WHILE Roly Poly has featured in these columns before, it is worth including her again after her latest Group 1 success in the Kingdom of Bahrain Sun Chariot Stakes at Newmarket. In the process she accorded trainer Aiden O’Brien with his 23rd Group or Grade 1 success of the year and the globe’s leading trainer is well on course to set a new world record for wins at this level in a calendar year.

This most recent win for Roly Poly meant that her dam Misty For Me was responsible for two Group 1 winners within a week. Seven days earlier her two-year-old son, and Roly Poly’s own-brother, U S Navy Flag (War Front) broke through at the highest level when he captured the Group 1 Juddmonte Middle Park Stakes. Furthermore, the first three offspring of this high-class daughter of Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) have won group races and Misty For Me is yet another exceptional mare among the broodmare band at Coolmore.

This was victory number three for Roly Poly at the highest level in 2017. She previously won the Group 1 Prix Rothschild and Tattersalls Falmouth Stakes this season and was runner-up in both the Tattersalls Irish 1000 Guineas and Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot. Last season she was in the runner-up position too in the Group 1 Cheveley Park Stakes and she will now head for the Breeders’ Cup.

Cover Song, a daughter of Fastnet Rock (Danehill) and the first foal of Misty For Me, won the Grade 3 Autumn Miss Stakes at Santa Anita in October 2016 and was sent to the Fasig-Tipton November Sale just over a week later. She proved to be popular and sold for $1.6 million to James Delahooke, acting for Bobby Flay. The fourth and fifth offspring of Misty For Me are a yearling filly and a colt foal, both by War Front.

Misty For Me won three Group 1 races with Seamie Heffernan in the saddle, the Moyglare Stud Stakes, the Irish 1000 Guineas and the Pretty Polly Stakes, while Johnny Murtagh had the leg up when she won the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac. Her other efforts included running third in both the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf and in the Matron Stakes at Leopardstown.

Misty For Me is a full-sister to Ballydoyle and she too won the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac and was runner-up last year in the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket, while another own-sister is the stakes winner and group-placed Twirl.

Their dam was the unraced Storm Cat (Storm Bird) mare Butterfly Cove, a full-sister to Group 3 winner Kamarinskaya and a half-sister to Group 1 winner and sire Fasliyev (Nureyev).

U S Navy Flag’s and Roly Poly’s third dam was the unraced Mr P’s Princess (Mr Prospector) and her siblings include a pair of Grade 1 winners, both of whom also ran second in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby. Menifee (Harlan) was the biggest earner of the two, his five victories yielding over $1.7 million and included the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational Handicap and Blue Grass Stakes. He was placed in all three legs of the US Triple Crown.

Menifee’s half-brother Desert Wine (Damascus) won eight races, earned about $100,000 less than his sibling, and was successful three times at the highest level, annexing the Hollywood Gold Cup, Charles H Strub Stakes and Californian Stakes.

War Front has had a meteoric rise to fame, starting his stud career at $12,500 but this year commanding $250,000 at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky. He retired to stud as a Grade 2 winner, though he twice placed second at Grade 1 level.

His eighth crop are this year’s juveniles and U S Navy Flag is the first of them to win at stakes level. To date he is responsible for 64 stakes winners and 36 have been at group/graded level.