FLORA OF BERMUDA (Dark Angel – Dubai Power) continued her outstanding season with another richly deserved Group victory on 29 July, landing the Rolls-Royce Oak Tree Stakes, Gr.3 at Glorious Goodwood for Wathnan Racing, trainer Andrew Balding and jockey James Doyle.
Sent off the 5/2 favourite and carrying a 3lb penalty, the five-year-old mare was stepping up to seven furlongs for the first time. Doyle settled her behind the leaders and remained patient when racing room briefly became tight. Once switched into the clear, FLORA OF BERMUDA quickened with real purpose, took the lead inside the final furlong and displayed her familiar courage all the way to the line, holding off Sayidah Dariyan by a neck. Radiant Beauty finished just over a length further back in third.
The performance once again underlined everything we have come to admire about her: quality, determination, versatility and exceptional toughness. It was her second consecutive Gr.3 success following her victory in the Summer Stakes at York earlier in July and her third win from four starts this season. Three years after winning the Alice Keppel Fillies’ Conditions Stakes at the same meeting, she has now returned to Goodwood as an established and thoroughly deserving Group winner.
For all of us at STAUFFENBERG BLOODSTOCK, every success achieved by FLORA OF BERMUDA is particularly rewarding. Bred by Francisco Bernal, she was pinhooked by STAUFFENBERG BLOODSTOCK, purchased for €60,000 at the Goffs November Foal Sale, raised and prepared on our farm at SCHLOSSGUT ITLINGEN, and presented by us at the Arqana August Yearling Sale in Deauville, where she was sold to Longways Stables for €52,500.
She was never the biggest filly, and her yearling sale was commercially disappointing, but we always believed in her. In fact, we had to persuade Longways Stables to buy her at Arqana because we were convinced that beneath her relatively small frame was a filly with tremendous quality, grit and attitude.
Longways Stables subsequently developed her into an outstanding breeze-up prospect and resold her for £340,000 at the Goffs UK Breeze-Up Sale. By then, nobody was concerned about her size anymore. She had demonstrated the qualities that truly matter, and those same qualities have continued to define her throughout a high-class racing career.
FLORA OF BERMUDA is not only a very good mare, but an exceptionally genuine and tough one. Time and again she has shown her willingness to fight, and her latest victory at one of the most prestigious meetings of the British racing season was another deserved reward for her consistency and courage.
To see a horse we selected, raised and prepared at our farm at SCHLOSSGUT ITLINGEN continue to flourish on the international stage is what makes this business so special. She has become a wonderful representative of the Stauffenberg programme, and we could not be prouder of her.
Congratulations to Wathnan Racing, Andrew Balding, James Doyle and the entire team behind FLORA OF BERMUDA on another excellent Group victory.
