Azamour on the mark as Night Shift sons shine at Caulfield

While all the attention was on the inaugural running of The Everest at Randwick on Saturday - won by Redzel, a son of the prolific Redoute's Choice stallion Snitzel - a rather less prominent branch of the Northern Dancer line was in the limelight at Caulfield as sons of Night Shift supplied two of the four Group 1 winners.

The late Aga Khan Studs sire Azamour, Night Shift's best runner on Racing Post Ratings, posted his fourth elite winner as Aloisia took the Thousand Guineas in impressive fashion by a length and a quarter, with Shoals (by Fastnet Rock) in second and Alizee (Sepoy) three quarters of a length back in third.

The Aaron Purcell-trained Aloisia failed to make her NZ$60,000 (£32,400/€36,400) reserve as a yearling and was bred by her former handler Jason Price with wife Kelly and her brother Michael Hall out of the Perfectly Ready mare Queen Boudicca, a winner at two who finished third in the Group 2 Matamata Breeders' Stakes and sixth in the Karaka Million.

Thousand Guineas result

In a poignant twist, Queen Boudicca was bred to Azamour in 2013 during his first and only season shuttling to Brighthill Farm in New Zealand, as the son of Night Shift was put down after sustaining a serious injury at his base of Gilltown Stud in the following April.

Azamour stood at Gilltown for nine seasons, following an excellent racing career for trainer John Oxx in which he won four Group 1s including the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes the year it was held at Newbury. He earned a career-peak Racing Post Rating of 129 in that race.

His covering fee dwindled from €25,000 to €8,000 in those nine years, despite supplying the Prix de Diane winner Valyra in 2012. His other two top-flight winners came posthumously, with Dolniya's success in the 2015 Sheema Classic and Covert Love's heroics in the Irish Oaks and Prix de l'Opera the same year.

Queen Boudicca also has a two-year-old filly by Keeper and a yearling colt by Swiss Ace, while the thick-and-fast nature of carnival racing in Australia could see Aloisia line up in the Cox Plate in two weeks' time.

Back to winning ways

Deportivo, another son of Night Shift, saw his son Gailo Chop record a second Group 1 victory as the six-year-old gelding narrowly denied the Galileo colt Johannes Vermeer by a head to land the 1m2f Ladbrokes Stakes, with the Iffraaj colt Jon Snow two and a half lengths adrift in third.

Gailo Chop was campaigned by Antoine de Watrigant to win three Group contests including the Prix Guillaume d'Ornano in his native France and the Mackinnon Stakes at Flemington, before he was transferred to the care of current trainer Darren Weir.

Bred by Alain Chopard, Gailo Chop was narrowly denied a win at the highest level in Europe, when second to Solow in the 2015 Prix d'Ispahan.

Deportivo was a Group 2-winning sprinter for Roger Charlton and Khalid Abdullah and started his stallion career in Britain and the National Stud and Walton Fields Stud, before he was switched to France where he stands at chickenfeed fees.

View Saturday's results

First Group 1 winner for Sepoy as Alizee takes Flight

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