Lahudood is the first homebred Breeders’ Cup World Championship winner for the powerful Shadwell Stable. Prior to the daughter of Singspiel’s victory Saturday in the Emirates Airline Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf (gr. IT), Shadwell’s best finish as a breeder had been Sakhee’s second place in the 2001 Classic.
Shadwell has been developing Lahudood’s female family since the early 1980s when farm owner Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum acquired the group II stakes winner Height of Fashion. The first two foals out of Height of Fashion were full brothers by Northern Dancer and both became group stakes winners. Her first colt was Alwasmi, winner of the Lane’s End John Porter E.B.F. Stakes (Eng-III), and her second colt was Unfuwain, who won the Princess of Wales’s Stakes (Eng-II) and placed in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes (Eng-I).
Lahudood has re-energized her female family. Her grand dam, Bashayer, was a stakes-placed runner who produced five winners but no stakes winners while Lahudood’s dam, Rahayeb, was a winner of nearly $12,600 who had produced only a winner of $18,440 before Lahudood arrived.
After placing in a couple of group races in France, Lahudood finally became a stakes winner in the listed Prix de Liancourt at Longchamp. The 4-year-old captured her first big graded stakes in the Flower Bowl Invitational Stakes (gr. IT).
Northern Dancer’s sire line seems to play a key role in the success of this family. Lahudood is inbred 4 x 4 to Northern Dancer. Among the five winners produced by Bashayer, one is by Danzig (a son of Northern Dancer), one is by Storm Cat (a grandson of Northern Dancer), and two are by Arazi (inbred 4 x 4 to Nearco, who is Northern Dancer’s grandsire).
Shadwell grabbed its first Breeders’ Cup title as an owner last year when Invasor won the Classic.
