JUST think about it – 5,000 winners. That was the feat achieved by Mark Johnston, now training with his son Charlie on the licence, when Dubai Mile won for the second time recently.

A two-year-old colt from the sole crop sired by Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy), Dubai Mile was making his third start and winning for the second time, on this occasion shouldering a seven-pound penalty. The next step is likely to be the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes. Bred by Skymarc Farm, the colt was sold for only €20,000 last year at the Goffs Orby Sale, a pittance given how well he is bred.

At the time of his sale, Dubai Mile’s dam Beach Bunny, a stakes winner and Group 1-placed daughter of High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells), had a perfect breeding record. Her first six foals had all run and won, two of them successful in blacktype races. The Johnston purchase was actually the mare’s ninth offspring, and now Beach Bunny’s record is that she has nine winners.

There is not a great deal more one can ask of a mare, and this year Beach Bunny’s latest arrival is a colt by Sottsass (Siyouni). She hopefully has a few more productive years at stud, as Beach Bunny is just 17 years old. What a bargain she was when purchased as a yearling for 25,000gns. She won almost six times that figure, her three wins including the Listed Dance Design Stakes at the Curragh, and she was beaten just a short head by Dar Re Mi in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes.

Classic winner

Beach Bunny is the best of the four winners from the unraced Miss Hawai (Peintre Celebre), a half-sister to the Group 1 classic winner Miss France (Dansili) who was successful in the 1000 Guineas eight years ago. They are daughters of the French champion Miss Tahiti (Tirol), winner of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac and classic-placed when runner-up in the Group 1 Prix de Diane-French Oaks.

A quarter of Roaring Lion’s runners have won, and that former Tweenhills stallion won the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes at two, before his stellar second season saw him land four Group 1 wins, the Irish Champion Stakes, Eclipse Stakes, Juddmonte International and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.