THIS was quite a week for first season sires to get off the mark with their initial stakes winners. One of the more significant was the Group 3 Sweet Solera Stakes win for West End Girl, a daughter of the Group 1 Derby and Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Golden Horn (Cape Cross), Europe’s best three-year-old colt of 2015 and now a Darley stallion.

Golden Horn made just a single start at two over a mile and half a furlong at Nottingham in late October, but in the process of defeating the subsequent Group 1 Irish Derby runner-up Storm The Stars and six others he set a new course record for a juvenile. The following year he won on six of his eight outings and they also included the Group 1 QIPCO Irish Champion Stakes and the Group 1 Coral Eclipse Stakes.