TOROK retired to stud in Turkey in 2013 and his initial fee was in the region of €750. The son of Singspiel was foaled in Ireland and is out of the Red Ransom mare Chatila.

Trained by John Gosden for Princess Haya of Jordan, Chatila was purchased as a yearling by John Ferguson at Keeneland for $150,000. She was a winner at two but was sold on as a five-year-old from Darley at the Tattersalls December Sale for 30,000gns and purchased by Omer Halim Aydin.

Her best runner has been Torok and he won four times in Turkey as a three-year-old and earned blacktype when he was runner-up in the local Group 3 Anafartalar over 10 furlongs on the all-weather and third in the local Group 2 Mehmet Akif Ersoy, this time over a furlong longer and on turf.

Torok’s first crop of three-year-olds are currently racing and the best of them is a colt named Piano Sonata. Last year he won the local Group 2 Queen Elizabeth II International at Ankara over seven furlongs and was runner-up in a pair of juvenile races that are Group 1 in Turkey, the Karayel Stakes over six and a half furlongs at Ankara and the Caldiran Stakes at Veliefendi.

This season he was runner-up in the Erkek Tay Deneme, the 2000 Guineas, over a mile before stretching to a mile and a half last Sunday and capturing the Gazi Derby. This was the 91st running of the classic which honours the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The stud fee to produce Piano Sonata seems miniscule now when compared with his winning purse of some €550,000.

Now the leader of his generation, Piano Sonata is owned by Oguz Yalçin and trained by Metin Acar. He was ridden by champion jockey Ahmet Çelik who also won the Gazi Derby with Renk in 2015 and Graystorm in 2016. He thus becomes only the second jockey in the history of the race to win it three years in a row.

While many mares have been imported to Turkey in recent years, this was very much a local success and Piano Sonata was bred from the Shining Steel (by Kris) mare Emma. She won three times at two years in Turkey and, by my reading, added six more victories up to the age of five. She is now the dam of three winners, last weekend’s classic hero being easily her best. Piano Sonata was bred by Gençay Dilek Emirsoy.

Shining Steel, the maternal grandsire of Piano Sonata, was trained by Henry Cecil for Jim Joel and won the Group 3 Diomed Stakes at Epsom before travelling stateside to land the Grade 2 Shoemaker Handicap at Hollywood Park. He is a full-brother to the group winner Moon Cactus who was runner-up in the French Oaks. She is dam of the Oaks winner Moonshell and her Sadler’s Wells full-brother Doyen, a proven Group 1 sire who is resident at Sunnyhill Stud.