Freshman Saxon Warrior joins the top table through Victoria Road

Victoria Road's thrilling success in Friday's Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf secured his sire Saxon Warrior an enormous top-level prize with his first crop of runners.

Aidan O'Brien's colt had already been one of three Group winners produced by the Coolmore resident when landing the Prix de Conde, with 21 of his progeny off the mark on the track worldwide.

It means that the 2018 2,000 Guineas winner joins northern hemisphere freshman Zoustar (through Lezoo in the Cheveley Park) and the late Roaring Lion (Dubai Mile, Criterium de Saint-Cloud) in delivering a Group 1 or Grade 1 two-year-old.

Victoria Road is also another tremendous achievement for his breeder Trevor Stewart, who famously bought the King's Stand winner and future blue hen Cassandra Go for 82,000gns as a foal.

Stewart has maintained the family at James Hanly's Ballyhimikin Stud and the Keeneland hero, who held off Godolphin's regally-bred Lope De Vega colt Silver Knott by a nose, is a grandson of the great mare though her daughter Tickled Pink.

Trained by the late Sir Henry Cecil to win the Abernant Stakes and then by his widow Lady Jane to take the Coral Charge, the Invincible Spirit mare had only produced other minor winners so far, which had most likely contributed to Coolmore's MV Magnier securing Victoria Road for a reasonably modest 115,000gns at last year's Book 1 of the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale.

Cassandra Go died at the age of 25 last year and is also responsible for the multiple Group 1 winner Halfway To Heaven, dam of the elite duo Magical and Rhododendron. The latter's first foal, Auguste Rodin - incidentally by Saxon Warrior's sire Deep Impact - leads the way among the O'Brien juveniles after his fine victory in the Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster.

O'Brien's other winner on the card, Meditate in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, was maintaining the golden season for another Coolmore stallion in No Nay Never.

The Cheveley Park and Moyglare runner-up was the sire's third Group or Grade 1-winning juvenile this year alone, following the exploits of stablemates Blackbeard in the Prix Morny and Middle Park Stakes and Little Big Bear in the Phoenix Stakes.

Meditate was bought by Jamie McCalmont on behalf of the Westerberg and Coolmore syndicate at Arqana for €360,000. Bred by Lynch-Bages and Rhinestone Bloodstock, she is out of a Dalakhani half-sister to Group 3 miler Johnny Barnes from the further Group 1 family of Most Improved and Ectot.

Godolphin had made the first move on the glittering card with the homebred Mischief Magic for Charlie Appleby in the Juvenile Turf Sprint. His Exceed And Excel full brother Sound And Silence had been touched off in the same event in 2017 before it had been added to the full Breeders' Cup championship roster.

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