ALMOND Eye was simply magnificent at the weekend when the five-year-old brought her Group 1 tally of victories to seven with success in the Victoria Mile at Tokyo. The win had the added bonus of guaranteeing her a place in this November’s Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf. Hopefully she will take up that invitation.

Carrying the colours of Silk Racing, Almond Eye not only won with ease, but she failed by just 0.1 of a second to match the course record. Her win puts her level with seven other Japanese Group 1 winners for the number of victories at the highest level, a group that includes heavyweights such as Deep Impact, Vodka and Gentildonna. Another landmark was achieved with this Victoria Mile triumph as the winning jockey, Christophe Lemaire, was recording his 30th Group 1 win in Japan.

Remarkably, Almond Eye has reached these heights after a light four-year-old campaign, and she looks set to have a fine season ahead, all being well. A winner on her second start, having finished runner-up on her juvenile debut, she went through her three-year-old season unbeaten in five starts, earning her the accolade of Horse of the Year having won the Triple Tiara, Japan’s fillies’ equivalent of the Triple Crown.

Her four Group 1 wins at three included the Oka Sho-1000 Guineas, the Yushun Himba-Oaks and the Japan Cup. She continued her winning streak on her first trip abroad, capturing the Group 1 Dubai Turf at Meydan the following March. Three months later she suffered her second career defeat when she was third in the Group 1 Yasuda Kinen, leading to a spell away from the track. She returned in late October to win the Group 1 Tenno Sho before finishing down the field in the Arina Kinen.

Abandoned trip

Her connections know this was not the real Almond Eye, and she was prepared for a trip, which she made, in March to defend her Dubai Turf crown. With the abandonment of the meeting, she returned to Japan and last weekend made her seasonal debut. She has now won nine of her 12 starts and her earnings stand at an incredible €11.2 million.

Almond Eye is the latest superstar to emerge from a branch of a family that is one of the best in the world. She had the distinction of providing her sire Lord Kanaloa (King Kamehameha) with his first Group 1 winner from his first crop, and she has now been joined by three others. Stelvio is from that initial crop and he won the Mile Championship, while last year’s Japanese 2000 Guineas winner, also a Group 1 winner at two, Saturnalia emerged in his second crop. In Australia he is the sire of this season’s Group 1 winning two-year-old Tagaloa.

Lord Kanaloa was never out of the first three in 19 career starts that yielded earnings of just shy of €7.5 million. The champion older sprinter and champion miler in Japan at the ages of four and five, he also proved his worth on the international stage and twice landed the Hong Kong Sprint, beating Sole Power on the latter occasion. He is a son of the dual champion sire King Kamehameha (Kingmambo) and his grandam is Saratoga Dew (Cormorant), the champion filly at three in the USA in 1992 and winner of both the Grade 1 Beldame Stakes and Gazelle Stakes at Belmont.

Shadai stallion

Lord Kanaloa stands at Shadai Stallion Station and this year his stud fee was a new high of 20 million yen, four times what he cost when he retired to stud. His fee this year equates to some €170,000. He had a good weekend as his son Danon Smash, from the same crop as Almond Eye, won the Group 2 Keio Hai Spring Cup, and this eighth success in his career boosted his winnings to more than €2.75 million.

On the female side of the pedigree, Almond Eye is the best of seven winners from the first eight runners for her dam, the top-class racemare Fusaichi Pandora (Sunday Silence). She won the 11-furlong Listed Queen Elizabeth II Commemorative Cup, and two years later was placed in the same race when it was recognised as a Group 1 contest. She was also runner-up in the Japanese Oaks.

Fusaichi Pandora is also the best of her dam’s six winning offspring, one of which, the Japanese-bred Dubai Sunday (Sunday Silence) was acquired by Darley and brought to England where he was put in training with David Loder. Having failed to race for connections, he was sold at the Tattersalls July Sale in 2004 and subsequently won a bumper and a flat race for Phil McEntee. He later added four more wins in the USA.

The dam of Fusaichi Pandora is Lotta Lace, an unraced daughter of Nureyev (Northern Dancer) who was imported, in utero, to Japan. Her immediate pedigree ensured that she was a most attractive breeding prospect. Her seven winning siblings included a trio of stakes winners, all of which are worthy of special mention.

Try My Best (Northern Dancer) was rated the best juvenile of his generation in 1977 after his victory in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket. He was unbeaten in three starts that year, also landing the Group 3 Larkspur Stakes at Leopardstown. Trained by Vincent O’Brien, he started his second season with victory in the seven-furlong Group 3 Vauxhall Trial Stakes and then finished last in the 2000 Guineas. Injured in the race, he never ran again and went to stand at Coolmore. He had fertility problems but nonetheless enjoyed success as a stallion, and his best sons included Last Tycoon and Waajib.

Try My Best’s full-brother El Gran Senor was foaled six years later and he too joined the Ballydoyle stables of Vincent O’Brien. He also won the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes, earning himself champion European two-year-old status, and he then went on to add the champion European three-year-old title. This was thanks to victories in the Group 1 Irish Derby and the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, and he was nudged out of an Epsom Derby success in one of that race’s most thrilling finishes.

Derby runner-up

The Derby second to Secreto, trained by Vincent O’Brien’s son David, was the colt’s only defeat in eight career starts. In spite of having a pronounced parrot mouth, his pedigree and race record guaranteed him a place at stud in the USA and he enjoyed great success in that sphere. This was despite having poor fertility, just like his brother, but his list of top-class winners, and overall stakes winners to runners’ rate of 14%, showed that he was a sire of great quality.

The third stakes winner from Sex Appeal (Buckpasser) was Solar (Halo) and she was a leading juvenile in Ireland when she won both the Group 3 Railway Stakes and Park Stakes, run at the Curragh and the Phoenix Park respectively. Though she never produced a runner that approached her own ability, her daughters and further generations have done well and her descendants include Takedown (Stratum), winner of the Group 1 Winterbottom Stakes in 2016, Bahamian Pirate (Housebuster), the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes winner, and Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes winner Strong Hope (Grand Slam) who was placed in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes.