THERE was so much Group 1 action last weekend that it is almost impossible to know where to start with reviews. Baaeed (Sea The Stars) and Trueshan (Planteur) have been written up already in this column.

On what was a memorable day for Shadwell on British Champions Day, Eshaada carried their colours to a short-head victory over Albaflora in the Group 1 Fillies and Mares Stakes. The pair had the brilliant Snowfall more than three lengths in arrears.

This was a huge result for the Nunnery Stud-based Muhaarar (Oasis Dream), as the winner gave her sire his first Group 1 winner.

Had the result gone the other way, we would still be saying the same thing, as the champion sprinter and four-time Group 1 winner was responsible for the first two across the line. The runner-up is a homebred of Kirsten Rausing, and her magic year of success shows absolutely no signs of stopping.

Eshaada is from Muhaarar’s second crop, and the three-year-old was making just her fifth start last weekend. She won a late season maiden at two, a listed race on her second season bow, and then chased home Loving Dream in the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot. Disappointing in the Yorkshire Oaks, she showed that run to be all wrong and well deserved her first Group 1 success.

Goffs purchase

Shadwell’s involvement with this family started with the purchase in 1998 of a Nureyev (Northern Dancer) yearling filly at Goffs. Sold by Haras d’Etreham, the daughter of the Group 3 winner Allez Les Trois (Riverman) cost Shadwell IR280,000gns, making her one of the top dozen yearlings at the sale. She was named Al Ishq and she won once as a three-year-old. While she didn’t justify her purchase price as a racemare, she certainly did so as a broodmare.

At stud she bred 10 winners, the best of which was the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois and Prix Jean Prat winner Tamayuz (Nayef), and that Derrinstown Stud stallion is the sire of four Group 1 winners. Al Ishq is the third dam of last year’s Group 1 Irish Derby winner Santiago (Authorized), while that colt’s year younger half-sister La Joconde (Frankel) was fourth at the weekend behind Eshaada.

The weekend provided hope that the family could be soon responsible for another Group 1 or classic winner. Al Ishq is the third dam of the Group 3 Killavullen Stakes winner Glounthaune (Kodiac). Owned by Evie Stockwell, and bred by her daughter Anne and son-in-law Tony O’Callaghan, this 350,000gns yearling purchase by MV Magnier is out of a Nayef (Gulch) half-sister to the dam of Santiago. Nayef has certainly worked well with this line.

Smart investment

In fact, Eshaada’s winning dam Muhawalah (Nayef) is a full-sister to Tamayuz. Hamish Macauley paid 60,000gns last year for the unraced Haafithah (Nathaniel), the only one of Muhawalah’s first three foals not to race or win. That investment looks pretty smart now, given the progress made this year by Eshaada. There is a two-year-old full-brother to Eshaada named Moonis (Muhaarar), while their dam took delivery of a filly foal this spring by Kingman (Invincible Spirit).

As if all of this does not make the family desirable enough, Eshaada’s third dam Allez Les Trois bred the Group 1 Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby winner Anabaa Blue (Anabaa), and she is a half-sister to Urban Sea (Miswaki), the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner and dam of four Group/Grade 1 winners, the best known being Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) and Sea The Stars (Cape Cross). Another 2021 star in the family is the recent Arc hero Torquator Tasso (Adlerflug).