Highfield Princess: from all-weather handicapper to Group 1 sprinter
John Ingles looks back at the remarkable career of Highfield Princess who progressed from low-grade handicaps to international Group 1 success.
On June 18, 2020, most eyes of the racing world were on Stradivarius winning his third Gold Cup just weeks after the delayed start to the Flat season due to Covid. But that evening, the career of another horse who would also achieve popularity as well as success at the highest level, was just beginning. Highfield Princess made a rather anonymous debut, finishing eighth in a maiden at Redcar, with Timeform’s report noting that she ‘ought to do better in time'. Three and a half years later, Highfield Princess made what proved to be her final start, sadly, in the Hong Kong Sprint at Sha Tin, worth the equivalent of more than £1.5 million to the winner, finishing a respectable sixth to the world’s highest-rated sprinter Lucky Sweynesse.
Between those first and last starts of a career that took in 39 races in total, Highfield Princess became a four-time Group 1 winner but her biggest successes would come later in her career. As a three-year-old, she had made her debut over seven furlongs and, apart from a try over a mile on her second start, that was the trip she largely remained at until into her third season of racing.
While she showed just modest form in her early starts, they ensured that Highfield Princess entered handicaps at the basement level and her first success came on her fifth outing, in a class 6 contest at Ayr from a BHA mark of just 58. But for the remainder of the year she quickly made progress through the handicapping ranks, particularly once she was tried on the all-weather. Three more successes followed, all of them on the polytrack at Chelmsford, from marks of 64, 73 and 80.
Such was her progress by the end of 2020 that Highfield Princess was given her first shot at achieving some black type in a listed race at Deauville. But that proved a bit too ambitious at that stage of her career and when she returned as a four-year-old, it was back to handicaps – for a while. A five-length win in a fillies’ contest at Haydock from a mark of 83 represented further improvement and the following month, virtually a year to the day since her debut, she saw off 27 rivals to win the Buckingham Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot from a mark of 92.
That proved to be the end of the handicapping chapter of her career. An ideal opportunity for another bid for black type came up in a listed race at Chelmsford less than three weeks later where Highfield Princess duly made it four wins at the Essex track. Her progress thus far had been remarkable but it turned out that there was plenty more still to come. She made the frame in her next four starts, with the pick of those efforts coming when runner-up to the subsequent Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Space Blues in the City of York Stakes, her first try at Group 2 level.
Highfield Princess was nothing if not tough, and her final outing – her tenth of the year – as a four-year-old gave an indication of where her future would lie. The British Champions Sprint Stakes was not only her first attempt in a Group 1, it was also her first time dropping down to six furlongs, but she acquitted herself really well in staying on to finish around three lengths sixth to Creative Force.
With the bigger sprints coming later in the year, Highfield Princess made an early start to her five-year-old season on the all-weather. While she failed to win any of her first three outings, they qualified her for the Fillies’ And Mares’ race on All-Weather Finals Day at Newcastle and she came good on the day that mattered, earning much her biggest prize to date of more than £77,000.
But it was her next start which proved a turning point in her career – no more seven furlongs and no more all-weather, the rest of her career would see Highfield Princess competing against some of the world’s best sprinters on turf. That was after taking her form to another level again in the Duke of York Stakes at York’s Dante meeting on her next start.
After finishing a close sixth in the Platinum Jubilee Stakes back at Royal Ascot, Highfield Princess then ran up a hat-trick of Group 1 wins in three different countries in little more than a month, an achievement for which she will probably be best remembered. Sprinters might be thought of as being rather one-dimensional types but Highfield Princess showed no lack of versatility in winning the Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville over six and a half furlongs and then the Nunthorpe and the Flying Five over the minimum trip, and handling the heavy ground at the Curragh just as well as she had much quicker conditions at York.
Highfield Princess had long been a strong traveller in her races, though her effectiveness over five furlongs on good to firm ground at York was something of a revelation as she ran out an impressive winner from the speedy two-year-old filly The Platinum Queen. She had even more to spare when following up against a big field at the Curragh, and those two wins go down as the best performances Highfield Princess put up in her entire career. She wasn’t in the same form around the turns of Keeneland in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint on her final five-year-old start but even then she was beaten less than two lengths into fourth behind the American mare Caravel.
And so to her final season which began with a fine second under a penalty when trying to win the Duke of York again, followed by a double appearance at Royal Ascot where she was second in the King’s Stand and third in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes four days later. Highfield Princess then made the most of a drop in grade to win the King George Stakes at Goodwood with complete authority but she couldn’t win either the Nunthorpe or the Flying Five this time, being unable to peg back Live In The Dream at York and racing on the wrong part of the track at the Curragh when she was also reported to be showing signs of being in season.
But before that final appearance in Hong Kong, Highfield Princess provided her connections with one last success to look back on. It might have been a messy race and she might not have travelled with her usual fluency or been near her high-class best, but she responded as willingly as ever to win the Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp last October. It was the fourteenth victory of a memorable career, all bar one of those wins coming with Jason Hart in the saddle. Tough and consistent, Highfield Princess was a credit to all her connections, her owner-breeder John Fairley and family, and the yard whose name she carried with such distinction, John and Sean Quinn’s Highfield Stables at Malton.
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