WHAT a year Darley Australia’s Epaulette is having. A Group 1 win in the Chestnut Stakes, a third at that level for Soqrat in South Africa, is now augmented with a 10th stakes winner, this time in the northern hemisphere, with Insignia Of Rank winning the Listed Dubai Celebration Stakes at the Curragh.

Bred by Eamonn Phelan and Reuben Solomon, the four-year-old gelding was making his 21st start, but just his third in stakes company. Victory took his career earnings to more than £70,000, paying back with interest the 44,000gns Joe Murphy gave for him as a yearling when he purchased him from Tally-Ho Stud. A rarity, but Tony O’Callaghan was suffering a small loss on his pinhook, as he gave 45,000gns for the then colt as a foal.

A winner at two, Let Me Shine (Dixie Union) is the dam of Insignia Of Rank, the stakes-placed Mayleaf Shine (Mayson), two other winners, a pair of placed runners and this year’s two-year-old Modern British Art (Cable Bay) who sold for 72,000gns as a breezer. They are the mare’s first seven progeny, while this year she had a foal by Cotai Glory (Exceed And Excel) and is in foal to Camacho (Danehill).

When I tell you that Insignia Of Rank’s third dam was Minnie Hauk (Sir Ivor) and her fourth dam was Best In Show (Traffic Judge), you will recognise this family as one of the best in the stud book. Let Me Shine was one of eight winners from nine runners from Thislillightofmine (Kingmambo), a half-sister to Group 1 Prix du Cadran winner Chief Contender (Sadler’s Wells) and, at the other end of the distance scale, the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes winner Aviance (Northfields).

Aviance bred two Group/Grade 1 winners in Denon (Pleasant Colony), a five-time Grade 1 winner in the USA, and Chimes Of Freedom (Pleasant Colony), winner of the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at two and the Group 1 Coronation Stakes the following year. Chimes Of Freedom matched her dam’s record at stud, breeding two top-level winners. The better of the pair was Aldebaran (Mr Prospector), a leading sprinter in the USA where he won three Grade 1 races and later became a successful sire.