A winner at Leopardstown and Killarney, Deepone was less than a length behind Warnie in the Listed El Gran Senor Stakes at Tipperary, but he failed to settle at Leopardstown on Irish Champions Festival weekend when fourth to Diego Velazquez. He made amends in fine fashion in the Group 2 Alan Smurfit Memorial Beresford Stakes, a race that year after year throws up champions, and recent winners include Luxembourg, Japan and Saxon Warrior.

It appears that, with five runs under his belt, Deepone will now be put away for the winter, and he should certainly be on everyone’s longlist for the 2024 classics. He is the third foal and winner for the unraced Avyanna, a daughter of Galileo (Sadler’s Wells), and Deepone is now the mare’s second group winner. Andreas Bezzola’s $75,000 spend on Avyanna as a four-year-old bought him a mare carrying the winner Altmeister (Bodemeister).

Chile wins

Avyanna remained in the USA where her second produce, Avya D’Or (Carpe Diem), was born. Both of these offspring were offered for sale at public auction but failed to trade on a total of four occasions. Avya D’Or made his way to Chile and there he has won seven times, once in a Group 3. Moved to England, Avyanna was covered by Study Of Man, and while Deepone sold reasonably well as a foal, Bezzola must have been counting the accumulated costs, with trepidation.

Worse was to come when, last year, Avyanna’s Bated Breath (Dansili) filly foal failed to attract a buyer, unsold at 18,000gns, but when she is reoffered in Book 2 of the upcoming Tattersalls October Yearling Sale she will surely prove to be more attractive. After all, she is now a half-sister to a pair of pattern winners, one of whom looks to be Group 1 class. Additionally, this is a female line that most breeders would pay a premium to have a family member.

Avyanna is a daughter of the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks and Group 1 Prix Vermeille winner My Emma (Marju), and she sold for 1,300,000gns at the same sale in 2005 that her stakes-winning daughter, Moments of Truth (Darshaan), realised 1,650,000gns. The latter mare is the grandam of last year’s Group 1 National Stakes winner Al Riffa (Wootton Bassett). My Emma is a half-sister to the classic and Group 1 Ascot Gold Cup winner, Classic Cliche (Salse).

Array

The Beresford Stakes was for many years sponsored by Juddmonte, and that organisation enjoyed a Group 2 juvenile victory at the weekend with Array. A group-placed winner going into the Mill Reef Stakes at Newbury, he emerged in pole position, and follows in the hoof prints of many illustrious winners of this contest.

His win was overdue for his dual listed-winning and multiple group-placed dam, Joyeuse (Oasis Dream). He is her sixth runner and all have won, but all that was missing from this perfect record was a stakes winner, and now he is here. Her previous winners include a pair who, despite not winning even at listed level, were both placed in Group 1s. Jubiloso (Shamardal) was third in the Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot, while Maximal (Galileo) went even closer, being runner-up in the Group 1 Doomben Cup and the Group 1 Turnbull Stakes in Australia.

This is, quite simply, one of the best Juddmonte families. Array’s dam, Joyeuse, is a half-sister to the exceptional Frankel (Galileo), his triple Group 1-winning full-brother Noble Mission (Galileo), and the Group 3 winner Bullet Train (Sadler’s Wells).

With four stakes winners, their dam Kind (Danehill), matched the achievement of the next dam, the Group 3 winner Rainbow Lake (Rainbow Quest).

Half of Rainbow Lake’s eight winners were successful in blacktype contests, and one of them was Frankel’s dam Kind. She won a pair of listed races, at Nottingham and Hamilton Park, and yet she was the lesser of the quartet as a racemare. Her half-brother Powerscourt (Sadler’s Wells) won the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup and the Grade 1 Arlington Million, her three-parts sister Riposte (Dansili) won the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes at Royal Ascot and two Grade 2 races in the USA, while Last Train (Rail Link) was a Group 3 winner in France and second in the Group 1 Juddmonte Grand Prix de Paris.

No Nay Never

The rise and rise of No Nay Never (Scat Daddy) as a sire continues, and while he has yet to sire a Group 1 winner in 2023, what an outstanding class of juveniles he has this year. They include Group 2 winners Lake Forest, Les Pavots, Matrika and Array, Group 3 winner Henry Adams, and blacktype winners No Nay Mets, The Fixer and His Majesty.

The pattern-winning Caught U Looking is reviewed elsewhere in this column, and so the final juvenile group winner of the weekend is Prime Art (Churchill), trained by Johnny Murtagh who spotted a great opportunity for the filly to earn valuable blacktype, and he sent her to Ayr where she won the Group 3 Firth of Clyde Stakes. Prime Art carries the colours of former Irish international soccer player Kevin Doyle, and he owns the filly in partnership with Sue Magnier and the two-year-old’s breeder, Diane Nagle.

Prime Art is the first foal out of a daughter of War Front (Danzig), Mona Lisa’s Smile, and she was a winner at two for Aidan O’Brien. This year Mona Lisa’s Smile had a filly foal by Wootton Bassett (Iffraaj). Prime Art is from Churchill’s third crop, and the first two crops have produced multiple Group 1 winners Vadeni and Blue Rose Cen. The Ayr victress takes Churchill’s tally of stakes winners to a baker’s dozen.

Another one

When it comes to outstanding female lines, here is another one. Mona Lisa’s Smile is a daughter of the Group 1 Oaks and Irish 1000 Guineas winner Imagine (Sadler’s Wells), and so Prime Art is inbred 3x3 to the great horse. Imagine was later to become an exceptional broodmare, with 11 winners, five stakes winners and the stakes-placed Red Rock Canyon (Rock Of Gibraltar), twice placed in Irish Group 1 contests.

The ill-fated Horatio Nelson sadly suffered an injury in the Derby that ended his life, but at two he won the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere and was an unlucky runner-up in the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes.

Fifteen years after Horatio Nelson, his half-brother Van Gogh (American Pharoah) won a Group 1 in France and he was classic-placed at three. Also placed in the Group 1 Irish 2000 Guineas was Imagine’s son Viscount Nelson (Giant’s Causeway), and he won a Group 2 in the UAE. Imagine’s other stakes winners were Group 2 Rockfel Stakes winner Kitty Matchem (Rock Of Gibraltar) and the US graded-stakes winner Point Piper (Giant’s Causeway).