LAST Tuesday in France the progeny of two top-class racemares visited the winner’s enclosure. Zarkava’s son Zarak looks to be potential classic material following his second start and second success, while One Foot In Heaven was a deserving stakes winner for his dam, the multiple Group 1 winner Pride.

A daughter of Peintre Celebre, Pride is the best winner sired by that Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winning son of Nureyev. She won three Group 1 races and in three different countries. They were the Champion Stakes at Newmarket, the Hong Kong Cup and the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and they were all gained as a six-year-old.

She was runner-up in the Arc to Rail Link and retired to stud with a proud record of having won nine times and earned well over €3 million. Her 13 placings also included being runner-up in two of the Group 1 races she later won, namely the Champion Stakes and Hong Kong Cup. While she had brief spells early in her career with John Hammond and Ger Butler, she was handled for most of her racing career by Alain de Royer Dupre.

It was hardly surprising that Galileo was chosen as the first mate for Pride when she went to stud and that coupling produced a colt, named All By Myself. Now an eight-year-old, he is still racing in France where he won as a three-year-old but then waited a further four years before doing so again, landing a pair of minor events last year.

Given that Pride had her biggest successes at the age of six, it is interesting to note that her first four foals have all stood up to plenty of training and the next example is Now’s The Time, her second foal and a son of Dansili. He won as a four-year-old in France before heading to Australia where he has added three more wins, including this year as a seven-year-old. Proud Dancer is a six-year-old son of Danehill Dancer and he too took his time to develop, not winning for the first time until he was four and then doing so again last year in Germany.

Now we come to the recent listed winner One Foot In Heaven. The four-year-old son of Fastnet Rock was successful in the mile and a half Prix Lord Seymour at Maisons-Laffitte and hopefully he will go on to augment this victory as the year goes on. This was his third win.

Still waiting in the wings for Pride are her three-year-old Raven’s Pass colt Man Of Honor, a two-year-old Lawman filly and a yearling colt by Reliable Man.

While Pride is easily the best winner in her family in recent years, her winning half-sister Specifically bred the 2006 1000 Guineas winner Speciosa, the Grade 3 winner Major Rhythm and the 2014 listed winner Special Meaning. In the year of her daughter’s classic win Specifically was sold for 1,850,000gns.

Another important update to the family in 2014 was the Group 3 Prix de Flore victory of Fate, a Teofilo half-sister to Pride, and last year she was placed in the Group 1 Prix Ganay. Fate and Pride are just two of the 11 winners for their Alleged dam Specificity and her siblings included the St Leger winner Touching Wood.