TWO juvenile winners at Royal Ascot worth a special mention were Raffle Prize and Southern Hills.

Raffle Prize’s victory in the Group 2 Queen Mary Stakes was a landmark for her sire Slade Power (Dutch Art), himself a hero at the meeting some years previously. From the second crop of the high-class sprinter, Raffle Prize became her sire’s first stakes winner and she is the fourth stakes performer by the Darley stallion who resides at Kildangan Stud.

Slade Power, who stood for €7,500 this season, won half of his 20 career starts and improved with age. His best season was his last when, at the age of five, he won the Group 1 Darley July Cup and the Group 1 Diamond Jubilee Stakes. He earned a cool million pounds plus for how enthusiastic owners.

Raffle Prize now catapults to the head of the four winners bred to date by the Group 3 winner Summer Pete, a daughter of the influential broodmare sire Pivotal (Polar Falcon). The sire influence of Cheveley Park Stud is noticeable in the pedigree of Raffle Prize. This is a family that each generation produces runners of note, and one of the best known was the speedy Overdose (Starborough), the Hungarian Bullet.

Gleneagles was another sire with a notable first at Royal Ascot. The champion Irish two-year-old and winner of the Group 1 National Stakes, he went on to become the champion miler in Europe at three, adding the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes to victories in the Irish and English 2000 Guineas. His first yearlings sold extremely well last year and now they are winning.

While he had three winners under his belt, the Aidan O’Brien-trained Southern Hills gave him that much appreciated first stakes winner when he became his fourth winner, landing the Listed Windsor Castle Stakes on his third start. Are we witnessing the start of a successful stallion career, yet again, for a top-class son of Galileo (Sadler’s Wells)?

Bred by Coolmore, Southern Hills, like Circus Maximus, is out of a mare who was trained by David Wachman, Remember You who is a daughter of Invincible Spirit (Green Desert). Remember You won at two and she was stakes-placed, notably runner-up in the Group 3 Go And Go Round Tower Stakes over six furlongs at the Curragh. Southern Hills is her second foal and winner, following I Remember You (Australia) who won last year at two. Remember You has a yearling colt by Galileo (Sadler’s Wells).