FOURTEEN Grade 1 races over two days, divided equally between turf and dirt, comprise the Breeders’ Cup, the World Championship of Racing as it is billed in the USA. This year’s racing provided no end of excitement and talent on show, so this week I am devoting the entire Breeding Insights pages to résumés of the winners.

Eleven of the winners won with a USA suffix, and the remaining trio all sport IRE as part of their name. I will devote the opening page to championing the Irish-breds – Sun Goddess, Libertango and Benvenuto Cellini.

SUN GODDESS (IRE), 2f by Sioux Nation (Scat Daddy) out of Etoile Bleu (Starspangledbanner). Bred by Owenstown Bloodstock Limited

I really don’t have to say much more about this superstar, the best of five Group 1 winners that John Tuthill has bred in the past 15 years, but she is the filly of a lifetime, and it might seem strange to say, but she could be even better at three. Aidan O’Brien has trained her to perfection, and she has raced nine times for seven wins and two runner-up finishes.

At Keeneland she added the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf to her European victories in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes, Moyglare Stud Stakes and Cheveley Park Stakes. Her winnings amount to more than €1.5 million, and what a find she was for the Coolmore partners when Paul Shanahan and Mark McStay discovered her at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale and purchased her for £120,000.

In the week that King Charles bred the Group 1 Melbourne Cup winner, it was his mother who developed the family of Sun Goddess. She sold Sun Goddess’s grandam, the Royal Ascot listed winner Holly Blue (Bluebird), as an eight-year-old for 44,000gns to Ashtown Bloodstock, carrying a colt, Cyan (Fantastic Light). He made all of his dam’s purchase price back as a foal, and eventually won a race in Greece at four.

Things improved after that and Holly Blue went on to breed a very smart Group 2 winner in South Africa, Gibraltar Blue (Rock Of Gibraltar) who was Group 1-placed, and the Group 3-winning sprinter Scream Blue Murder (Oratorio). The latter mare is grandam of another 2026 Group 1 winner in the Prix Jean Prat hero Thesecretadversary (St Mark’s Basilica).

Sun Goddess has shone a light on the ability of her young sire to get the highest quality of runners and is the star of his nine stakes winners this year. His Group 2 Flying Childers Stakes winner Final Objective ran fourth at the Breeders’ Cup in the Grade 1 Juvenile Turf Sprint. Sioux Nation has three other group-winning juveniles this season, and the Group 1-placed listed winner Velozee.

LIBERTANGO (IRE), 2f by No Nay Never (Scat Daddy) out of Ein Gedi (Oasis Dream). Bred by Lynch Bages and Camas Park Stud

Paul Shanahan had a major part to play in the sourcing of Sun Goddess, but he had an even closer connection to the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint winner Libertango. He bred this filly in partnership with Timmy Hyde’s Camas Park Stud, and sold her as a yearling at Arqana for €130,000. She was not finished with the sales however, and Brendan Holland resold her from Grove Stud for 400,000gns at the Craven Breeze-Up Sale to Rob Speers.

Libertango is one of two fillies to inflict defeat on Sun Goddess, and did this in the Group 3 Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot. The tables were turned in the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes, and Libertango goes into winter quarters with four wins and two seconds in her six outings and with more than €800,000 banked. She also won the Group 2 Lowther Stakes.

What a year No Nay Never is having, again. His stream of top-class winners this year alone features classic winner True Love, Breeders’ Cup winner Libertango, Royal Ascot hero Mission Control, and Arc weekend heroine Amusingly. Add to that list seven other pattern winners and a plethora of stakes winners, and it adds up to a year to remember. Breeders who used him this year at a fee of €100,000 will be rubbing their hands with glee.

Cleverly, Rob Speers bought Libertango’s full-brother at Arqana in August for €620,000 and will be hoping for a second strike of lightening in 2027. Meanwhile, the Shanahan and Hyde families will be taking extra special care of a full-sister who was born this spring.

Ein Gedi raced twice at two, having been sold as a yearling by Loughtown Stud’s Paddy Burns for 420,000gns. Tim Hyde spotted her as a three-year-old at the Keeneland January Sale and brought her back to Tipperary with a $200,000 price tag on her. What is she worth today? Ein Gedi is a daughter of listed winner Splashdown (Falbrav) who has six winners to date. They include Ein Gedi’s full-brother Aktabantay (Oasis Dream), a group winner at two. Splashdown’s latest offspring to sell is her yearling son of Mehmas (Acclamation) who realised 190,000gns last month.

BENVENUTO CELLINI (IRE), 3c by Frankel (Galileo) out of Newspaperofrecord (Lope De Vega). Bred by Coolmore and White Birch Farm

Victory for Benvenuto Cellini in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf was memorable on several fronts, not least in that he equalled trainer Aidan O’Brien’s Group/Grade 1 record of 28 wins in a single year with this triumph. Now the race is on to go one or two better. The success was also special for Peter Brant who was on hand to see the colt which he co-bred win in his colours.

What a few days it was for Frankel, as he followed up this top-table win with another for a colt from the same crop, Point Of Law in the Group 1 Melbourne Cup.

This takes his haul of Group 1 winners to 45, and he has had six in 2026 – the others being Item, Minnie Hauk, Thundering On and Giant Sequoia. Little wonder that he stands at one of the highest fees in the world, £350,000.

You don’t have to look far to find a second Breeders’ Cup winner in this immediate family. Benvenuto Cellini’s dam Newspaperofrecord landed the Grade 1 Juvenile Fillies’ Turf at Churchill Downs eight years ago, and two years later added the Grade 1 Just A Game Stakes to her five victory-tally. She was bred by Allan Belshaw’s Times Of Wigan and sold to Klaravich Stables as a yearling for 200,000gns.

This family has been well reviewed, as it is that of Frankel’s 2026 Group 1-winning two-year-old Giant Sequoia. He catapulted himself into the classic picture for next year with his recent Futurity Trophy Stakes win. A pair of winners at the highest within a week from the same tap root is quite the achievement.

Benvenuto Cellini is the second progeny of his dam, and the first is his year-older full-sister Giselle (Frankel). Group-placed at two, she won a listed Oaks trial last year. She and her Group 1 Irish Derby-winning brother are followed by Sweetly (Frankel), an unraced juvenile at Ballydoyle who holds classic entries. With his Irish Derby success at the Curragh, Benvenuto Cellini became the second winner of that classic in the immediate family. The other is Latrobe (Camelot).