By Emma Berry
Shapoor Mistry is no newcomer to breeding. He's been at the game for 40 years in his native India where he owns Manjri Farm and has won his home Derby on several occasions. But he described winning the Betfred Oaks with his homebred Thundering On as being “like a dream come true”.
He said, “It's tough to win big races anywhere in the world and especially tough in England.”
That may be but Thundering On really didn't make it look tough at all as she motored down the home straight under a motionless Dylan Browne McMonagle as all around him his rival jockeys were pushing and shoving.
Mistry, who is chairman of his family's construction and engineering business Shapoorji Pallonji Group, admitted that he hadn't even registered the manner of his filly's win.
“I don't know,” he said. “I was just yelling and shouting. I really haven't seen the race.”
He can enjoy the replay at his leisure and, as Brian Sheerin chronicled in TDN on Thursday, a story born in despair has now delivered a happy ending – or at least a highly celebratory chapter.
“We bought the granddam and we bred the dam,” says Mistry, whose long-term collaboration with bloodstock agent Anthony Stroud has seen him develop his racing and breeding interests in Britain and Ireland into a select clutch of promising fillies and “two or three” broodmares.
“The real story behind it is that we tried to sell the dam and we couldn't sell her so we just kept her in racing and then she won us a Group 1. It was meant to be.”
Thundering On's dam Thundering Nights was from the first crop of the now-champion sire Night Of Thunder and, also trained by Joseph O'Brien, she became her sire's first Group 1 winner in Europe when winning the Pretty Polly Stakes. Tragically the mare was lost to colic after foaling Thundering On, her first and only foal, who is now the fourth winner of the Oaks for her sire Frankel.
“It's phenomenal because I've been in racing and breeding for close to 40 years now and we race and breed horses in India and a few here as well,” said Mistry. “I've won three or four Indian Derbys, which is naturally a great thing to do, but I guess this would top all of that, for sure.”
He continued, “Anthony, a great friend of mine, just said, 'Come on Shapoor, lead her in because I don't know if you're ever going to do this again in your life. I agree with him. It's a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”
While for a breeder it is nigh-on impossible to beat the thrill of a homebred Oaks winner, the fun may yet continue for Mistry, who has a “trio of Havana Greys” in training, including recent Listed Cecil Frail Stakes winner Rosy Affair, who is trained by George Boughey and is entered in both Group 1 sprints at Royal Ascot.
Boughey also trains two-year-old Havana Lightning for the owner. A winner at Yarmouth on her second start, she is on course for the G2 Queen Mary Stakes. Mistry's colours were also recently carried to victory at Salisbury by the Harry Eustace-trained first-time-out winner Shimmering Sun.
Then of course there is the promise of more to come from his scintillating Oaks victrix. Of her path from Epsom, Mistry is happy to defer to O'Brien and Stroud.
He said, “We'll race her this year then who knows? It depends on the team, what they decide and whatever they advise me. I'll go by their advice.”
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