DUBAWI ranks among the top two or three stallions in the world, with a number of ways to measure such an achievement. Any way you look at it, he takes top rank and just over two weeks ago at Chantilly he achieved the remarkable landmark of having his 100th individual group winner when Crown Walk triumphed in the Group 3 Prix Chloe. Once again, I was fortunate last week to see Dubawi at the Darley stallion parade in Newmarket.

To cap her success the three-year-old Crown Walk won in the Godolphin blue of Sheikh Mohammed. Dubawi’s crowning achievement as a racehorse was to win the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville and he earlier won the Group 1 Irish 2000 Guineas. His winners include Monterosso, the Group 1 Dubai World Cup winner; Postponed who won the Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes; Al Kazeem who landed the Group 1 Coral Eclipse Stakes; and Akeed Mofeed, successful in the Group 1 Hong Kong Cup - a truly international array.

Dubawi is now on his way to a second century of group winners and one of the first of these is Quorto, winner last weekend of the Group 2 Superlative Stakes at Newmarket. This was a second win in two starts for the Godolphin-owned and bred two-year-old and the manner of his victory over Cape Of Good Hope and others would augur well for the rest of his juvenile campaign.

Quorto and William Buick winning the Group 2 bet365 Superlative Stakes. Photo Healy Racing

Quorto is the only produce to date of the Mount Nelson (Rock Of Gibraltar) mare Volume. She was trained by Luca Cumani for owner/breeder Stuart Stuckey and won the 10-furlong Listed Swettenham Stud Fillies Trial at Newbury before stepping up to a mile and half and running third in both the Investec Oaks at Epsom (to Taghrooda) and the Darley Irish Oaks at the Curragh behind Bracelet.

At the end of her three-year-old season Volume was sent to the Tattersalls December Sale as part of the Cumani’s Fittocks Stud draft and she sold for 700,000gns to John Ferguson on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed.

Volume is a daughter of Victoire Finale (Peintre Celebre) who won in France, and a granddaughter of Victoire Bleue (Legend Of France) who took until she was aged four and five to win, but when she did she landed both the Group 1 Prix du Cadran over two and a half miles and the Group 3 Prix Gladiateur over a mile and seven furlongs. The best of her subsequent six winners at stud was Vertical Speed (Bering) and he was unbeaten in three starts at three in France, including the Group 2 Prix Hubert de Chaudenay, and he travelled to Doncaster to run second in the Group 1 St Leger.

Victoire Bleue is out of the Group 1 Prix Vermeille third Vosges (Youth) and that mare’s half-brothers included the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois winner Vin De France (Foolish Pleasure) and the Group 2 Mill Reef Stakes winner and sire Vacarme (Lyphard).