William Longsword’s oldest crop are only four-year-olds and his statistics keep on improving.

He is comfortably the newest sire in the top ten on the national log.

In the sires of three-year-olds list this season he is lying in second place with only the country’s leading stallion Gimmethegreenlight ahead of him.

However, a common opinion  of the trainers who have his progeny is they are progressive types who get better and better.

His statistics should get better and better accordingly.

Trainers do take a while to work out how to get the best out of a sire’s progeny and Vaughan Marshall, who trained both William Longsword and his sire Captain Al, is in the best position to comment on the former.

He said William Longsword had never been an early two-year-old and his progeny were proving to be the same.

However, he said his progeny tended to show a lot at home and this had misled trainers into believing they might be early horses.

He confirmed that without a doubt they tended to be progressive and get better and better.

He added another misleading point was that with William Longsword having only ever raced over 1600m as a three-year-old, culminating in his victories in the Grade 1 Cape Guineas and R6,5 million CTS 1600, connections tended to believe his progeny lacked speed.

In fact it is evident when looking at the like of the Lucky Houdalakis-trained Dyce and the Tony Rivalland-trained Coin Spinner that they have plenty of speed.

Marshall said he had fallen for this and it showed in the career of his gelding Ensuing, whom he had tried from 1400m to 1600m in KZN without success.

As soon as he had returned to Cape Town Vaughan put Ensuing back over 1200m and he won three of his next four starts.

Vaughan concluded by saying it was clear by the number of winners William Longsword was having he was going to make it.

He added that all he needed now was some black type winners.

He said he reckoned he had some who were capable of stepping up to the plate.

Joe Soma reiterated Vaughan’s sentiments and said, “The ones I have in my yard I have been very, very impressed with. I have always been very impressed with the two William Longsword three-year-olds I have in my yard, Brave Viking and Back In Business, and there is no doubt I will never be scared to buy a William Longsword again. My two-year-old ones are showing quite nice work. I think the big mistake people are making is they are expecting the William Longswords to come early … I think they will be better as late three-year-olds and as four and five-year-olds.”

If there was a book on which William Longsword would become the first to make it big then Back In Business, who made a huge impression when running on late from a beaten position to win on debut, would be among the fancied horses.

Lucky Houdalakis can only have a good opinion of William Longsword, because Dyce is the only one he has.

This amazing horse was one of the best two-year-olds of William Longsword’s first crop. He had five starts as a two-year-old. His three defeats were to Pyromaniac, William Robertson and Master Archie, who all went on to be top class performers with the last-mentioned winning the Grade 1 Computaform Sprint. Dyce’s two victories as a juvenile were in a Maiden Plate by 9,25 lengths and in the Grade 2 Umkhomazi Stakes over 1200m by 4,30 lengths. He missed his entire three-year-old through injury but has come back looking as good as ever and his big action with the unusually high arching neck is always a joy to watch.

Tony Rivalland was confident Coin Spinner, who has won five out of ten and is merit rated 103, would go close in the Grade 3 Merchants on WSB Summer Cup day, but he unfortunately sustained a niggle a few days before and had to be scratched. He looks likely to make an impact on the top sprint races as he progresses.

The William Longswords are not limited to speed and mile events through.

He has produced a number of middle distance winners up to 2000m.

William Longsword’s progeny tend to have scopey conformation, which fits in with their progressive profile.

He is an exciting stallion and his popularity should increase.