WHAT a joy to see Newspaperofrecord back where she belongs, in the winner’s circle following a Grade 1 race. The four-year-old daughter of Lope De Vega (Shamardal) added the Just A Game Stakes at Belmont Park to her juvenile success in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, run that year at Churchill Downs.

Newspaperofrecord went through her juvenile year unbeaten, capturing the Grade 2 Miss Grillo Stakes along the way. Her second season did not go according to plan, her curtailed racing year limited to three starts that yielded a pair of runner-up efforts in Grade 3 races. Now, at the age of four, she has won both her outings, starting with the Grade 3 Intercontinental Stakes, and her winnings now stand at €868,426. She has well repaid the 200,000gns she realised as a yearling at Tattersalls.

Newspaperofrecord is one of 10 Group or Grade 1 winners, 29 group or grade winners and 53 stakes winners for Lope De Vega who stands at Ballylinch Stud. The dual classic winner was well supported again in 2020 at a fee of €100,000.

Newspaperofrecord is the third produce and one of three winners from the first four foals for her dam, Sunday Times, who is a daughter of Holy Roman Emperor (Danehill). The latter won the Group 3 Sceptre Stakes at three, having been runner-up as a juvenile in the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes. Classical Times (Lawman), her first foal, is also a stakes-winner.

Sunday Times foaled a full-sister to Newspaperofrecord this year and is in foal to Kingman (Invincible Spirit).

This is a pedigree that is really current. Sunday Times is a half-sister to Question Time, a stakes placed daughter of Newspaperofrecord’s grandsire Shamardal. Question Time’s son Latrobe (Camelot) won the 2018 Group 1 Dubai Duty Dree Irish Derby and was runner-up in the Group 1 Irish St Leger and Group 1 Mackinnon stakes. Question Time is also dam of stakes winner and Group 1 Oaks runner-up Pink Dogwood (Camelot) and Group 3 Gladness Stakes Diamond Fields (Fastnet Rock).

Sunday Times and Question Time are two of the four winners from the So Factual (Known Fact) mare Forever Times, herself a winner of six races from 51 starts, all but one of which were on the turf in England, and she was in the first three on 20 occasions.

Bred and raced by Allan Belshaw’s Times of Wigan at Goldford Stud, the breeders also of Newspaperofrecord, Forever Times is out of Simply Times who was unplaced on both her starts but she was very successful as a matron, breeding 10 winners and a pair of these were stakes winners. Best by some way was the Group 2 Hungerford Stakes winner Welsh Emperor (Emperor Jones) and he was twice unlucky to find one better than himself in the Group 1 Prix de la Foret.