Late, lamented Lancaster Bomber on the bounce

If you lose them or sell them, they will give you reason to regret. Stallion management supremo John Freeman reminded us of this racing Murphy’s Law this week as he reflected on the untimely death of Lancaster Bomber more than two years ago.

Within a fortnight, Lancaster Bomber achieved the apparently unique feat of having sired the winners of both the Cape Fillies Guineas and the Cape Guineas – Beach Bomb and Snow Pilot respectively.

Neither Freeman nor his breeding fundi friend Oscar Foulkes could recall any other stallion doing that.

Gone too soon

In July 2021, Lancaster Bomber collapsed and died of a heart attack in his paddock at Drakenstein Stud Farm at the age of seven, after a stellar international racing career and with two crops of offspring in the stud book.

After Snow Pilot’s brilliant victory in the Guineas at Kenilworth on Saturday, his owner/breeder Gaynor Rupert said: “We lost Lancaster Bomber when he was only seven. It was completely heartbreaking. You
know, he was the future of Drakenstein. But we thought maybe he’ll give us something from his short two seasons – and he’s given us Snow Pilot.”

And Beach Bomb and 55 other horses currently in training, some of whom show promise.

Strong genes

Lancaster Bomber was born in the US in 2014, the son of leading sire War Front, himself a son of the great Danzig, in turn a son of the legend Northern Dancer. His mother, Sun Shower, a daughter of the stallion Indian Ridge, also produced champion Excelebration, winner of three Grade 1 races in the UK and France.

Racing out of the Ireland yard of the world’s foremost trainer, Aiden O’Brien, Lancaster Bomber developed “seconditus” – but at least it was in Grade 1 races!

He was runner-up in five Grade 1s, third in another and fourth in two more. But he did taste victory in the Grade 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh in Ireland, before being retired at four years old and shipped to Drakenstein in the Western Cape winelands.

Unique name

He was named after the giant World War 2 plane that rained death and destruction on Germany and which some historians say was that conflagration’s single most effective weapon.

The aircraft’s most famous moment came when 19 of them were used in Operation Chastise, a bombing raid under the command of Wing Commander Guy Gibson against industrially important dams in Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Walls of several dams were successfully breached with an improvised “bouncing bomb” that literally bounced along the water surface of a dam until it reached the wall, sank to the bottom and exploded at the structure’s vulnerable point.

The exploit was made into a hugely popular 1955 film The Dam Busters, starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave.

Among Lancaster Bomber’s successful progeny to date are the aforementioned Snow Pilot and Beach Bomb – from star race mares Snowdance and Beach Beauty respectively – Grade 2 winner Rascova, three-time winning fillies Bomber Girl and Runway Bomb, and two-time winner Guy Gibson, who has been competing at the top youth level and has third places in the Gold Medallion and Golden Horseshoe to show for it.

After the events of the past few weeks, Lancaster Bomber tops the log of sires of three-year-olds, with a winners-to-runners ratio of 40.3%, average earnings per runner of R71,666 and total winnings of R4.8-million.