Dutch Art's daughter Preening finishes 2019 on a perfect note

Dutch Art and Cheveley Park Stud had the last word in the the black type calendar of 2019 as the James Fanshawe-trained Preening gained deserved honours in the Prix Miss Satamixa at Deauville.

The Listed race, held over seven and a half furlongs on the Normandy Polytrack, is the final such event of the year in Europe, with Group races in the Pattern Book having been wrapped up last month.

Dutch Art, who is approaching his 16th birthday and will be offered privately for a second consecutive breeding season, has his most high-profile year with Mabs Cross, one of his three Group 1 winners to date, failing to hit the mark at the highest level again but still adding the Palace House Stakes to her commendable tally.

His juvenile son Positive showed promise in beating the subsequent Vertem Trophy scorer Kameko in the Solario at Sandown.

Preening has been consistent all season, finishing second to Agrotera in Listed company at Kempton in the spring, while she filled the same berth in the Group 3 Sceptre Stakes at the Doncaster St Leger meeting.

Plenty of British and Irish trainers sought this late opportunity for fillies here but Preening, under Aurelien Lemaitre, won a perhaps a trifle comfortably by three-quarters of a length from Richard Spencer’s California Love [Power] and Joseph O’Brien’s Lethal Force filly Crochet.

Preening is out of Cheveley Park’s Striving, a half-sister to the Cheveley Park Stakes winner Wannabe Grand. Preening’s three-year-old full brother More Than This is proving a hit in Hong Kong, where he has won his last four starts.

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