One Foot In Heaven will be following in the hoofprints of his dam, Pride, when he contests the Group 2 Dunaden Jockey Club Stakes at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile Racecourse on Saturday (6th May).
A quality entry of nine horses has been received for this mile and a half £100,000 contest, which is one of the main supporting races behind the QIPCO 2000 Guineas on Saturday, the first day of the two-day QIPCO Guineas Festival.
Trained in France by Alain de Royer-Dupre, One Foot In Heaven has already been successful in a pair of Group 2 events but, unlike Pride, who won the Champion Stakes on the Rowley Mile in 2006 having finished second in it the year before, has come up short in Group 1 company.
After finishing last year with a fine third place in the Group 1 Hong Kong Vase in Sha Tin, One Foot In Heaven began this season with a seventh place in the Group 2 Prix d’Harcourt over a mile and a quarter at Chantilly four weeks ago.
The Dunaden Jockey Club Stakes has a strong roll of honour, with recent winners subsequently successful in the Eclipse Stakes (Al Kazeem 2012), Japan Cup (Alkaased 2005) and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Marienbard 2002).
The recent run of eight straight British successes in the race is under threat on Saturday, as One Foot In Heaven’s most dangerous rival could be the fellow overseas raider, Seventh Heaven, from the yard of Irish Champion Trainer, Aidan O’Brien.
In 2016 Seventh Heaven won both the Group 1 Irish Oaks and the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks and she began this term with an excellent second place in the Group 1 Dubai Sheema Classic in Meydan.
Other leading candidates are last season’s Group 2 King Edward VII Stakes winner, Across The Stars; September’s Group 3 Arc Trial hero, Algometer; and the four-time Pattern Race scorer, Western Hymn.
Sven Hanson, owner-breeder of One Foot In Heaven, said:
“One Foot In Heaven lost a front shoe in the early stages of the Prix d’Harcourt and was not given a hard time thereafter. He is a mile and a half horse anyway, so the d’Harcourt would have been slightly too short for him, and he has done well since.”
“We would have preferred a little more cut in the ground for the Dunaden Jockey Club Stakes and we do not know for sure how he will handle the dip.”
“Pride did not have her best season until she was six. One Foot In Heaven is five now and will hopefully keep racing and allow us to have some more fun.”
“It is always very special to have a runner at Newmarket, it is a place that means a lot to racing and the atmosphere there is different.”
“The people there know the game and are very sporting – when Pride won the Champion Stakes, I had previously been second in three Group 1s at Newmarket [once with Pride and twice in the late 1970s with Fair Salinia] and, even though she was trained in France, she was given a very generous reception.”
“Pride is 17 years old but, touch wood, she is still very healthy and good-natured. She is in Ireland, about to visit Fastnet Rock sire of One Foot In Heaven again, and on Monday her three-year-old Lawman colt, Speciality, was beaten a nose on his debut at Saint-Cloud.”
