WHAT a way to win your first Group 1, and in the process post a fine advertisement for the current classic crop. Having disappointed in the Derby at Epsom, the Aidan O’Brien-trained Delacroix bounced back in the best way possible with his ‘from the clouds’ win in the Eclipse Stakes from Ombudsman, adding to three prior successes at Group 3 level.
Named after a French painter, last year Delacroix raced five times in three months. Connections must have hated the sight of a Jessica Harrington-trained opponent. Runner-up to her Green Impact in a Leopardstown maiden, Delacroix was again second to that colt on Irish Champions Weekend in the Group 2 Golden Fleece Stakes, having won a Curragh maiden in the meanwhile. A game victory in the Group 3 Autumn Stakes at Newmarket set him up for Doncaster’s Group 1 Futurity, but he was denied a nose by the Harrington-trained Hotazhell.
Two Group 3 wins at Leopardstown before he went to Epsom began with a two-length defeat of Lambourn in the Ballysax Stakes (the runner-up has certainly done well since!), so it was no wonder that Ryan Moore picked Delacroix as his Derby mount. Delacroixbeat five tip-top colts at Sandown, and has the pedigree of a readymade Coolmore stallion prospect. He is a son of two racing greats.
This Eclipse win for Delacroix was a third in that feature for a son of Dubawi (Dubai Millennium), and the winner is among 18 blacktype winners in 2025 for the Darley standard-bearer.
At the time of writing, and likely to change after the week’s racing at Newmarket, Dubawi has sired a staggering 448 blacktype performers, 303 of them winning such a race.
His Group 1 tally stands at 62 winners thanks to Delacroix.
Twice champion
Bred by the Coolmore-based Tepin Syndicate, Delacroix is out of the great racemare of the same name, Tepin (Bernstein), whose six top-table wins included the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland.
Twice a champion in the USA, Tepin won 13 of her 23 starts, having been bought by Robert Masterson as a yearling for $140,000. He was rewarded by Tepin who returned $4.5 million in winnings, but Masterson was to hit the jackpot when he sold Tepin to M.V. Magnier for $8 million eight years ago.
Tepin was sold carrying a filly, Tepin Thru Life (Curlin), who never raced, and was twice unsold when offered for sale. That mare has two colts on the ground, a three-year-old Jasper Cross (American Pharoah) who is in Japan, and his two-year-old full-brother. Tepin’s second offspring, Swirl (Galileo), was foaled in 2019 and she too never raced.
Produce number three for Tepin is the four-year-old filly Grateful (Galileo), and last year she became the first to justify the big spend on her dam when she won the Group 1 Prix de Royallieu. She is now among the elite broodmare band at Coolmore. If her win came as something of a relief, even better was to come with Delacroix. Sadly, these are the only four offspring of Tepin who died in 2023.
Quick return for Goffs London Sale investment
JOHN Stewart’s Resolute Bloodstock spent £625,000 at the Goffs London Sale on the eve of Royal Ascot, and payback came along very quickly.
Stewart entered the sport two years ago, buying into European stars Believing and Goliath while also racing numerous high-class horses at home in the USA. On this occasion he added last May’s Group 3 Prix Texanita winner Woodshauna to his team, and afterwards revealed his plans and the reason why he purchased the three-year-old son of Wooded (Wootton Bassett).
“He’ll stay with Francis Graffard and be campaigned in Europe,” he told reporters. “Francis said he would be in the sale and thought he was a good horse. I actually thought he might make a little more money, but he didn’t have a Royal Ascot entry so we might have got a bit of value. Around 80% of our programme is turf, and we’ve got a lot of sprinters, so now we’re looking for some more stayers.”
Whatever about the latter comment if it related to Woodshauna, Stewart was perhaps right about value. Making his first start since his Group 3 triumph back in May, Woodshauna claimed the scalps of a number of high-class colts and fillies to land the spoils in the Group 1 Prix Jean Prat over seven furlongs at the weekend, with £190,000 in prizemoney for the winner.
This pales by comparison with the increase in value for the colt, whose future challenges are likely to include the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest and Prix de la Foret.
Woodshauna was bred in the west of France by Haras de Magouet, owned and run by the husband-and-wife team of Marie and Patrick Lemarié, who are better-known in France for their prowess as National Hunt breeders.
They sold the Jean Prat winner at Arqana as a yearling for €70,000 to Al Shaqab Racing through Haras de Grandchamp. The used the Haras de Bouquetot stallion Wooded in his first season at stud when he cost €15,000, though that fee more than halved this year to €7,000. This happened on the back of him having no blacktype horse in his first crop of juveniles. Mind you, that first crop did include a dozen winners at two, but Woodshauna will focus some more attention on Wooded’s runners who improved greatly from two to three years. He was a smart juvenile, running second to Kenway in the Group 3 Prix La Rochette, and like his son Woodshauna, Wooded gained his first pattern win in the Group 3 Pric Texanita.
His moment of glory was later in his second season when he beat Glass Slippers and Liberty Beach to win the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp. Wooded is a full-brother to Group 1 winner Bucanero Fuerte (Wootton Bassett).
Eithne Thompson
Woodshauna is the first winner out of the German stakes-placed Tosen Shauna, a daughter of the former Tara Stud sire Alhebayeb (Dark Angel). She was bred by Morning Star Stud’s Eithne Thompson and sold at the Goresbridge Breeze-Up Sale for €26,000. She went on to win three times in France, and the weekend Group 1 winner is her first foal and only runner to date. Woodshauna’s two-year-old half-brother by Hello Youmzain (Kodiac) was sold at this year’s Craven Breeze-Up Sale to KGS Bloodstock.
Two of the three other stakes winners in the first four generations of this female line gained their biggest wins in Italy. Woodshauna may be the first foal and winner for her dam, but the next three have not been found wanting in that department, breeding eight, five and nine winners respectively. One shows one’s age when you can recall the fourth dam of Woodshauna, Pepi Image (National).
The American-bred Pepi Image won at two, in 1973, trained by Stuart Murless. She won a six-furlong maiden in July at the Phoenix Park on her third start, having been purchased in Florida that spring for $26,500.
She was to finish second on her three subsequent juvenile starts, twice in races that now carry Group 1 status. Beaten a neck by Noble Mark in the Group 2 Phoenix Stakes, and by Milly Whiteway in the Listed Moyglare Stakes, at three Pepi Image was placed in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas.