WHILE the winners’ purse of €7,375 will go a small way towards defraying training costs at Paddy Twomey’s, success for Express Way in a 10 and a half furlong Dundalk maiden on her belated debut was worth many multiples of the prize money.

Owned by Patricia Burns, and bred by her and her family at Lodge Park Stud, the three-year-old Dark Angel (Acclamation) filly was always going to be retained, thanks to her outstanding pedigree. It is fair to say that she is certainly among the top 1% of pedigrees in the stud book, and the cost of buying a treasure like Express Way would put her out of the reach of most breeders.

Given Paddy Twomey’s record with fillies and mares, it must be tempting to race on, as achieving blacktype would be an added bonus. The trainer and the winning jockey, Seamie Heffernan, seemed to indicate that she was well up to earning blacktype. Time will tell what happens.

The problem for any reviewer of this pedigree is not what to include, but rather what to leave out. Express Way is the ninth winner from 12 foals of racing age for the now retired Alluring Park (Green Desert), and that mare was a stakes-placed winner, and one of eight successful runners for the champion Park Express (Ahonoora).

Winner of the Group 1 Irish Champion Stakes at the Phoenix Park in 1986, and successful also in what is now the Group 1, then Group 2, Nassau Stakes that same year, Park Express was campaigned at the highest levels, and won five of her 14 starts. She finished in the first four in such prestigious races as the Yorkshire Oaks, Champion Stakes at Newmarket, Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh and the Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Bred by the late Peter Clarke, Park Express sold as a foal for IR17,000gns, and resold as a yearling for 42,000gns. She was purchased by John Warren on behalf of Seamus Burns and his father Paddy, and ran in the latter’s name, trained by Jim Bolger. She was just as good a broodmare as she was on the track, and her eight winners were headed by New Approach (Galileo), a European champion at two and three.

Blind mare

In fact, New Approach was foaled when Park Express was 22 and blind, a condition that set in six years earlier. While the marketplace has a bias against the progeny of older mares, Jim Bolger knew better and he paid €430,000 for the last offspring of a champion he trained, and he was rewarded handsomely.

Unbeaten at two when successful in both the Group 1 National Stakes and the Dewhurst Stakes, Jackie Bolger and John Corcoran sold New Approach that winter, though he stayed in the yard. At three he won the Group 1 Derby, Champion Stakes at Newmarket, and emulated his dam with victory in the Irish Champion Stakes. He is now a multiple Group 1 Darley sire.

Park Express also bred Alluring Park’s full-brother Shinko Forest (Green Desert), a leading runner in Japan, and the Group 3 winner and Group 1 Irish Champion Stakes runner-up Dazzling Park (Warning). The latter mare was also classic-placed and she is grandam of the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes winner Alfred Nobel (Danehill Dancer).

Alluring Park

Now, I need to stop, and return to Alluring Park herself. I wonder how the team at Lodge Park felt a few years into her time at stud, and could they have imagined she would scale the heights she has done. What is clear is that they stuck to their belief that she would breed a good horse – and she eventually bred multiple good horses.

Alluring Park’s first foal didn’t race, her second and third foals took until the age of four to win, and then along came the first of her four stakes winners, Janood (Medicean). Her fifth progeny was a daughter of Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), and she first made a splash when selling for 1,200,000gns as a yearling to Demi O’Byrne. In just nine starts Was, as she was named, won the Group 1 Oaks at Epsom, was runner-up in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes and she made the frame in two more Group 1s, the Nassau Stakes and Yorkshire Oaks.

Was is now a successful broodmare herself, and this year her daughter Concert Hall (Dubawi), already a Group 3 winner, was placed in the Group 1 Irish 1000 Guineas.

Two more fillies by Galileo followed for Alluring Park, the unraced Al Jassasiyah (dam of the stakes winner Mashael (Dubawi)), and the group-placed Al Naamah. The former sold for 1,500,000gns and the latter for a cool 5,000,000gns.

Successful

As the cross with Galileo was so successful in the sales ring and on the racecourse, Alluring Park continued to visit the multiple champion. In order of appearance she then bred the Group 3 winner Douglas Macarthur (1,250,000gns yearling), the Irish and French winner Park Bloom, and the Group 2 winner and Group 1 Derby third Amhran Na Bhfiann (1,300,000gns yearling).

While the two colts in that trio ended up at Ballydoyle, Patricia retained Park Bloom and this year sold her first produce, a yearling filly by No Nay Never (Scat Daddy), for 375,000gns.

Express Way is the penultimate offspring of Alluring Park, and Patricia Burns has the mare’s last produce, the two-year-old colt Classic Speed (Kodiac), in training with Clive Cox.

I don’t envy the Burns family’s predicament – stay in training or head to the breeding shed. That said, it is a nice dilemma to be faced with, one we would all love to have. With a pedigree that gives them so many stallions to choose from, it must be tempting to quit while they are ahead and cover Express Way in 2023.

Broodmare sire

While still in the early days of his career as a broodmare sire, it is worth mentioning the stakes winners Dark Angel’s daughters have bred, and what they are by. His outstanding achievement in this department is that he is the damsire of the Group 1 winner and exceptionally successful first-season sire Havana Grey (Havana Gold).

Dark Angel mares are also responsible for another pair of top-level performers in the Group 3 Molecomb Stakes winner and Group 1 Middle Park Stakes-placed Rumble Inthejungle (Bungle Inthejungle), and the listed winner and Group 1 Oaks runner-up Mystery Angel (Kodi Bear).

The six other stakes winners to date from Dark Angel dams are Captain Magnum (Kodiac), Castle Hill Cassie (Casamento), Cresta (New Bay), Hikma (Roderic O’Connor), Salimah (El Kabeir) and Tudo Bem (Sommerabend).