SATURDAY was quite a day for Darley’s Territories. The Group 1 Prix Jean Prat winner and classic-placed son of Invincible Spirit (Green Desert) had two landmarks on the day, in very different spheres.

At the Arqana December Sale his daughter Rougir sold for a record €3 million, while, at Aintree, Ross O’Sullivan saddled another of the sire’s first-crop daughters to win the listed juvenile fillies’ hurdle. Named Sea Sessions, she was quite the value purchase by Ross O’Sullivan’s wife, Katie Walsh, having been picked up for 5,000gns as a yearling at Tattersalls December Sale.

Together with an earlier win on the flat, and a few placed efforts, Sea Sessions has amassed almost £30,000, and her value as both a racemare, and a potential broodmare in due course, have increased substantially. While she was bred with the flat in mind, her stakes-placed dam Funday (Daylami) is a full-sister to a Grade 2 hurdle winner and a Cheltenham Festival chase winner.

That horse was Pigeon Island (Daylami) who died this year at the age of 18. He was the last leg of a great treble for Paddy Brennan at the 2010 Festival when, having scraped in at the bottom of the handicap, he won the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase. A couple of years earlier he started co-favourite with Binocular and others for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, a race won by Captain Cee Bee.

A better hurdler than a chaser, Pigeon Island won seven times over the smaller obstacles and four times over fences. His most important success as a young horse was his five-length victory in the Grade 2 Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle at Kempton, the win that propelled him to favouritism for Cheltenham. Pigeon Island was bred by the late Sir Eric Parker, while Sea Sessions was bred by his son Charlie’s Crimbourne Bloodstock.

Eric Parker

Sea Sessions is one of four winners to date for Funday who carried Sir Eric’s colours to a pair of wins, trained by Gary Moore. Sir Eric tried unsuccessfully to sell the filly as a yearling, and his son also failed to trade her on a few years ago as a broodmare. Recently Crimbourne Bloodstock offered Sea Sessions’ Havana Gold (Teofilo) half-sister, a foal, for sale at Newmarket but she too returned to the farm in Marlborough. Havana Gold was also bred by Sir Eric.

Territories will start his sixth season at stud in Dalham Hall next spring and his fee this year and next is £10,000, marginally down on his starting price of £12,000. Having a Group 1 winner and a listed winner in his first crop, as well as the highly-promising Masseto among this year’s juveniles, Territories has made a very solid start to his career at stud.

Being a son of the influential stallion-maker Invincible Spirit, and from the female line of Street Cry and Shamardal, Territories always had the credentials to succeed.