Love all around Middlelane Farm with second top-level performer

Middlelane Farm near Naas now has a second top-level winner out of a little-known broodmare that caught the experienced eyes of Kevin and Meta Cullen.

Love And Laughter, a maiden winner for Tim Easterby at Chester in 2004, joined the stud for 50,000gns at the end of her racing career and has already been responsible for the ill-fated but popular Wigmore Hall, the dual Northern Dancer Turf winner who collected more than £1 million in prize-money.

His much younger half-sister by Australia, Ocean Road, finished sixth in last year’s Oaks for Hugo Palmer and Qatar Bloodstock but has been transferred to the US and the Brendan Walsh stable.

The winner of an allowance race at Keeneland in April, she zipped from last to first in the space of a furlong under Umberto Rispoli to collect the Grade 1 Gamely Stakes at Santa Anita in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The couple’s daughter, Jennifer, said: "I didn’t know she was entered until Saturday when a friend texted to congratulate on the entry, but I set the alarm for a quarter to two and we were all screaming the house down!"

Of the initial purchase of the now 20-year-old Theatrical mare, a daughter of the Cherry Hinton runner-up Hoh Dear, she continued: "Age doesn’t seem to have stopped her, so it’s just been great.

"Mum and Dad fell in love with her in the Tattersalls December Sale, they were determined to have her even though her page wasn’t that strong at the time.

"In the book it was basically only half a page, there wasn’t much black type at all, and they paid what we thought was a lot of money for her, but they’ve been really good at buying horses so we’re thrilled how it’s worked out. I’m still learning from them!"

The success of Wigmore Hall has ensured that Love And Laughter has looked value for money ever since.

Cullen continued: "We sold [Ocean Road] as a foal, it was actually the first time we went to the foal sale at Tattersalls, but my sister Evelyn looked at her in the field in the middle of the summer and said she thought we ought to try it and see how it went.

"She was loved by everyone who saw her and sold for 140,000gns, which was a really good price.

Ocean Road's late half-brother Wigmore Hall was a fine globetrotter for Michael BellCredit: Edward Whitaker

"She has a Saxon Warrior colt that we sold last year for 60,000gns and she actually has another Australia filly foal born this year. We don’t have a daughter of hers ourselves yet, she gave us one this year and I think the signs are there that we probably should keep this one!"

Founded by Kevin and Meta almost half a century ago, Middlelane has only usually had half a dozen broodmares and seems in safe family hands.

Jennifer added: "It’s always been small but Mum and Dad always punched above their weight. They bred Bachir, who won two Guineas, Speciosa, who won the 1,000 Guineas, and Irish Rookie, who was second in the French Guineas. They’ve done a really good job."

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