'We've created the pedigree and that makes us very proud to have come here'
With the astute acquisition of smart stallions such as Authorized and Daredevil, Turkish racing has been gaining respect around the wider bloodstock world.
One of the country’s leading owner-breeders hopes to advance that further by running his homebred Burgas in elite international company in Saturday's Longines Dubai Sheema Classic.
A winner of Istanbul's signature race, the Gazi Derby, Burgas is the pride of engineering mogul Fedai Kahraman’s operation. On his first run outside Turkey, he was an encouraging fourth behind Royal Fleet in last month’s Dubai Millennium Stakes and, although Godolphin’s Breeders' Cup winner Yibir and a decorated fleet of Japanese challengers await on Saturday, he could yet outrun odds of around 100-1.
Kadir Kiygir, Kahraman’s stud manager, certainly hopes so.
"He’s a champion three-year-old in Turkey who has won three Grade 1 races," he says. "He’s a very competitive horse and he deserves to be here, we just want to test his limits to see if he’s a really good international horse or not.
"The first time he ran gave us a good sign for the Sheema Classic, which was our first big target, and he has a chance this Saturday. If he finishes maybe first, second or third, we’d like to race him in France or the UK, that’s our plan."
The Kahraman Stud in southern Turkey stands Burgas’s sire, King David. Winner of the 2012 Grade 1 Jamaica Handicap for Mike Maker, he had dropped down the ladder after that and was obtained from what is now Horseshoe Indianapolis, the former Indiana Grand.
Burgas: looking to showcase Turkey on the world stage at Meydan on Saturday
"We wanted to buy him a few years ago, we made them an offer but the owner didn’t sell," explains Kiygir. "Later, he was in a claiming race, we saw him and we bought him.
"He had one race under our company name in the US, then we brought him to Turkey and started breeding from him in 2017."
Saturday will be a big day for the family as Burgas’s full-sister WMurcott is running back home, attempting to break her duck in a maiden at the third time of asking.
"It wasn’t our best family, Burgas was kind of a surprise for us but we believe in King David," says Kiygir. "He’s by Hat Trick, that’s the Sunday Silence and Halo [line], and we believe that pedigree works very well in Turkey, the dirt pedigree.
"Burgas is his best horse, he has about 50 horses so far, and a couple of others are getting close. We’ve got the third generation of them now, and we’ve got big hopes that we can step up in Turkish races and go to European races.
"His dam and his second dam also belonged to us. We’ve created the pedigree and that makes us very proud to have come here to race. He’s not a huge horse but he has a really big heart. When he races, he knows his job and he gives us whatever he has at that moment."
Kahraman has fielded Dubai runners before, with his filly Peri Lina finishing fourth in the Cape Verdi at Meydan a couple of years ago. He has several other stallions at the farm along with around 60 broodmares, including half a dozen recently bought from Arqana, and his string of 44 horses, based with four trainers in different parts of the country, is among Turkey’s largest.
Noting the respectable fourth obtained by the Turkish-bred Final Dance at huge odds in the Listed Al Bastakiya earlier in the month, Kiygir believes that there could be many more to step into a bigger spotlight.
"The Jockey Club of Turkey made good investment to our stallions," he says. "We've had Epaulette, Daredevil, Super Saver, Authorized. These are good stallions and maybe in the next couple of years they’ll step up international races."
