THE Arqana Yearling Sale week also saw racing at Deauville on Tuesday, and the pair of blacktype races on the card for two-year-olds were both won by Irish-bred fillies.

The Group 3 Prix des Reservoirs was landed by Cotton House Bloodstock’s Fancy Me, and it was a second success this year for the daughter of Pivotal (Polar Falcon). She won on her debut at La Teste de Buch in May, and has been runner-up on two of her three intervening starts. Fancy Me is trained by Philippe Sogorb, and he also handled the racing career of the filly’s dam.

Fancy Me is cleverly-named, being a daughter of Besotted (Dutch Art). Bred by C-Squared Investments, like the owners of the filly this is a Hayes family group, Fancy Me is that mare’s third winner, joining 185,000gns foal and £460,000 breeze-up buy Baldomero (Shalaa), and this year’s three-year-old winner Maplewood (Oasis Dream), a 320,000gns foal purchase by Godolphin.

In August, buyers missed out on a great opportunity when the fourth offspring of Besotted, a filly by Siyouni (Pivotal), was led out unsold at Arqana when bidding reached €140,000. Meanwhile, down at Knocktoran Stud in Co Limerick, there is a filly foal by Kodiac (Danehill). Besotted is in foal to Ghaiyyath (Dubawi), and she is already slotted to visit Lope De Vega (Shamardal) in 2023.

Besotted was bred at Brendan and Anne Marie Hayes’ Knocktoran Stud and, having failed to sell her as a yearling at Goffs, they put her in training. One of her two wins was gained in a listed race at Toulouse, and she chased home Volta in the Group 2 Prix de Sandringham at three.

Distinguished

This is a family with which Knocktoran has had a long and distinguished association, and a female line that continues, generation after generation, to spawn Group 1 winners, Can Fancy Me progress to that level? Were she to do so she would share a catalogue page with a long list of Group/Grade 1 winning females that descend from Fancy Me’s third dam Mill Princess (Mill Reef).

They are, in alphabetical order, this year’s Group 1 Sun Chariot Stakes winner Fonteyn (Farhh), Hermosa (Galileo), Hydrangea (Galileo), Immortal Verse (Pivotal), Sense Of Style (Thunder Gulch), Tenebrism (Caravaggio), Tie Black (Machiavellian), and Valentine Waltz (Be My Guest). The full-sisters Hermosa and Hydrangea are out of a daughter of Pivotal.

With a group-winning daughter now of the outstanding sire and broodmare sire Pivotal, no wonder Anne Marie Hayes could say, the morning after the win, that “we are absolutely thrilled”.

Listed win

While the second stakes race at Deauville was a listed one, I am sure that the O’Callaghans in Yeomanstown Stud were just as pleased to watch Secret Angel (Dark Angel) win by a neck. The winner runs in the colours of Nick Bradley Racing, and is trained by Karl Burke.

Victory in the six-furlong Prix Zeddaan was a third of the season for the two-year-old filly who cost Bradley and Burke just £68,000 at the Goffs UK Premier Yearling Sale last year. Knowing what they had in the yard, it is no surprise to learn that the same owner and trainer combination stretched to 110,000gns at the recent Tattersalls Book 2 Sale to acquire Secret Angel’s Invincible Army (Invincible Spirit) half-brother.

Secret Angel is one of three winners out of Meydan Princess (Choisir), a listed winner at Ascot who was bought for 200,000gns to continue her career in the USA. She won a stakes race at Del Mar before making her way back to England, and was eventually sold to Yeomanstown five years ago for 45,000gns. Meydan Princess has a colt foal at home by Invincible Army.