CAMELOT was an immensely talented racehorse, a champion at two and three years when his victories included the Derby at Epsom and the Curragh, the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, and he came agonisingly close to capturing the Triple Crown when he was runner-up in the St Leger. At two he won the Racing Post Trophy on his second start.

He suffered a colic attach at the end of his three-year-old season and stayed in training at four. He was runner-up in the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup but his bid for a Breeders’ Cup victory was aborted when he suffered an injury at Ballydoyle and he went to stud in 2014. A son of Montjeu (Sadler’s Wells) and out of the Group 3 winning Kingmambo (Mr Prospector) mare Tarfah, Camelot is a grandson of the blacktype winner Fickle (Danehill).

His first crop are really hitting their stride and at the time of writing he has 17 individual winners of 20 races, with his first stakes winner appearing last month. Now he can claim his first group winner, the Kilcarn Stud-bred Fighting Irish landing the Group 2 Criterium de Maisons-Laffitte. The colt is trained by Harry Dunlop and is the first stakes winner for his Pivotal (Polar Falcon) dam Quixotic and one of three winners she had bred to date.

Miss Pat O’Kelly bought Quixotic for 105,000gns as an unraced three-year-old from her breeders Cheveley Park Stud and then sold her first offspring for €230,000. Fighting Irish was sold for €50,000 as a foal to the Players at Whatton Manor Stud and they traded him on as a yearling at the Goffs UK Premier Sale for a handy profit, realising £70,000 for him last year.

Quixotic is from one of the most successful female lines at the Thompson’s Cheveley Park Stud. She is an own-sister to the Group 1 Lockinge Stakes winner Virtual and a three-parts sister to the Group 2 Coventry Stakes winner Iceman, a son of Polar Falcon (Nureyev).

Their dam Virtuous (Exit To Nowhere) was stakes placed and her half-sister Dancing Debut (Polar Falcon) is the grandam of Lahaleeb (Redback) who won the Grade 1 E P Taylor Stakes at Woodbine and sold for 1,000,000gns as a three-year-old.

Further back in the pedigree you will find Group 1 performers galore. Fighting Irish’s fourth dam Exclusive Order (Exclusive Native) won the then Group 2 Prix Maurice de Gheest and she bred Group 1 winners Entrepreneur (Sadler’s Wells) and Exclusive (Polar Falcon). The former won the 2000 Guineas, while Exclusive bred the Group 1 Matron Stakes winner Echelon (Danehill) and her half-sister Chic (Machiavellian). The latter won the Group 2 Celebration Mile twice and was runner-up in the Group 1 Matron Stakes.

Breeders, stallion masters and readers are invited to contact Leo Powell at leopowell@theirishfield.ie with news and updates for the column, and to visit our website www.theirishfield.ie for daily breeding news