WHILE Spanish Mission was landing the Jockey Club Derby Invitational Stakes, another overseas challenger was capturing the inaugural Jockey Club Oaks Invitational Stakes at Belmont. Alain de Royer-Dupre saddled the three-year-old Kitten’s Joy (El Prado) filly Edisa to land a winner’s prize of $400,000 in the latter.

Edisa was adding to her summer success in a listed race at ParisLongchamp and she was runner-up twice in a pair of Group 3 races in the interim, the Prix de Malleret and Prix de Psyche. She is the first foal of her dam Ebiyza (Rock Of Gibraltar) who has a juvenile filly Ebaiyra (Distorted Humor) and a yearling filly by More Than Ready (Southern Halo).

Edisa is yet another stakes winner for a line that has provided her breeder, His Highness the Aga Khan, with many great successes. Edisa’s dam Ebiyza won once but it was a significant victory in the Group 2 Qatar Prix de Royalieu. She in turn is the best of four winners from Ebalista (Selkirk) and that winning daughter of Ebadiyla (Sadler’s Wells) was added to the broodmare band at the Smurfit’s Forenaghts Stud for €300,000 in 2017.

Ebadiyla is a dual Group 1 winner, successful in both the Irish Oaks and the Prix Royal Oak, and at stud she bred 10 winners. Among them were Eyshal (Green Desert), winner of the Centenary Vase in Hong Kong and placed in the Group 1 National Stakes at the Curragh.

I often refer to the small coterie of mares that I consider to be worthy of being called ‘Blue Hens’. They are the eight who bred four or more Group/Grade 1 winners on the flat. Ebadiyla is out of one of them, the listed winner Ebaziya (Darshaan). She also produced two winners of the Group 1 Ascot Gold Cup, Enzeli (Kahyasi) and Estimate (Monsun), and the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes winner Edabiya (Rainbow Quest).

Kitten’s Joy, a dual Grade 1 winner, is the sire of 13 Group or Grade 1 winners, and we know him well in Europe as the sire of Roaring Lion, Hawkbill and the Lanwades Stud stallion Bobby’s Kitten.