WHEN Dubai Mile won for the second time in late August, he was the 5,000th winner saddled by Mark Johnston, though nowadays with his son Charlie on the licence. The two-year-old came out the following month, was narrowly beaten in a four-runner Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes, but the third that day, Flying Honours, has since won the Group 3 Zetland Stakes.

Now Mark Johnston knows a thing or two about the Zetland Stakes, and he last won it with the subsequent multiple Group 1 winner Hartnell, one of a number of high-class colts he trained to land the contest. Perhaps this year’s result gave him the confidence to fly high with Dubai Mile, and the colt duly obliged when he beat a smart field to capture the weekend’s 10-furlong Group 1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud.

Dubai Mile is from the sole crop sired by Roaring Lion (Kitten’s Joy), and he was bred by Skymarc Farm, being sold for only €20,000 last year at the Goffs Orby Sale, a pittance given how well he is bred. At sale time, 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.

Nine winners

The Johnston purchase is the mare’s ninth offspring, and now Beach Bunny’s record is that she has nine winners. What more can one ask of a mare, and this spring her latest arrival was a colt by Sottsass (Siyouni)? Beach Bunny is just 17 and this year was covered by Oasis Dream (Green Desert).

Incredibly, Dubai Mile was catalogued this week at Tattersalls, a plan that was not surprisingly aborted, but there are a couple of opportunities to buy into the family at the December Sale in Newmarket, just like Michael O’Leary did last year at Goffs when he paid €350,000 for a winning half-sister to Dubai Mile, Zahratty (Muhaarar), carrying her first foal, a filly by Lope De Vega (Shamardal). He covered the mare this year with Sea The Stars (Cape Cross).

David Redvers’ Tweenhills Stud is offering a stakes-winning and stakes-producing half-sister to Dubai Mile at the December Sale. Beach Belle (Invincible Spirit) is the dam of this year’s Group 2 winner in Australia, Surf Dancer (Lope De Vega), and she is in foal to Zoustar (Northern Meteor). The week before he has the mare’s colt foal for sale, one of the first crop of Kameko (Kitten’s Joy) on offer.

Bargain

If Dubai Mile is a bargain, then the same could be said for his dam Beach Bunny. She was purchased as a yearling for 25,000gns and won almost six times that figure. Her three wins including the Listed Dance Design Stakes at the Curragh, and she was beaten a short head by Dar Re Mi in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes.

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

Dubai Mile is some way the best of Roaring Lion’s seven winners to date, and the former Tweenhills stallion won the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes as a juvenile, before his brilliant second season saw him capture the Group 1 Irish Champion Stakes, Group 1 Eclipse Stakes, Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and the Group 1 International. What a loss he was to the stallion ranks.