Most expensive Havana Grey yearling of 2023 set to debut for Godolphin at Newmarket

Our resident bloodstock experts profile the well-bred eyecatchers and expensive purchases set to grace the track.

Symbol Of Honour

Tattersalls £40,000 EBF Novice Stakes, 4.50 Newmarket, Sunday 

Forecast odds: 13-8

What's the story?

Havana Grey is not yet associated with total smash hits in the sales ring, for all he is recognised as an outstanding and progressive young sire, but Godolphin were taken enough with his colt out of Arcamist to go to 600,000gns at Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale last autumn.

That made Symbol Of Honour, as he is now called, the most expensive Havana Grey yearling of 2023.

It was his second appearance in the Park Paddocks ring, having been sold by breeder Whitsbury Manor Stud as a foal the November before, for 250,000gns to Stauffenberg Bloodstock, who took him back to Newmarket as a yearling.

How's he bred?

His dam is an Arcano mare who had a light career on the track herself, packing in just five runs, but she managed to win one of them, a Ripon maiden.

Her first foal was Dragon Symbol, by Cable Bay, who was rather cruelly denied a Group 1 win in the 2021 Commonwealth Cup when demoted in the stewards’ room after bumping Campanelle. 

Luck wasn’t really ever something that Dragon Symbol had on his side, as for all his talent he never won a stakes race – he was beaten a nose in the Group 2 Sandy Lane Stakes and was also runner-up in the July Cup.

Symbol Of Honour in the Park Paddocks ring before selling to Godolphin for 600,000gnsCredit: Laura Green

He now stands alongside Havana Grey at Whitsbury Manor Stud.

Symbol Of Honour’s other half-brother, Celtic Champion, is a three-time winner, including in Bahrain.

Who does he face?

Half a dozen others have been declared for the five-furlong contest, three of whom are also unraced. 

One of them is Yaroogh, by Dubawi and bred by Godolphin out of the Invincible Spirit mare Lawahed, who is closely related to Quddwah, winner of a Listed race at Ascot on Wednesday. He is trained by William Haggas for Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum.

Of those to have run, Sheikh Mohammed Obaid’s homebred by Harry Angel, The Actor, sets the standard having been beaten just a neck into second on his debut over course and distance at the Craven meeting. He is trained by Richard Hannon.

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