A fond farewell to one of Europe's most accomplished - and oldest - broodmares

Good Morning Bloodstock is Martin Stevens' daily morning email and presented online as a sample. 

Here, Martin speaks to Haras de Meautry's Nick Bell about the remarkable mare Dievotchka, who has died aged 34. Subscribers can get more great insight from Martin every Monday to Friday. 

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Regular readers will know there’s little I enjoy writing about more than the biographies and breeding records of the most fruitful broodmares. It’s only fair to shine a spotlight on those producers, when they manage the sorts of strike-rates of black-type horses to runners that even the very best stallions would envy.

We lost one of the highest achieving, and certainly oldest, blue hen mares in Europe with the death of Dievotchka at her owner Baron Edouard de Rothschild’s Haras de Meautry in Normandy last Friday. She was the remarkably grand age of 34.

She had a pretty good innings,” says stud director Nick Bell with some understatement. “She’d started to lose a lot of weight this year, but had done pretty well for herself up to then.

“She was always the easiest mare to deal with – a good doer and a very good mother. She certainly liked her food. She was always the first one by the gate, and she’d wait there when you went to bring the mares in. Her only funny trait was that she used to go around with her tongue hanging out all the time. I’ve no idea why.”

Dievotchka might have looked a bit of a dope sometimes, with her tongue sticking out, but make no mistake, she was an exceedingly clever old girl. 

The daughter of Dancing Brave and the Group 3-placed High Line mare High And Dry was originally bought by Patricia Boutin’s Suprina agency on behalf of Baron Edouard for $250,000 at the Keeneland July Yearling Sale of 1990 – an auction topped by future US horse of the year and champion sire A.P. Indy, who also made it into his fourth decade, funnily enough.

Dievotchka entered training with Luca Cumani but never ran, and so was retired straight into the baron’s broodmare band, which was based at Haras Fresnay-le-Buffard until his father Guy died in 2007 and the stock was moved to the family’s Haras de Meautry. The racetrack’s loss would be the breeding shed’s gain.

From 13 foals she produced 11 winners, six with upper-case black type. Her first three stakes-winning offspring were Russian Hope, a colt by the uninspiring Rock Hopper who won the Grand Prix de Deauville; Russian Hill, a filly by Indian Ridge who took a Listed race at Compiegne and was a close second in two Group 2s; and Archange D’Or, a Danehill colt who landed the Prix Eugene Adam.

Later came Russian Desert, a colt by Desert Prince who also scored in Listed company at Compiegne; Russian Cross, a colt by Cape Cross who won the Prix Guillaume d’Ornano; and Esoterique, a filly by Danehill Dancer who turned out to be her dam’s masterpiece.

Esoterique didn’t make her debut for Andre Fabre until the April of her three-year-old season, but she made up for lost time by winning a Saint-Cloud maiden and the Prix Vanteaux, and running a neck second to Flotilla in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches on her first three starts in the space of just over a month.

She made no impact behind Treve in the Prix de Diane on her only other start at three but returned in fine form at four when she was dropped in trip, winning the Dahlia Stakes and Prix Rothschild, and running a close fourth in both the Prix du Moulin and Sun Chariot Stakes.

Esoterique (pictured below) was sublime at five, when she took the notable scalp of Territories to win the Prix Jacques le Marois and defeated Integral to land the Sun Chariot. She also finished hard on the heels of some true top-notchers in other Group 1s that season – just half a length behind Muhaarar when second in the Prix Maurice de Gheest, a length behind Solow when second in the Queen Anne and even two lengths behind Maurice when fourth in the Hong Kong Mile.

She failed to win in four starts at six, but that season did nothing to dim the memory of her formidable class, high cruising speed and lethal turn of foot.

Esoterique was terribly good,” says Nick. “Dievotchka certainly saved the best for last, or nearly last anyway. When I came to Haras de Meautry, Russian Cross was doing his stuff. He couldn’t quite win a Group 1, and neither could his siblings, for all they were very good at winning Group 2s. But then along came Esoterique, the mare’s penultimate foal, to put the record straight.”

Esoterique: top-class daughter of the late DievotchkaCredit: Mark Cranham

Sadly, though, the story of Dievotchka’s succession at Haras de Meautry is not a simple one.

“We don’t have many fillies from the family, that’s the problem,” says Nick. “She produced an awful lot of colts. We made a mistake a few years ago by selling Russian Symbol, an earlier full-sister to Esoterique who won a small race but wasn’t very good. We sold her for €115,000 and then as Esoterique kept winning she kept going back to the sales and going up in value. 

“As for her other daughters, Dievotchkina didn’t do much and was gone by the time I got here, Russian Love produced nothing at all, and as for Something Strange, every foal she produces has issues, although we have two young daughters by Le Havre out of her who we’ll obviously keep.

“Russian Hill was pretty good for us, producing the Group 3-winning sprinter Russian Soul, but she also had a lot of colts. She did give us some fillies at the end, though, before retirement.”

Esoterique is far from a reliable guardian of Dievotchka’s legacy at Haras de Meautry, either.

“It was quite well chronicled that she had problems with her ovaries while in training, and she has a lot of trouble going in foal,” says Nick. “She’s 13 now and it says it all that we’ve only had two foals out of her. They’re both colts, the first of which, a Galileo called Ingres, was no good.

Esoterique will be covered by Kingman again this yearCredit: Asuncion Pineyrua/Juddmonte Farms

“She has a Kingman yearling colt, is in foal to Kingman and is going back to Kingman. We’re just dying for a filly out of her. We don’t know what she’s carrying at the moment, as we never scan the mares, because there’s nothing you can do about it when you do find out. We just keep our fingers crossed.

“So at the moment the only female descendants of Dievotchka we have in production are the odd granddaughter who was only moderate on the course, but there’s nothing we can do about it and hopefully we’ll be okay in the long run.”

Good Morning Bloodstock is keeping its fingers firmly crossed that Esoterique produces that longed-for filly foal this year or in the near future.

Haras de Meautry sounds like heaven for us connoisseurs of accomplished older mares, by the way. 

“We have a lot of retired horses here,” says Nick. “Dievotchka would have been the oldest mare in her paddock but the average age of the horses in there must be 27 or 28. There are some real blasts from the past, like Nordican Inch. We also have a whole barn full of Edouard’s former show jumpers, so it feels a bit like an old people’s home here at times!"

Another Meautry matriarch who might be about to head into an honourable retirement is Penne, a 20-year-old Listed-placed daughter of Sevres Rose who has produced multiple Group 1 winner Meandre (by Slickly) and last year’s Prix de la Nonette runner-up Mqse De Sevigne (by Slickly’s close relation Siyouni).

“Mqse De Sevigne will be back in action this year and we’re hoping she’ll win a Group 1 this year,” says Nick. “She was always going to improve with time but she still ran well in the Prix de l’Opera on her last start, over a little shorter than she needs and in spite of the race not panning out in her favour.

Penne might be in her last year as a broodmare. She keeps going back to Siyouni, but she’s become a very tricky breeder and if she doesn’t go in foal again we’ll retire her. It’s not the end of the world as we have a lot of her daughters. We’re definitely not short on those.

“Penne is still mad as ever, though. She really is nuts. It must be all that Kenmare blood.”

Putting dotty geriatrics firmly to one side for a moment, there is also news on Nick himself as he is getting back in the saddle for another gruelling charity cycle ride.

You might remember that he rode the Ring of Kerry challenge two years ago, but only the equivalent distance in Normandy as the physical event was called off due to lockdown measures. Well, he’s heading to Ireland in July to complete the actual course this time.

“There’ll be a few more hills than there were here,” he says with a faint note of dread. “But at least I’m a bit fitter than last time.”

There is a serious reason for Nick donning the Lycra and getting back on the bike besides raising funds for a good cause. 

“It’s all to do with the fact I have to take masses of cortisones for the cancers I have, and so I put on a lot of weight,” says Nick. “The bike is an antidote to that and I have to say I often need a bit of motivation, when I look out of the window and see the weather and think I’m not going out in that. Having that goal makes you get on with it.”

I’m sure I speak for all Good Morning Bloodstock readers when I wish Nick the best of luck. Having taken such good care of cherished older mares like Dievotchka and Penne he deserves the most cooperative of tailwinds as he cycles through the beautiful Kerry countryside, along with a miraculous absence of saddle soreness.

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