Irish champion and graded-stakes producer Minstrella dead at 28

Minstrella, the 1986 Irish champion juvenile filly and a graded stakes producer for the late Robert Evans, died earlier this year and was buried at Evans’s Spring Hill Farm, The Blood-Horse has reported.

The daughter of The Minstrel was 28.

Minstrella, an Evans homebred, won England’s Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes and Ireland’s Group 1 Phoenix and Moyglare Stud Stakes en route to her Irish divisional title. She also placed in a pair of Group 3 stakes in England, the 1986 Cherry Hinton and the 1987 Cork and Orrery before retiring.

She went on to produce graded winners Minidar, the dam of A Little Warm; Colonial Minstrel, dam of Storm Minstrel; Colonella, dam of Pleasant Strike; and stakes winner Unrestrained.

Minstrella was out of the Misty Flight stakes winner Flight Dancer, who also is 2005 Horse of the year Saint Liam’s third dam.

Minstrella’s last foal was Bad Boy Sparta, an unraced Grand Slam colt foaled in 2007.