WHAT joy was experienced by her owner-breeder John Fairley when Highfield Princess swooped to win the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp, her fourth success at the highest level. This absolute queen of racing is a treasure, who took her winnings north of €2.1 million, and crowned a memorable weekend for Darley stallions.

By the Kildangan Stud-based Night Of Thunder (Dubawi), Highfield Princess was winning for the second time in France, having previously annexed the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville. In Ireland she won the Group 1 Flying Five Stakes, while the Group 1 Nunthorpe Stakes is the highlight of her victories in Britain. The six-year-old has now won 14 races, and placed the same number of times. What an advertisement she is for racing, and she is not finished yet.

Fairley will never spend 18,000gns more wisely than he did at the 2016 Tattersalls December Sale, on that occasion acquiring the dam of his star mare, Pure Illusion (Danehill). She was carrying Highfield Princess at the time, and the mare, along with the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes winner Thundering Nights, are from the classic winner’s first northern hemisphere crop. His first southern hemisphere crop includes the Group 1 Queensland Derby winner Kukeracha.

The best

Highland Princess is one of six winners from her dual-winning dam and the best of the rest is the Group 2 July Stakes winning juvenile Cardsharp (Lonhro) who was placed in the Group 1 Middle Park Stakes. He emerged in the aftermath of Fairley’s purchase of Pure Illusion, and that mare is one of seven winning offspring of the Group 3 Princess Margaret Stakes winner Saintly Speech (Southern Halo). That was, sadly, the second and last win for the mare.

Through another daughter, the French hurdle winner Well Spoken (Sadler’s Wells), Saintly Speech is also the grandam of the Group 1-placed Chrysanthemum (Danehill Dancer). That dual Group 3 winner is now the dam of a pair of pattern winners, one of which, Maxux (Frankel), very recently won a Group 3 at Gowran Park.