CELEBRATED with a statue at the Curragh, Ridgewood Pearl (Indian Ridge) was an exceptional racemare and she made history, being the first horse to win four Group 1 races in different countries in the same year.

Born the year after her own-brother Ridgewood Ben (Indian Ridge), she was put in training by Sean and Anne Coughlan with John Oxx. He also trained her older sibling. Ridgewood Ben had been a majestic eight-length winner of his only start at two, won the Group 3 Gladness Stakes on his first start at three, and was third behind Turtle Island, the runaway winner, in the Group 1 Irish 2000 Guineas. While he placed many times in stakes company afterwards, he didn’t live up to the great expectations many had for him.

The same could not be said for Ridgewood Pearl. Obviously highly-regarded, she was narrowly beaten on her debut, unusually in a listed race, before landing the Group 3 C L Weld Stakes. At three she won five of her six starts, running second to Bahri in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. She rightly earned champion status following wins in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas, the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Prix du Moulin de Longchamp, before rounding out her career with victory in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.

Spotlight

At stud Ridgewood Pearl did not achieve much, breeding just three minor winners. For some time it appeared her legacy would be that, through her unraced daughter Sacred Pearl (Daylami), she was grandam of the Grade 1 Weatherbys Champion Bumper winner Silver Concorde (Dansili). However, the family has once again been put in the spotlight thanks to a descendant of one of Ridgewood Pearl’s winning offspring.

John Oxx trained Josh’s Pearl (Sadler’s Wells) to win and place from just four starts. She bred five winners, one of them in Russia, and they include Joshua’s Princess (Danehill). While it appeared for a long time that she was to be nothing more than ‘just’ a regular winner producer – she has had seven – she will now be celebrated as the dam of the Grade 1 E P Taylor Stakes winner Mutamakina, the fifth winner at the highest level for Nathaniel (Galileo).

Incredibly, all five Group/Grade 1 winners by the Newsells Park Stud sire are fillies, led by the brilliant Enable. The recently retired Lady Bowthorpe is another, as well as the French Oaks heroine Channel. Going deeper, 10 of the stallion’s 15 group/graded winners are fillies.

Shawn Dugan

Purchased for 100,000gns as a yearling by Shawn Dugan for Al Shira’aa Farms, owners of Meadow Court Stud near the Curragh, the five-year-old Mutamakina was a listed winner in France and Group 2 placed before she transferred to the Christophe Clement stable in the USA. A Grade 3 winner at Aqueduct, she has shown a particular fondness for Canada, prefacing her Grade 1 win with victory in the Grade 2 Dance Smartly Stakes, also at Woodbine.

One man who will have delighted in this top-level win is Colm Sharkey who spent just 10,000gns in February to purchase Mutamakina’s three-year-old full-sister Flash Flossy (Nathaniel). Given that she was purchased for a syndicate bearing the name of the new Castlefield Stud sire for this year, Hunting Horn (Camelot), it is probably safe to say she has likely already been covered by that Group 2 winner.