DEPENDING on which currency conversion you use, True Self has won in or about €1 million for connections. That is some amount of money for an eight-year-old daughter of Oscar (Sadler’s Wells) who failed to find favour with buyers at the Tattersalls Ireland Cheltenham December Sale in 2016.

She had finished second, beaten a short head, in a three-year-old bumper for her breeder, owner and trainer, Don Cantillon. True Self was unsold that day for £18,000. Next time she appeared it was from the stables of Willie Mullins and she ran up a sequence of victories, bumpers at Galway and Down Royal, and a maiden hurdle at Thurles.

True Self has gone on to win a Grade B hurdle at Punchestown, listed races at Newmarket, Bath and Gowran Park, the Group 3 Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Flemington twice, and now the 10 and a half furlong Neom Turf Cup in Saudi Aradia. Hollie Doyle teamed up with her in Riyadh to capture the $600,000 first prize.

While True Self is a daughter of Oscar, and your first thought will be a National Hunt-bred mare, she actually is from a flat family which has flirted from time to time with jump racing. She is the only blacktype flat winner by her sire (as far as I can tell), and his position as one of the most prominent stallions in the world of jump racing is guaranteed.

Don’t forget that Oscar had, in his short career, the race record of a potential top-flight sire on the flat, having run second to Peintre Celebre in the Group 1 Prix du Jockey Club-French Derby. However, he was sent to stud with a different career in mind, and that decision has been justified many times over.

His list of multiple Grade 1 winners include Paisley Park, Our Duke, Finian’s Oscar, God’s Own, Oscar Whisky, Lord Windermere, At Fishers Cross, The Tullow Tank, Big Zeb, Oscars Well, Peddlers Cross, Refinement, as well as the Champion Hurdle winner Rock On Ruby

True Self is the best of the four winning offspring of the unraced Mukaddamah (Storm Bird) mare Good Thought, though her 11 victories match the number of successes enjoyed by her half-brother Shared Moment (Tagula). Another sibling Shared Moment (Tagula) won seven times, while The Golden Rebel (Gold Well), born the year after True Self, won a pair of point-to-points last year in England, once under Jack Andrews who partnered the seven-year-old gelding to a surprise 19-length win in a maiden hurdle at Doncaster last month.

The dam of True Self is a half-sister to a single winner, the four-time scorer Beau Cyrano (Cyrano De Bergerac). Good Thought is a daughter of the Austin Leahy-trained Only Great (Simply Great) who was a smart performer and won three times on the flat, including at two, and once over the smaller obstacles, a code in which she was placed 14 times. She gained valuable blacktype when she ran third of eight in the Grade 1 Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle at Punchestown behind Orbis and Jennycomequick.

Skip back two more removes to Ceili Mor (Irish Ball), the fourth dam of the weekend’s big race winner, and you find yet another smart dual-purpose winner – something of a feature in this family. Ceili Mor was placed in the Group 2 Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh in the late 1970s but three of her five career victories were over hurdles at the age of four.

Her five winners included Commanche Chief (Commanche Run). Though by a Coolmore sire, like Oscar, who had most of his stallion success in the National Hunt sphere, Commanche Chief was a high-class stayer in South Africa where he was born when Ceili Mor was exported while carrying him. Four of his seven wins were at stakes level and included the Group 2 Owners’ and Trainers’ Handicap at Newmarket twice. He was runner-up in the Group 1 The Gold Cup at Greyville.

AT the age of 30, and after many years in retirement, Balanchine died this month. She has a special place in the history of Godolphin, and she acquired after her two-year-old season from her owner and breeder Robert Sangster.

Bred in the name of Swettenham Stud, Balanchine was born in the USA and was a daughter of Storm Bird (Northern Dancer).

Trained by Vincent O’Brien, Storm Bird was the champion two-year-old in Europe in 1980, winning the Group 1 Dewhurst Stakes and, what was then, the Group 2 National Stakes. He was unbeaten in his five juvenile starts.

Storm Bird’s three-year-old career was a disaster. Attacked in his stable, he later sustained an injury and made a single, unsuccessful, start. He went to Ashford Stud and sired Preakness Stakes winner and sire Summer Squall, the brilliant Indian Skimmer, and the influential sire Storm Cat among his Group/Grade 1 winners.

His daughter Balanchine won half of her eight career starts. After winning both her starts at two for Sangster and trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam at Manton, she was purchased by Maktoum Al Maktoum for his fledgling Godolphin Racing. She was narrowly beaten in the 1994 Group 1 1000 Guineas before winning the Group 1 Oaks at Epsom.

She then took an unusual route and recorded her most important success when defeating colts in the Group 1 Irish Derby. After recovering from a life-threatening illness, she returned as a four-year- and, though managing to run second in the Group 3 Prix Foy, she failed to win again.

Balanchine was out of the Affirmed (Exclusive Native) mare Morning Devotion, making her a half-sister to the Group 2 Sun Chariot Stakes winner Red Slippers (Nureyev) and the Group 2 winner and classic-placed Romanov (Nureyev). Red Slippers went on to breed the Group 1 French Oaks winner West Wind (Machiavellian), and become grandam of the dual Group 1 Dubai World Cup winner Thunder Snow (Helmet).

Private buy

Maktoum Al Maktoum bought Balanchine privately and sent her to spend the winter in Dubai under the care of Hilal Ibrahim. The then novel idea was that the warm climate would allow horses to develop more quickly, giving them an advantage in the early part of the European season. When she won the Oaks she became the first classic winner for Godolphin.

In the Budweiser Irish Derby Balanchine won by four and a half lengths from the Derby runner-up King’s Theatre. Less than three weeks later she contracted colic and became gravely ill. Intensive veterinary treatment saved her life. At the end of her three-year-old season Balanchine was given a Timeform rating of 131 and named European Champion Three-Year-Old Filly at the 1994 Cartier Racing Awards.

Balanchine was bred to many of the world’s leading stallions but never produced a runner of great merit. She had 12 foals, the last of which was not named. Ten of them raced and five of them won.

Her best offspring was the five-time winner and Group 2 runner-up Gulf News (Woodman). Just less than three weeks before her death, Balanchine’s grandson Western Symphony (Shamardal), a three-year-old trained by Charlie Appleby, won in the Godolphin blue at Newcastle on just his second start.