THE Group 2 Airlie Stud Stakes winner Albigna won last week in the style of a filly going places. Bred by and racing in the colours of the Niarchos Family, Albigna is from a female line nurtured over many generations now by Maria Niarchos and her family.

Albigna is a daughter of Zoffany (Dansili) and one of 15 group winners and almost twice that number of stakes winners by the Group 1 winning two-year-old who has just finished another season at Coolmore Stud, this time at €25,000. She is the first stakes winner from his fifth crop of racing age.

Albigna joins Polybius (Oasis Dream) as stakes-winning offspring of Freedonia (Selkirk), winner of the Group 2 Prix de Pomone at Deauville as a four-year-old when trained by John Hammond and she ran well to finish second later that year in the Grade 1 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic on the turf at Belmont Park. Freedonia was by some way the best of four winners from Forest Rain (Caerleon).

From here back the pedigree gets better and better. Forest Rain’s half-brother Domedriver (Indian Ridge) was a Group 2 winner in France and twice runner-up there in the Group 1 Prix Jacques Le Marois. He travelled to America for his most important success; jockey Thierry Thulliez, who was riding in his first ever Breeders’ Cup race, guided Domedriver to an upset win over Rock Of Gibraltar who had come into the race having won a then world record seven straight Group 1 races.

Domedriver’s stakes winning dam Napoli (Baillamont) was out of Bella Senora (Northern Dancer), a placed own-sister to El Gran Senor and Try My Best.