SUNDAY was close to being a perfect day for leading second-season sire Churchill (Galileo).

His homebred daughter Blue Cen Rose produced a great turn of foot to run out a five-length winner of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac from a pair of Irish-trained fillies, Jim Bolger’s Gan Teorainn and Aidan O’Brien’s Never Ending Story.

Now the winner of four of her six starts, Blue Cen Rose’s previous efforts saw her win the Group 3 Prix d’Aumale, also at ParisLongchamp, and finish second in a listed race at Deauville.

Owned and bred by Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals’ Yeguada Centurion, Blue Rose Cen is the first foal out of a €15,000 yearling buy at Goffs who went on to win the Group 3 Lodge Park EBF Park Express Stakes at the Curragh when trained by Patrick Prendergast. She is Queen Blossom,

INS-bred

Sent to race in the USA, Queen Blossom is a daughter of Jeremy (Danehill Dancer), a sire more noted now in National Hunt circles, and she was bred by the Irish National Stud. In the USA she was sold on for $220,000, won the Grade 3 Santa Barbara Stakes at Santa Anita, and was sent back across the Atlantic to the Tattersalls December Sale where Ted Durcan picked her up for 110,000gns.

Now the dam of a Group 1 winner with her first foal, who has already earned €325,000 on the track and given young trainer Christopher Head his first Group 1 winner, Queen Blossom has earned the moniker of being ‘good value for money’.

Also delighted with the result of the Marcel Boussac will have been bloodstock agent Cathy Grassick and Carisbrooke Stud’s owner Yvonne Jacques. They purchased the dam of Queen Blossom, the group-placed juvenile Mark Of An Angel (Mark Of Esteem), in February 2019 at Arqana for €72,000.

The foal she was carrying, Capo La Gala (Le Havre), became her fourth winning offspring this year, and all of these updates will help with the sale in Book 3 of the Tattersalls October Sale next week of Mark Of An Angel’s yearling filly by Starspangledbanner (Choisir).

For good measure, Carisbrooke welcomed a colt foal this spring out of Mark Of An Angel by Showcasing (Oasis Dream), the sire of another Group 1 winning juvenile on the same card on Sunday, Belbek.

This year is proving to be a strong one on the track for Churchill, with Group 1 winner and Arc runner-up Vadeni, Group 1 winner Blue Rose Cen, Group 2 winners The Foxes and Ladies Church, Group 3 winner Queroyal, and couple of stakes winners also.