Globetrotting Silvano Dies at 25 in South Africa

Multiple champion South African sire and globetrotting middle-distance performer Silvano  has died aged 25, Maine Chance Farms has reported.

A homebred from the Jacobs family's Gestut Fahrhof in Germany, the son of Lomitas was trained by Andreas Wohler, for whom he was quickly off the mark as a 2-year-old and won the Oppenheim-Colonia-Union-Rennen (G2) as a 3-year-old.

Campaigned more adventurously as an older horse, Silvano was fifth in the Hong Kong Vase (G1) in 2000 and returned to Asia three months later to win the Singapore Cup (G1), adding the Audemars Piguet Queen Elizabeth II Cup (G1) in Hong Kong and the Arlington Million (G1T)  later that season. 

An extraordinary campaign also saw him stop off back in Singapore, run second in the Man o' War (G1T) at Belmont Park, and fourth in the Carlton Draught Cox Plate (G1) before signing off back in the Hong Kong Vase.

Silvano, a half brother to the top-class Sabiango, was rostered on both of the Jacobs operations at Fahrhof and Maine Chance, but has spent the last decade in South Africa, from where he was pensioned from duty last year.

Maine Chance reported on Twitter: "With deep sadness we announce that Silvano has passed away during the night after a bout of colic. He leaves behind a legacy which has been carved in the stone of horse racing history forever."

He was leading first-season sire in Germany in 1998, overall champion in 1999, and later crowned South Africa's champion sire on five occasions.

Of Silvano's progeny, 25 have struck at the highest level and he can claim 68 group winners and 101 who have landed a stakes race.

Among the best are his Sparda Deutsches Derby (G1) winner Lucky Speed , a host of South African heroes such as the prolific Hawwaam, and Mike de Kock's Jebel Hatta Sponsored by Emirates Airline (G1)-winning export Vercingetorix (now standing at Maine Chance), as well as Proudinsky , who took a string of graded titles in America.