SUNDAY’S Prix Ganay at ParisLongchamp is the first Group 1 of the year in Europe, and was a pipe-opener in their Arc-winning season for both Waldgeist and Sottsass. Last year’s Arc favourite Sosie (Sea The Stars) took on the hugely fancied Map Of Stars, another son of the Gilltown stallion, and they finished first and second.

Winner of the Group 2 Prix d’Harcourt in April, Map Of Stars had been beaten just once in six starts, while last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe fourth Sosie was making his seasonal bow. It was the Wertheimer’s homebred Sosie who prevailed, giving André Fabre his eighth Ganay win. Sosie had gone into last year’s Arc on the back of victories in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris and Group 2 Prix Niel, and he was placed in the Group 1 Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby.

Sosie is the best of five quality winners from the stakes-placed Sosia (Shamardal), and the second to win a pattern race this year. First to that achievement was his three-year-old half-brother Uther (Camelot) who won the Group 3 Prix Noailles. He holds an entry for this year’s French Derby.

All five of Sosia’s quintet of winners have blacktype, the others being the stakes winners Copie (Iffraaj) and Anasia (Intello), and the group-placed Sosino (New Approach).

Placed in the Listed Prix Coronation at Saint-Cloud and a winner at three, Sosia is one of four stakes performers out of Sahel (Monsun), herself a winning four-year-old, and two of this quartet were sired by Sea The Stars. They were the Group 3 Prix du Prince d’Orange winner Soudania and the French listed-placed Sahelian. As if that was not enough proof that Sea The Stars is potent with this family, their winning half-sister Intimhir (Muhtathir) produced the Group 3 UAE winner Star Safari, and he too is by the brilliant son of Cape Cross (Green Desert).

Classic winners

The best offspring of Sahel was the Italian Group 1 winner Sortilege (Tiger Hill). Here is another example of a family branch clicking with a particular stallion. She is the dam of the Italian Group 3 juvenile winner Sirjan (Zarak), last year’s Group 1 Preis de Diana-German Oaks second Spanish Eyes (Zarak) and grandam of dual Group 2 winner and Group 1 runner-up Straight, also a son of Zarak (Dubawi).

Sahel is an own-sister to no less than three Group 1 classic winners, Schiaparelli (Monsun), Samum (Monsun) and Salve Regina (Monsun).

Twelve-time winner Schiaparelli became the third classic winner for the Old Vic (Sadler’s Wells) mare Sacarina. His German Derby win was the first of five Group 1 victories, and he was following in the hoofprints of the Deustsches Derby and Group 1 Grosser Preis von Baden winner Samum (Monsun) and the Group 1 German Oaks winner Salve Regina (Monsun). The latter has five stakes-winning descendants, led by a US Grade 2 winning daughter Salve Germania (Peintre Celebre), and including last season’s Group 3 juvenile winner Santagada (Soldier Hollow).

This is one of the best families in Germany, and three daughters of Sacarina have gone on to produce Group 1 winners, the most notable being Sanwa (Monsun), responsible for Sea The Moon (Sea The Stars), the brilliant German Derby winner and now a successful Group 1 sire at Lanwades Stud.

Best racehorse

Sea The Stars, possibly the best racehorse I have ever witnessed in the flesh, is now 19, and the king at Gilltown Stud. One of the world’s great sires at a covering fee of €250,000, his highest ever, he has sired 82 pattern winners and 137 stakes winners.

Twenty-two of them have won Group or Grade 1 contests, and nine have annexed two or more. They are Stradivarius (seven), Baaeed (six), Star Catcher (three), while Sosie, Hukum, Emily Upjohn, Sea Of Class, Harzand and Taghrooda have won a pair each.

Not only did Sea The Stars sire the first two home in the Prix Ganay, but he made it a weekend to remember when his four-year-old daughter Aventure, also owned and bred by the Wertheimer brothers, made a winning return in the Group 3 Prix Allex France. This was an early season statement of intent for a filly who, on her final two starts last season, found just Bluestocking too good for her in the Group 1 Prix Vermeille and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. She is a Group 1 winner in waiting.

MARK Boylan recently had a feature in this paper about Wexford trainer Paul Nolan, and referenced some early success this year for a filly he previously trained, and who had made a promising start in the USA.

Mark wrote: ‘Nolan is anything but slow when it comes to the commercial realities of the game too. This season he expects to have four two-year-olds for the flat, following on from a successful trading venture with Jungle Peace after finishing third in a juvenile maiden at Dundalk last October.

‘The Bungle Inthejungle filly was well found at just €14,000 as a yearling, and even better business was Nolan’s son Barry buying her back for £5,000 after breezing under the Toberona Bloodstock banner at the Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale last April. She has won both her starts at Santa Anita for top California trainer Phil D’Amato since changing hands privately.’

Well, now you can change that wording to winning her first three starts at Santa Anita, as over the weekend the filly extended that successful run in the USA with a victory in the seven-furlong Grade 3 Senorita Stakes, thus crediting her sire, Bungle Inthejungle (Exceed And Excel), with his twelfth stakes winner, and the first of 2025. His progeny do very well in the USA.

Standing at Rathasker for €7,500, Bungle Inthejungle will have one of his biggest crops to represent him this year, with more than 80 juveniles, and they came on the back of him siring his sole Group 1 winner, Winter Power, in August 2021. The supporting cast of good winners by the Group 3 Cornwallis and Group 3 Molecomb Stakes winning juvenile also features the Group 3 Lowther Stakes heroine Living In The Past, and a pair of pattern winners who were also Group 1-placed, Givemethebeatboys and Rumble Inthejungle.

Tries hard

Jungle Peace is owned by a partnership that includes Michael Nentwig, and she was bred by M Brigid B Ltd.

Nentwig said: “We wanted to try to get a mile out of her. We knew that might be stretching it with the pedigree. We really liked the way she dug in the first time—she can definitely sprint. She doesn’t have the best pedigree in the world, but she tries hard. We’ll take a mare who tries hard over one with a good page any day.”

While this may not be a Group 1 pedigree, it is one that is far from being moderate. Jungle Peace’s dam Peace Treaty (War Command) showed little in five starts, but her own first three dams were multiple winner producers. Jungle Peace is the second foal for her dam, the first being Havana Smoke (Havana Grey), and on the three times he has been runner-up he was beaten three-parts of a length or less. Jungle Peace’s two-year-old colt Colpernaco (Coulsty) is in Italy, and there is a yearling full-brother to follow.

Peace Treaty’s seven successful siblings are headed by the two-year-old listed winner at York, Rebel Assault (Excelebration). She sold at three for 120,000gns and made her way to Australia where her first foal, Siren Assault (Rich Enuff) won the Group 3 Gimcrack Stakes for two-year-olds a year ago. The best-known name on the pedigree page is that of Oratorio (Danehill), a champion at two in France who went on to add the Group 1 Irish Champion Stakes and Eclipse Stakes to his win in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere.