THE Group 1 Prix d’Ispahan demolition by A Shin Hikari has to be one of the performances of the year and entitles the five-year-old entire to be ranked with the best runners in the world. He will now go to Royal Ascot as one of the most talked about horses competing at the gala meeting.

The son of Deep Impact first came to attention in the Listed Ireland Trophy, one of his five victories in six outings as a three-year-old in Japan. He did not run at two. Last year he won three of his four starts in Japan, all stakes races, and the most important of these came in the Group 2 Mainichi Okan. He also travelled abroad and annexed the Group 1 Longines Hong Kong Cup.

His recent Group 1 success was his 10th in 12 starts and he could yet become a true global superstar. What of his pedigree?

Well, he is a son of the Japanese sire sensation Deep Impact, the 14-year-old Triple Crown winning son of Sunday Silence who stood this season for a stud fee of approximately €250,000. His seventh crop are now two-year-olds and he has been the champion sire in Japan on three occasions already. There are many more such championships to be won.

A Shin Hikari could well be on his way to being crowned a champion in Japan, something that eight sons and daughters of Deep Impact have already achieved. The best known performer among them is Gentildonna and this mare was twice Horse of the Year in Japan, won the fillies’ Triple Crown and announced her presence on the world stage when capturing the Group 1 Sheema Classic at Meydan.

The dam of A Shin Hikari is the Storm Cat mare Catalina, and she won three times in her native USA and was at stud there for a few years before being sold to Japan where her first foal, the Pleasant Colony filly San Juan Girl, was a winner.

Her record now as a broodmare is that eight of her nine foals have raced and all but one of them are winners.

The others include a pair of stakes-placed horses, the filly A Shin Cool D (by Distorted Humor) and A Shin P C, a son of Fusaichi Pegasus.

Catalina is one of eight winners from the Caro mare Carolina Saga, and the best of the rest by some margin was Sir Beaufort. That son of Pleasant Colony won more than $1.1 million and his 10 victories were headed by the 1993 Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap. The colt had a Grade 2 race named after him and this was run with his named attached for about two decades, but was renamed in 2014.

On the female side of his family A Shin Hikari could be described as having a solid pedigree, and the stakes winners under his first three dams include winners in the USA, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.