FEW fillies have ever reached the racing heights achieved by Pretty Polly.

She won all but two of her 24 starts and she captured the Fillies’ Triple Crown in 1904. Bred by Major Eustace Loder at Eyrefield Lodge Stud on the Curragh, history now relates that she also became an enormous influence on thoroughbred breeding and she is ancestress of many wonderful performers on the racecourse and at stud.

Urban Sea was born in 1989 and in the intervening three decades has become a champion racemare, a phenomenal broodmare and has established a dynasty of her own through her sons and daughters.

The daughter of Miswaki crowned her own racing career when she won the Group 1 CIGA Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1993. Carrying the colours of David Tsui, she beat a stellar field that included 16 other Group 1 winners, eight of them classic winners. Urban Sea retired to stud as the winner of eight races, all but one of them stakes races.

Her first mating was with the French Derby winner Bering and resulted in her first group winner, Urban Ocean capturing the Gallinule Stakes at the Curragh for David Tsui. He was followed by Melikah, a daughter of Lammtara, and she won the Pretty Polly Stakes at Newmarket on her racecourse debut and went on to be placed in the English and Irish Oaks. Melikah is the dam of four stakes winners, and third dam of the Derby winner Masar.

Urban Sea’s third foal was the European champion three-year-old Galileo, the dual Derby winner and many times leading sire. He won six of his eight stars before embarking on his stud career. By now Urban Sea’s record was a perfect three stakes winning progeny from her first three foals. Who could have imagined that three more Group 1 winners were to follow?

Black Sam Bellamy, a full-brother to Galileo, was a Group 1 winner in Ireland and Italy, his principal victory coming in the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh. He too became a Group 1 sire. Two years later Urban Sea foaled her second filly, All Too Beautiful, and this group-winner was runner-up to Ouija Board in the Epsom Oaks. Her stakes winners include Wonder Of Wonders, another to finish second in the Oaks at Epsom, and she is the grandam of Sir Dragonet.

Record price

My Typhoon made headlines just months after her birth. Offered for sale at Tattersalls as a foal she realised a record price at auction in Europe for a filly foal, selling for 1,800,000gns. This was 700,000gns more than All Too Beautiful had sold for a year earlier in the same ring, that being a record also. My Typhoon was a daughter of Giant’s Causeway and she won the Grade 1 Diana Stakes at Saratoga and seven other stakes races.

The Green Desert filly Cherry Hinton was next and she was group-placed, although she never actually won a race. She was the only runner out of Urban Sea not to win, but she has been a huge success at stud, being dam of the 2014 Darley Irish Oaks winner Bracelet, the US Grade 1 winner Athena and two other group winners.

Urban Sea foaled a son of Cape Cross at the age of 17 years and, put into training with John Oxx on the Curragh, the colt was retained by the Tsui family and registered in the ownership of David and Ling’s son Christopher. Placed on his debut, Sea The Stars then went through the rest of his career undefeated. At two years he won the Group 2 Juddmonte Beresford Stakes at the Curragh.

World champion

His second season racing saw him run six times, all Group 1 races, in six months and earned him the accolade of world champion in 2009. Starting with a victory in the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket and ending the year by emulating his dam with success in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Sea The Stars’ outstanding year also included wins in the Derby, Eclipse Stakes, Juddmonte International Stakes and the Irish Champion Stakes.

He retired to Gilltown Stud with earnings of more than £4.4 million and has been a huge success, with 14 Group 1 winners to date.

A few years after foaling Sea The Stars, Urban Sea produced what was to be her last offspring, the Invincible Spirit colt Born To Sea, at the Irish National Stud. He too was entrusted to the care of John Oxx and made a winning debut in a listed race, The Irish Field Blenheim Stakes. As a three-year-old he finished second to Camelot in the Group 1 Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby, He now stands in France.

Already one of the most successful matriarchs in the history of the thoroughbred, the ultimate influence that Urban Sea will have on the breed through her sons and daughters can only be surmised. It is probably a safe bet that in another century she will be remembered just as well as Pretty Polly.