SIX horses went to post for the 2005 running of the Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville.

The filly Divine Proportions started favourite, ahead of the Aga Khan’s Valixir. However, neither of them could land a blow at the winner, Godolphin’s Dubawi, who held Whipper by a length and a half.

Dubawi was coming back to a mile having finished third behind Motivator and Walk In The Park in the Epsom Derby and he was adding to an earlier victory at the Curragh when he made up for a fifth place finish in the 2000 Guineas with an emphatic two-length win in the Irish equivalent.

He also finished runner-up in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. Sadly a ligament injury brought his eight race career – he was unbeaten at two and won the National Stakes – to a premature end.

He went to stud for £25,000 at Dalham Hall with the Timeform comments that he was a “small, strong, attractive individual who carried condition” and that he had “a short, choppy action” ringing in his ears. Well, handsome is as handsome does and his subsequent outstanding stallion career shows that he is a winner on the racecourse and in the sales ring, with demand for his stock always strong.

Last year his yearlings averaged £647,000 and his stud fee of £125,000 is also indicative of his popularity. As the outstanding son of his sire Dubai Millennium and from that horse’s only crop, Dubawi is himself sire of a growing list of Group 1 horses, with more than 20 winners already at that level including Poet’s Voice, Monterosso, Night Of Thunder, Al Kazeem, Makfi and Postponed.