I had previously eliminated Coded Message from consideration since, although she was a Listed-placed racehorse with a highest OR of 135, she wasn’t in the same class as Midnight Jazz; also she was a typical daughter of Oscar, medium-sized and rather light-framed. However, these factors might well make her affordable – and an additional piece in the breeding jigsaw was now available in the form of the newly-retired Logician, a high-class racehorse with the size and substance lacking in Coded Message. She in turn offered toughness, soundness, stamina and a pedigree good enough to appeal to potential foal buyers.
I rang her trainer, Ben Case, to remind him to enter the mare for the Elite Mares Scheme if she might be going to stud in the coming Spring (a plan of almost Baldric-like cunning to see what the score was); and he confirmed she might well be, asking if I knew of a possible buyer (clearly Ben was using Baldric’s methods too). At that stage I did not think it all that likely to be me. I then reviewed her best races on the Racing Post website and found evidence to change my mind: a mare that jumped well, stayed well and tried hard, not quite able to beat the best mares of her era but not beaten that far by such as Magic of Light, Indefatigable, Molly Olly’s Wishes and Roksana.
In her best win, a 10-length victory in a Class 2 Mares Handicap at Kempton, she beat TBA Elite mares Danse Idol, Molly Childers, Culture de Sivola and Oscar Rose. I also looked at her sire’s record as a broodmare sire and found plenty of evidence of his abilities in that role. Increasingly, I came to think of Coded Message as an excellent foil for Logician.
The following weekend Coded Message ran in a Mares chase, ridden by Ben’s son Charlie. As usual, she raced at the rear of the field, but unlike her best runs this is where she stayed; and she was pulled up with three fences remaining. She was clearly ready to start having babies. I mulled the matter over for a couple of days, then rang Ben offering to buy her at the highest valuation I could justify to myself. Two days later Ben came back to me to say that the owners had accepted the offer; and a few days later Peter Hockenhull and I went down to Edgecote to collect her.
She settled well into her new life at Shade Oak; and by the end of April she was carrying her first foal, by Logician. Unfortunately, she slipped that foal later in the summer; but in 2024 produced a very nice bay or grey filly foal by the same stallion. She is now in foal to the dual Classic winner Capri, a son of Galileo who beat Cracksman in the Irish Derby and Crystal Ocean & Stradivarius in the St Leger – in my opinion underrated as a stallion after being transfered to England from Coolmore before he even had a runner.
