At the last count, Highfield Princess had won 14 of her 38 races and a total of £1.67 million in win and place prize money. Her victories include no fewer than four at the highest Group 1 level and, most recently, she overcame a wide draw to justify favouritism in the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp, run over 5 furlongs at Longchamp Racecourse on the same day as the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, at the first time of asking. That was her first Group 1 win of 2023 but, in 2022, she completed a Group 1 hat-trick in the Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville, the Nunthorpe Stakes at York and the Flying Five Stakes at the Curragh within a five-week period in August and September.
Now a six-year-old, the daughter of Night Of Thunder, who won the 2,000 Guineas in 2014, is rated 125 by Timeform, which places her in the ‘high class’ category; if the 3lb sex allowance she receives from her male rivals is taken into account, she is bordering on ‘top class’ but, in any case, has bona fide claims of being the best sprinter in Europe. Any such claim is all the more remarkable for the fact that her owner, John Fairley, bought her dam, Pure Illusion, who was in foal with her, for just £18,000 in December, 2016.
Highfield Princess did not race as a juvenile and, on her first three starts as a three-year-old, was beaten an aggregate of 28¼ lengths in maiden and novice stakes races, over 7 furlongs and a mile, at Redcar and Thirsk. Sent handicapping, off an official mark of 57, she troubled the judge for the first time when third, beaten 1¾ lengths, in a lowly, 0-65 affair, over 7 furlongs, at Doncaster, before cosily opening her account, off a 1lb higher mark, at Ayr six weeks later. Her trainer John Quinn, who is based in Settrington, North Yorkshire, said of her, ‘Some horses get quicker – and that’s what she did.’ No kidding, John.