The legendary late Deep Impact, whose champion son Danon Platina stands at Mauritzfontein, had another fantastic posthumous weekend this week.
Not only did Deep Impact brilliant two-year-old son Auguste Rodin win Saturday’s G1 Vertem Futurity Trophy Stakes at Doncaster, Deep Impact’s three-year-old son Ask Victor More captured the G1 Kikuka Sho (Japanese St Leger) at Hanshin the following day.
A seventh European G1 winner for Deep Impact (whose subsequent G1 Qipco 2000 Guineas winning son Saxon Warrior captured the same race back in 2017), Auguste Rodin provided his trainer Aidan O’Brien with an eleventh win in the Vertem Futurity with a stellar performance in Saturday’s G1 feature for two-year-olds.
Auguste Rodin was odds-on on Friday but drifted due in part to the heavy ground before he ran out a ready winner from Epictetus and the wayward Holloway Boy.
They split into two groups when the stalls opened with Salt Lake City heading Epictetus and Auguste Rodin in the small group on the stands’ side with Holloway Boy trailing the slightly bigger group at the other side of the track.
He travelled well in a first-time visor under Danny Tudhope and hit the front with two furlongs to go, but he appeared to get lonely and drifted markedly over to the stands’ side group.
By the time he got over Auguste Rodin hit the front and he kept on well to beat Epictetus by three and a half lengths with Holloway Boy third.
Out of Galileo’s multiple G1 winning daughter Rhododendron (whose full-brother Flying The Flag stands in South Africa), Auguste Rodin has now won three of four starts with the blue blooded colt having triumped in the G2 KPMG Champions Juvenile Stakes last time out.
Deep Impact struck again at the highest level on Sunday when his son Ask Victor More emulated his sire when victorious in the G1 Kikuka Sho.
The Yasuhito Tamura-trained Ask Victor More held on for a memorable success in the final leg of the Japanese Triple Crown, the Kikuka Sho, defying Boldog Hos and Justin Palace to record his first Group 1 victory of his career, under a well-timed ride from Hironobu Tanabe.
The son of Deep Impact was third in the G1 Tokyo Yushun and fifth in the Satsuki Sho earlier this year but got a deserved elite success after tracking tearaway leader Seiun Hades throughout and then assuming the lead at the top of the straight.
Justin Palace was the first to issue a challenge, before Boldog Hos, under a determined ride from Hayato Yoshida, surged down the outside. He drove late at Ask Victor More, but the inside colt held him at bay to win by a nose on the line, with Justin Place half a length back in third.
