The family
Our Elsie is the third foal out of the Dodlands Steading trained
racemare Well Disguised. Picked up by Donald as a 3yr old at
Doncaster Sales, Well Disguised raced for Al Duncan and 'Lucky Dave'
Leslie for whom she won 4 hurdles and was placed numerous times in
bumpers and hurdles.
Well Disguised is a half sister to a useful staying jumper in
Paul Nicholls' French Executive, the winner of 7 races over jumps
including the Sussex National.
The granddam, Executive Move, unraced but a half sister to useful hurdler/chaser Parson's Green, who won 7 races for Nicky
Henderson in the early 90s.
4th dam Bruff Gypsy is a half sister to Scottish National winner Cockle Strand.
Well Disguised has produced 5 living foals, and in
addition to 'Margaret' there are a half sister (b 2012, injured as
a yearling, broodmare), winning bumper/hurdler
Eternally Yours (b 2013) and a gelding by Midnight Legend
(b 2016), both in training at Dodlands,
In 2020, she produced a
cracking colt foal by Linda's Lad.
About the sire
Yeats (bay horse b 2001) was an outstanding racehorse. He was a tall, good topped horse with a powerful round action when trained over 7 seasons by Aiden O'Brien and winning 15 of his 26 races. He is best remembered as the only horse to win the Ascot Gold Cup four times, a race that has been run for over 200 years.
Owned by the Coolmore organisation, he was retired to stud in 2010 and marketed initially as a flat stallion but since 2014 has gradually gravitated to the ranks of being a National Hunt sire. And a very good one at that.
He has regularly covered books of mares into the hundreds most years, and Grade 1 success has come his way through the likes of racemares Shattered Love (winner of the JLT Chase at 2018 Cheltenham Festival) and Augusta Kate. With his youngest stock being only 8 year olds in 2019, this is a sire who can rise to the top of the NH lists in the next 4-5 years.
Season 2020-21 outlook
Our Elsie had actually been showing up well in the morning exercise gallops prior to her debut
in a bumper at Ayr in November '19. We were taken aback by her
slightly underwhelming performance that day, up with the pace but
weakening from 4 out.
She seemed fine afterwards and we had her fully checked out but
nothing untoward has arisen. It may just have been she was still on
the weak side.
So, she has had a good time out at summer grass and has come back
into the stable in August in fine fettle. The free-moving Our Elsie,
an attractive, determined-looking mare will initially be aimed at bumpers in
2020-21.
Purchased for racing by Steve and Barry Chamberlain, and we hope
she's very lucky for the lads.
Previously....
Our Elsie is somewhat of a collector's item these days....a
purchase for Dodlands Steading which is not from the NH sales ring!
In the summer of 2017, Eternally Yours was in the stable and had impressed the staff in her morning work over the previous 4 or 5 months. Although the daughter of Well Disguised was a few months away from her first racecourse appearance, we became interested in her younger half sister by Yeats. An offer was made to her breeder and a deal was done to suit both parties.
Two years down the line and we are delighted with 'Margaret'. She was educated by Gary Rutherford in the Spring of 2018, and the local handler himself was very pleased with the young filly and even passed on a couple of videos of her nimbly jumping some low-lying poles. And our staff were equally impressed when the filly was stabled here for a couple of weeks to continue her early gallop experience.
Given time to strengthen and grow, 'Margaret' was brought back into
the yard early in 2019 where she was given a slightly more harder
routine alongside several of her fellow unraced 4 year olds. The
opportunity was also taken to test her upsides some of our more
mature mares too, and again we were delighted with her.
Maybe not as
forward at the same stage as her illustrious half-sister (now a
triple winner with an Official Rating high of 128) but the family
resemblance is uncanny.
Season | win | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | other | |
2019-20 | NH Flat | 1 | ||||
2020-21 | NH Flat | 1 | ||||
2020-21 | Hurdles | 3 |