahmed Aldowaisan for £30,000.
Ubettabelieveit’s yearlings last year sold for an average of 19,722gns and median of 12,000gns, which wasn’t bad going when there was little fanfare about them at the time, and there was the odd jackpot hit, especially when Creighmore Stables sold to Alex Elliott for 90,000gns a colt by the sire out of the Mizzen Mast mare Let It Be Me who had been pinhooked as a foal for 52,000gns.
I can see this sire developing into a firm friend of breeders, trainers and owners operating on a shoestring.
