Avontuur Thoroughbred Farm’s perennially successful sire Var, Champion Sire of 2Yos for the past two seasons running, had another memorable weekend, when Var was represented by four winners, with his progeny scoring in both South Africa and Mauritius.

Var’s first winner this weekend came when his Varsfontein Stud bred 3yo filly Valeriana shed her maiden over 1000m at Greyville on Friday night. The consistent Gareth Van Zyl trained filly was not winning out of turn, with the well bred Valeriana having finished second at each of her last three starts.

The G1 winning Var also enjoyed success in Mauritius in Saturday, thanks to his son Rule The Night, and also had a notable juvenile double on the same day at Durbanville.
Var progeny dominated the 2yo races run at Durbanville this weekend, with Var two-year-olds Mister Vargus and Tutorial running first and second in race one, and Var’s 2yo daughter Lumiere, scoring at just the second time of asking, impressing when scoring a one and a quarter length win in the afternoon’s second race –a juvenile plate for fillies.

Var, whose past two-year-old stars include graded stakes winners Villandry, Purple Diamond, Harry Lime, Normanz, William The Silent and Vacherin, has now been responsible for five two-year-old winners in 2018-2019.

An increasingly successful broodmare sire (his daughters having previously produced such stakes winners as Zen Arcade, She’s A Giver, Down To Zero, and Mambonick), Var is also broodmare sire of the very smart filly Miss Frankel, who picked up her first black type win when victorious in the Listed Kwazulu-Natal Stakes at Scottsville on Sunday.

The regally bred Miss Frankel (by Frankel out of the Var sired champion and multiple G1 winner Val De Ra) has now won three of just seven outings and she looks a hugely exciting future prospect.

Her broodmare sire Var has 23 lots on offer at the 2019 Emperors Palace National Yearling Sale –including a filly (Lot 94) out of Fillies Guineas winner Go Indigo, a half-brother (Lot 107) to G1 Computaform Sprint winner Attenborough, and a filly (Lot 186) out of Equus Champion Rat Burana.