IN the aftermath of the death of David Powell, his son Leonard saddled Neige Blanche (Anodin) to win the Grade 3 Astra Stakes, and one of the five-year-old mare’s part-owners is Leonard’s daughter Mathilde. It was a poignant victory I am sure for the Powell family.

Anodin (Anabaa) will have a new home for the 2022 season, commanding a fee of €4,000 at Haras De La Haie Neuve after standing all of his career to date at Haras du Quesnay where he retired in 2015. His fee reached a high of €15,000, but his failure to get a winner at anything above Group/Grade 3 level has seen his popularity wane.

That said, Anodin’s first two crops also include Group 3 winners Insandi, Directa and Anodor, listed flat winners Narcos, Harmless and Hayzum, and the Scottish Triumph Hurdle Juvenile Trial winner Thyme Whyte.

As well as being the best winner sired by the Group 3 winner and Group 1-placed Anodin, Neige Blanche is by some way the best winner in her family for four generations.

A Group 3 winner in France, she has blossomed in the USA and Monday’s success was her third Grade 3 win, while she also ran third in the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks there.

Neige Blanche is one of six winners from her dam Bianca Neve, and that daughter of Muhtathir (Elmaamul) won just one of her 29 career starts, taking until the age of five to do so.

The only other stakes winners, apart from Neige Blanche, in the first four generations of the family are Bianca Neve’s half-sister Blanche (Loup Solitaire), who won the Group 3 Prix de Meautry, and the latter’s listed-winning daughter Indigo (Falco).