HEAVY ground can distort the value of form but it is hard not to be impressed with how Jet Setting won the Group 3 Leopardstown 1000 Guineas Trial Stakes over seven furlongs at the Dublin venue last Sunday.

She made all and kept on well to beat Now Or Never by three lengths, the pair finishing two and three-quarter lengths clear of the dual Group 1-placed favourite Alice Springs, a filly who will likely be seen to better effect on a sounder surface.

Jet Setting may aim for Germany’s 1000 Guineas, and if she is to take a crack at the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 1000 Guineas next month then she will need to be supplemented, but wherever she goes this filly cannot be ignored if the ground comes up soft.

A €7,000 Goffs foal, Jet Setting is a second-crop daughter of Fast Company (by Danehill Dancer) who is in his first season at Overbury Stud having spent five years on the team at Rathasker Stud.

He is also responsible for the Group 2 Norfolk Stakes winner Baitha Alga, his stakes-winning daughter Devonshire was third in last year’s Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas, and his long list of successful runners also includes Fast Act and Al Qahwa, both whom were group-placed as two-year-olds.

The filly was trained by Richard Hannon last year, was narrowly beaten in early-season maidens at Brighton and Newmarket, and picked up her first piece of blacktype when third behind the still unbeaten La Cressonniere in the Listed Prix Herod over seven furlongs in heavy ground at Chantilly in November.

She was then sold for 12,000gns in Newmarket, she joined the Co Kildare stable of Adrian Keatley, and her first start for her new connections saw her justify favouritism in an eight and a half furlong Cork maiden last month.

Jet Setting was bred by Peter Kelly who bought her dam, Mean Lae (by Johannesburg), for just €3,000 in Goffs after a 15-race career that saw her win a seven furlong Dundalk handicap off a mark of 67, pick up placings at Limerick and the Curragh, and retire with a rating of 79 on turf and 88 on the all-weather.

Her price is remarkable given that she had been led out unsold at €100,000 in the same venue three years before, showed some ability on the track, and has a Royal Ascot pattern winner in her immediate family.

Mean Lae’s two-year-old, a full-sister to Jet Setting, is catalogued as lot 92 in Wednesday’s Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale in Doncaster so the timing of the Leopardstown race could be highly beneficial for that filly’s connections.

Her dam, Plume Rouge (by Pivotal), made a winning debut over six furlongs at Leopardstown as a juvenile, finished fifth behind Yesterday in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas the following May, was third in the Listed Celebration Stakes over the same course and distance a month later, and then won the Listed Fairy Bridge Stakes over seven and a half furlongs at Tipperary.

Senorita Best (by Best Of The Bests), who won nine times in Italy, is the only one of Plume Rouge’s nine siblings that was successful and their placed dam, Classic Fan (by Lear Fan), is among eight foals out of the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes heroine Miss Boniface (by Tap On Wood).

That mare also won the Listed Lupe Stakes, she was third in the Group 1 Prix de la Salamandre, Grade 1 Selima Stakes and Group 2 Lowther Stakes, and she finished a two-length fourth behind the dead-heaters Diminuendo and Melodist in 1988’s edition of the Group 1 Irish Oaks.

Only three of her eight progeny were winners, and another of them was runner-up in a minor listed contest in the USA, but she herself was one of seven winners from nine produced from Etty (by Relko) and that winning mare’s tally also included the classic-placed dual Italian stakes winner Dungeon Master (by Polish Patriot).

Jet Setting is bred on a somewhat similar pattern to that colt given that both represent Danzig-line stallions and descend from Etty, but their actual relationship is distant.

The way in which she won on Sunday suggests that there is more to come from her, but even if things don’t work out for her racing career, this Danehill-line filly is a pattern-winning grand-daughter of a stakes-winner and descended from a Royal Ascot Group 2 scorer, and that boosts her prospects of producing at least one high-class son or daughter when she eventually goes to stud.