Stud move completed as Sir Ron Priestley heads to Haras du Saz

Haras du Saz has taken its roster back up to three with the recruitment of Mark Johnston's popular and consistent stayer Sir Ron Priestley.

The five-year-old will stand at the Simon family's stud near Nantes alongside Madhmoon and Elm Park and will be introduced at an opening fee of €2,500.

"We were very interested to have a son of Australia, who has had a really good year with I think 24 different black-type horses and two Group 1 winners, and also being out of a Danehill Dancer mare you are going back to the Galileo-Danehill cross, which is interesting," said the stud's Valerie Simon.

"He's out of a good family of jumping stallions, Sholokhov, Solder Of Fortune, so that's a good point as well."

Sir Ron Priestley, who was bred by Susan Hearn's Mascalls Stud, was bought by Johnston for 70,000gns at Tattersalls Book 2 and later owned by Paul Dean.

He won the March Stakes at Goodwood in 2019 on the way to finishing second to Logician in the St Leger and, after a season's absence, has notched up Group 2 wins in the Jockey Club and Princess of Wales's Stakes in 2021. The chestnut is a three-parts brother to this year's Gold Cup winner Subjectivist.

Simon continued: "His dam [Reckoning] is a fantastic broodmare who was a good racehorse, and he's a very good-looking horse with strong bone himself.

"Obviously we loved him as a racehorse, he's not a Group 1 winner but he had a very good rating and ran against a lot of Group 1 horses. We loved his temperament, he seems a very easy horse and he always did his best on the racecourse, which we think is very important for our stallions."

It is early days for Madhmoon, the Group 2 winner and Derby runner-up who has finished his first covering season, while former Racing Post Trophy winner Elm Park has been having his first runners.

Simon continued: "We had three last season, we had a horse bred ourselves, Desinvolte, he's gone to another stud as it's sometimes interesting to move them. We didn't plan to buy another horse but we were offered the opportunity to get him and we thought that we should not miss it.

"Elm Park covered 80 or 90 last season and we've a lot of mares coming just for the stallions, it's not just ourselves. There are a lot of local breeders but we get mares from as far away as Germany and Belgium."

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