WHEN you have just paid £170,000 for a yearling to pinhook, what better result could you have than to watch her two-year-old half-sister win her first group race with some style? Well that’s what happened on Saturday when Al Raya, a daughter of Siyouni (Pivotal), stepped up to the mark and won the Group 3 Prix d’Arenberg at Chantilly.

This was not the first time for Al Raya to be in the limelight. Bred by Ed’s Stud Ltd, she sold as a yearling from Eugene Daly’s Longview Stud for £95,000 to Longways Stables’ Mick Murphy and Sarah O’Connell and they know a thing or two about progeny by the Aga Khan Studs’ stallion. They sold the filly for a record £450,000 at this year’s Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale from their new base in Waterford and some of the profit will surely have defrayed the wedding expenses they incurred in July.