THERE are many examples of mares who breed two Group 1 winners, and this year I have written about many who have done so in the same year. Misty For Me, elsewhere in this week’s edition, is an example.

The Giant’s Causeway (Storm Cat) mare Trensa has come close to having a pair of Group/Grade 1 winners this year, and it may yet happen. She has however produced a pair of winners at the highest level, one on either side of the Atlantic, and this is just from three runners.

At the weekend her two-year-old son Free Drop Billy, a son of Union Rags (Dixie Union) and from that horse’s second crop, won the $300,000 Grade 1 Claiborne Breeders’ Futurity and thus earned an automatic berth for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. His four-length success means that he has won two of his four starts, placing second in the Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes and Grade 3 Sanford Stakes on his other runs.

His sire Union Rages won the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes in his second season, having collected the Grade 1 Champagne Stakes as a juvenile. He was denied a Breeders’ Cup Juvenile success by just a head. Union Rags retired to stud having won five of his eight starts and this year commanded $50,000 at Lane’s End. Given that his first crop included a pair of Grade 1 juvenile winners in Dancing Rags and Union Strike, and he recently added Grade 1 Zenyatta Stakes winner Paradise Woods and the subject of this article, Free Drop Billy, to that tally, his fee for 2018 could be set to increase.

Prior to the emergence of Free Drop Billy, his dam Trensa bred last year’s Group 1 Eclipse Stakes winner Hawkbill, a son of Kitten’s Joy (El Prado). He also won the Group 2 Princess of Wales’s Stakes this year and on his last two starts has come tantalisingly close to winning again at the highest level, running second in the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Berlin and the Grade 1 Northern Dancer Turf Stakes at Woodbine.

Trensa’s third winner is the filly Trensita (Curlin) and she took until she was a four-year-old to win. The fifth produce of Trensa is a Curlin (Smart Strike) colt who sold for $800,000 in September at Keeneland, while waiting in the wings is a More Than Ready (Southern Halo) colt. In an effort to breed a full-sibling to Hawkbill, Trensa was mated again with Kitten’s Joy this year.

Trensa won three times and was placed in a number of minor stakes races. She is one of five winners from the Grade 1 Ballerina Stakes winner Serape (Fappiano) and the best of these was the Storm Cat (Storm Bird) filly who won three Grade 3 races and notably set a course record for nine furlongs when she won the Vinery Matchmaker Stakes.

Each generation of this family seems to throw up a Grade 1 winner – or two. Serape is by some way the best of seven winners from her stakes-winning dam Mochila (In Reality). One of that mare’s unraced daughters was Montera (Easy Goer) and she bred a pair of stakes winners, including the Woodman (Mr Prospector) Grade 3 winner Sue’s Good News, who in turn is dam of the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps Handicap winner Tiz Miz Sue (Tiznow). Finally, Mochila is a half-sister to the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Mile winner and leading sire Cozzene (Caro).