THERE can be no better way to earn your first success at graded stakes level than to land a Grade 1, and this happened last weekend to the British-bred Almanaar. The Shadwell Stud owned and bred son of Dubawi won the Gulfstream Park Turf Handicap by three-quarters of length, his fifth career victory. In so doing he became the 27th winner at Group or Grade 1 level for Dubawi who will command a fee of £250,000 this year at Dalham Hall Stud, were you lucky enough to get a mare accepted to visit him. Dubawi’s impressive list of Group 1 winning sons also includes Erupt, Postponed, New Bay and Makfi.

Almanaar is a five-year-old gelding out of the Bahhare mare Baqah, herself winner of the Group 2 Prix de Sandringham and the Listed Prix d’Angerville when trained by Freddy Head. Her placed efforts included a third-place finish in the Group 1 Falmouth Stakes. She is the dam of seven foals of racing age, three of which have run and won. Her eighth is a yearling colt by Exceed And Excel.

Only two of the offspring of Baqah have been fillies and both sold at the end of last year at public auction. Two men who will be feeling very pleased as a result of Almanaar’s Grade 1 win were the agents who purchased the pair of half-sisters.

John Walsh paid 20,000gns at the Tattersalls December Sale for the unraced Oasis Dream mare Mutheera and she was carrying her second foal, due in March, by Cable Bay. She has a yearling colt by Zoffany.

If that looks to be a bargain, consider how Marc Antoine Berghgracht feels as he picked up the unraced Hayaan, a daughter of Haafhd and dam of a minor two-year-old winner last year, for only €4,000. She was in foal to the German Derby winner Samum whose fee was €5,000!

This is a female line that Hamdan Al Maktoum’s Shadwell has a long association with. It began when he acquired the Roberto filly El Rabab, a daughter of the champion American juvenile filly Brave Raj. El Rabab won as a two-year-old when trained by Tom Jones and she bred seven foals for Sheikh Hamdan. The best of these was the Muhtarram colt Muntej whose biggest success was in the Grade 2 Sky Classic Handicap in Canada, while he was also Grade 1-placed.

El Rabab was sent to Goffs to be sold, in foal to Nashwan, and Dermot Cantillon secured her with a bid of €85,000. He got his money back when he sold the resultant offspring, a colt, for €105,000 before selling the mare on for just €8,000. It was to be four years after the Nashwan colt that she produced one more foal.

El Rabab’s Cadeaux Genereux daughter Filfilah won three races and bred five winners, the best of which was Almanaar’s dam Baqah.

Brave Raj, the fourth dam of Almanaar, only raced for a single season in the USA and won six of her nine starts, amassing a then record amount for a juvenile filly of $933,650. Rated the champion of her sex, she won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Stakes as well as the Grade 2 Del Mar Debutante Stakes. She bred 11 winners, two of them successful in stakes races, and is grandam of the Grade 2 winner and Grade 1 Stephen Foster Handicap runner-up Eurosilver.