DEEP Impact achieved yet another record earlier this week. On Monday, a national holiday in Japan, he recorded his 1000th JRA win as a sire and joined an elite group of 17 sires who have been inducted into Japan’s stallion millennium club.

However, Deep Impact did it in record time and needed only six crops of racing age to reach this very significant sire milestone.

Previously the record was held by King Kamehameha who required almost a year longer to reach a similar goal. Exactly five years, three months and 23 days had elapsed between Deep Impact’s first and 1000th JRA winner.

Deep Impact’s most recent landmark winner was Lavender Valley who won on her debut in the fifth race in Tokyo. Fittingly the daughter of Deep Impact was owned and bred by Makoto Kaneko who raced Deep Impact and carried his famous blue and yellow colours to victory in seven Group 1 races.

Lavender Valley, like her sire, started as the odds-on favourite on her debut and made a great impression. Ridden confidently by Keita Tosaki, the diminutive 424kg filly stalked the early lead and easily asserted herself with a furlong to run and won snugly from Sea Breeze Love in a 15-runner field.

Expectations for the bay two-year-old will be high and the Group 1 Hansin Juvenile Fillies in mid-December is now very much on her radar.

Two of Lavender Valley’s full-siblings, Boreas and Camino Tassajara, are group winners in the JRA. A further full-sibling, Bell Canyon, is a listed winner and group-placed.

Yet another full-sibling is graded stakes placed.

It should be noted that Deep Impact’s 1,000 wins discussed here refers only to the JRA. In fact, Sunday Silence’s most pre-potent son has 1,219 wins to his name which includes the JRA, NAR and overseas successes.

Notable in the latter category is Beauty Parlour who won the Group 1 Poule D’Essai Des Pouliches.