Crystal Ocean riding a sparkling early wave of success as stallion career gets off to the best start

Exciting young stallion Crystal Ocean has made an immediate impact at stud and in the space of four days his first crop yielded a black-type winner in France, the top lot at the Tattersalls Cheltenham Festival Sale and a second four-year-old maiden winner.

Although just four-year-olds and therefore only representative of a small sample, early indications are hugely positive for the Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes winner who stands under the Coolmore National Hunt banner at the McCarthy family’s The Beeches Stud in County Waterford.

“We’ve had some great results with Crystal Ocean, it has been a fantastic start and we are delighted with how his career has begun,” said Robert McCarthy. “They look like they have inherited his good traits. They are showing that they jump and stay, and are demonstrating that they have a great attitude.”

At Auteuil on Saturday his son Saint Crystal was successful in the Listed Prix General de Rougemont for Dominique Bressou and the gelding’s owner-breeders Patrick Joubert and Ecurie Couderc. It was Saint Crystal’s second victory from four career starts and provided Crystal Ocean with his first black-type winner.

In the point-to-point realm, Crystal Ocean’s statistics are equally as impressive with two individual winners from three runners and he has 26 further members of his first crop registered with hunters’ certificates. Many of them are in the yards of leading handlers including Colin Bowe, Sam Curling, Cormac Doyle, Aidan Fitzgerald, Rob James, Denis Murphy and Derek O’Connor.

Both of his four-year-old maiden winners were successful on debut and the first – Cristal D’Estruval – sold for £400,000 to Harry Derham and Ed Bailey in the Cheltenham winners’ enclosure last Thursday night.

The son of Listed hurdle winner Aurore D’Estruval, who was also second in the Grade 1 Fighting Fifth, was purchased by Colin Bowe for €67,000 at the Goffs Arkle Sale and made quite the impression when battling back from a mistake at the last to win at Lisronagh, a race in which he and the runner-up pulled 20 lengths clear of the third-placed finisher.

Speaking in the Cheltenham winners’ enclosure after the sale Bowe said, “He was a straightforward horse to do anything with and I’ll be back looking for more by Crystal Ocean at the sales.”

It was a doubly important sale and win for McCarthy who bred Cristal D’Estruval and sold him as a foal to Jamestown House Stud for €70,000 at the Goffs December National Hunt Sale. On Tuesday afternoon, the sale-topper’s Graded-placed dam, who is a daughter of Nickname, was covered by Crystal Ocean once again.

McCarthy said: “Cristal D’Estruval was a gorgeous-looking foal and all Crystal Ocean’s foals have great presence and quality, they are fantastic walkers too – they look like racehorses.”

Robert McCarthy of The Beeches Stud at Tattersalls IrelandCredit: www.healyracing.ie

Green Hint made it two winners for Crystal Ocean when successful at last Sunday’s Longford meet held at Daramona House. Trained by Ross Crawford for Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, McCarthy revealed the gelding will now move on to the next phase of his career.

“He is being aimed at the Defender Bumper at the Punchestown Festival. Anthony Bromley bought him last year and he was really taken with him, so it is great that the horse is already repaying his faith in him. They seem to really like Green Hint.”

Out of the Mastercraftsman mare Hint Of Grey, the four-year-old was bred by Paul and Catherine Reed and, like Cristal D’Estruval, was another purchased at the 2024 Goffs Arkle Sale, in his case by Highflyer Bloodstock for €50,000 from Clonmult Farm.

Crystal Ocean has stood for an advertised fee of €8,000 in each season since he retired to The Beeches and his first crop averaged more than four times that amount at the store sales last year.

MV Magnier teamed up with Willie Mullins and Harold Kirk to purchase the most expensive store from the first crop of Crystal Ocean; a gelding out of the unraced Yeats mare Carrowmore from Baroda Stud for €120,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale. That figure was more than three times his 2023 store sale average of €35,862 and matched the highest price for his progeny to that point, which was also at Tattersalls Ireland.

At the 2021 edition of the November National Hunt Sale, Kevin Ross and Ben Case parted with €120,000 for the colt foal out of Daydream Beach, an unraced half-sister to Grade 1 Royal Bond heroine Airlie Beach, sold by Coolmara Stables.

By Sea The Stars, Crystal Ocean himself is a half-brother to the Grade 1 Canadian International winner Hillstar and he has consistently been one of the most popular stallions at stud. His first crop numbers 179 while there are 213 three-year-olds by him on the ground.

His two-year-old crop is larger again at 222, while his yearlings are his biggest cohort to date at 232 and he covered 186 mares last season.

Crystal Ocean is on course to be even more popular with breeders this season as there is evidence to back the promise of his pedigree and performance.

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing for him, and I think he is going to have a busy season of it,” said McCarthy. “All the top breeders have used him in the past, sending him good mares and he is definitely busy again. People like Frank Motherway, Michael Moore and Oliver O’Loughlin have all been supporters of him from the start of his career and are continuing to use him, and of course we have always supported him ourselves and are doing so again.”

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