BRED in Kentucky and sold at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale for what now appears a modest $160,000, Roaring Lion carried Qatar Racing’s silks to victory over Saxon Warrior in the Group 1 Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown last Saturday.

A fifth career victory in nine outings, Roaring Lion had previously annexed the Group 2 Juddmonte Royal Lodge Stakes at two after making a winning debut in the same race won by Motivator and Frankel. Unbeaten in his first three starts at two, he ended the season with a highly creditable runner-up position behind Saxon Warrior in the Group 1 Racing Post Trophy.

This season he also won the Group 2 Dante Stakes and was third at Epsom behind Masar in the Derby. His only other starts saw him run third in the Craven Stakes and fifth in the 2000 Guineas. His earnings to date stack up to £835,000.

Victory in the Group 1 centrepiece last weekend was the second in the race, in the last three runnings, for a son of Kitten’s Joy (El Prado), Hawkbill having been successful in 2016. A two-million dollar earner as a racehorse and the champion grass horse in the USA, the Hill ‘n’ Dale Stud-based Kitten’s Joy covered this year at a fee of $60,000 or just over €50,000. He has been the leading turf sire in the USA for the last five years and Roaring Lion becomes his 12th Group 1 winner from his first nine crops of racing age.

His leading earner is the aforementioned Hawkbill who was fourth last Saturday in the Eclipse, and he is closely followed by the outstanding racemare Stephanie’s Kitten.

Lanwades Stud’s Bobby’s Kitten is another of his sons to win at the highest level, and he is one of the stallion’s three Breeders’ Cup winners. His first foals are on the ground.

Roaring Lion is the best performer in his female family and the first Group or Grade 1 winner in the first four generations at least. That said, his dam Vionnet, a daughter of Street Sense (Street Cry), was a three-time winner and her stakes placings notably included running third in the Grade 1 Rodeo Drive Stakes at Santa Anita.

Her second offspring, Fran The Man (Medaglia D’Oro), sold for $550,000 as a yearling to Spendthrift Farm and to date they are the only living offspring of Vionnet.

While Vionnet managed to be the only offspring of her Grade 3 winning dam Cambiocorsa (Avenue Of Flags) to gain a Grade 1 bracket, she is also the only one of that mare’s five winners to fail to become a stakes winner. The other four include Grade 2 winners Moulin De Mougin (Curlin) and Schiaparelli (Ghostzapper), and the minor stakes winners Alexis Tangier (Tiznow) and Bronson (Medaglia D’Oro).

Cambiocorsa won half of her 18 starts and her most notable success was in the Grade 2 Las Cienegas Handicap at Santa Anita. She is a full-sister to the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner California Flag, but the race was then a listed stakes, while he also won the Grade 3 Morvich Handicap in a course record time.