PROSPEROUS Voyage earned a well-deserved first stakes win last Friday, and she did it in style, and with great aplomb.

The victory was gained in the Group 1 Tattersalls Falmouth Stakes at the Newmarket July meeting, though it was somewhat ironic that the winner wasn’t sold in the Newmarket ring, but rather at the Goffs Orby Sale in 2020, held in Doncaster. As a consequence you will see two sale prices for the filly on record, the £65,000 she brought in the ring from Badgers Bloodstock, and the €76,700 that it was converted to for statistical purposes.

Prior to her appearance in the five-runner feature at Newmarket last week, for which she started a 16/1 shot, the Ralph Beckett-trained daughter of Zoffany (Dansili) had been inexplicably flying under the radar. Runner-up to her nemesis, Inspiral, last year in both the Group 2 May Hill Stakes and later in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile, she started this season as an outsider for the Group 1 Qipco 1000 Guineas, but failed by just a neck to catch Cachet.

Bargain buy

Down the field at Royal Ascot, her only time out of the money in nine starts, she bounced back to beat Inspiral on her most recent outing at double-digit odds, and she will not be starting at such prices again I would venture to suggest. Her now bargain yearling price looks ridiculous when you consider her pedigree, and she has no inbreeding in her family for at least five generations, making her an ideal broodmare prospect in due course.

Sadly, her sire Zoffany died in 2021, before the start of the covering season, at just 13 years of age. A solid sire of good performers, his star was in the ascendancy at the time of his demise, coming in the wake of Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac winner Albigna in 2019, and Group 1 National Stakes winner Thunder Moon the following year. Months after his death his daughter Mother Earth won the Group 1 1000 Guineas, and now Prosperous Voyage becomes his fifth Group 1 winner.

Prosperous Voyage is a product of the dynamic breeding duo of Paul Shanahan’s Lynch Bages and the Hyde family’s Camas Park Stud. She is by some way the best of her Mizzen Mast (Cozzene) dam Seatone’s four winners, easily eclipsing the achievements of her stakes-placed half-brother Romanesque (Montjeu).

Outshone

The third produce from mating Seatone with Zoffany, she has certainly outshone her full-siblings. Victory March (Zoffany) cost MV Magnier 220,000gns as a yearling, made two unsuccessful starts for Aidan O’Brien, and in 18 subsequent runs for Denis Hogan has managed three places on the flat and one over hurdles. Their four-year-old full-sister Thar She Blows (Zoffany) cost Jamie Osborne 48,000gns, hasn’t run, but what a valuable broodmare prospect she is now.

The family could get better too. Sold for 450,000gns to Peter and Ross Doyle Bloodstock last year in Book 2 of the Tattersalls October Sale, Tenerife (No Nay Never) is now in Ballydoyle, in the ownership of Sue Magnier, Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith and Westerberg. In the sale ring, and now on the racecourse, Seatone has proven her worth, having been purchased as a winning three-year-old for 115,000gns.

A Juddmonte-bred, Seatone had lots to recommend her at the sale in 2011. Coming from a renowned Khalid Abdullah female line, she was the ninth and last winner out of the Group 3 winner Diese (Diesis). A third of the nine are stakes winners, but one matters more than the rest. Senure (Nureyev) thrived when he was sent racing in the USA and there he won Grade 1 races at Santa Anita and Monmouth Park.

Well-connected

Diese was herself well-related. She was one of no fewer than 14 winners out of the Robert Sangster-owned, Vincent O’Brien-trained Monroe (Sir Ivor). A Group 3 winner and runner-up in the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes, Monroe established a very successful branch of an outstanding distaff line.

She is dam of the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes winner Xaar (Zafonic), while through her daughters and further down the line her own descendants include Group 1 Dubai Duty Free Stakes winner Cityscape (Selkirk), Group 1 St Leger winner Logician (Frankel), five-time Grade 1 winner Close Hatches (First Defense), and Group 1 Irish 2000 Guineas and Phoenix Stakes winner Siskin (First Defense).

Excluding the Group and Grade 1 winners already mentioned, Monroe’s dam, the stakes winner Best In Show (Traffic Judge), has a further 37 Group or Grade 1 winners listed under her on the pedigree page, including another daughter of Zoffany, Albigna, and this is surely one of the stud book’s best and most enduring families.