Daryz extends Group 1 streak, targets Royal Ascot showdown
Daryz made the Prix Aga Khan IV look routine, stretching his Group 1 run to three and setting up a Royal Ascot test against Minnie Hauk and Ombudsman.
Daryz is no longer just a high-class horse with promise. He has turned into Europe’s most dangerous middle-distance and staying force, and his latest statement came in the newly renamed Prix Aga Khan IV at ParisLongchamp, where he brushed aside a compact but quality field to complete a hat trick of Group 1 wins.
The Sea The Stars colt won the 1,850-meter race in 1:54.43 on May 21, taking the €250,000 prize in a five-runner field and making the result look cleaner than the margins on paper suggest. Mickael Barzalona settled him into the race for trainer Francis-Henri Graffard and owner Aga Khan Studs Scea, then watched Daryz pull away late to beat Leffard by 3 1/2 lengths. Sosie, last year’s winner when the race was still called the Prix d’Ispahan, finished another four lengths back in third. That is the kind of separation that matters in a Pattern race. Daryz did not nick this. He put proven Group horses in their place.
The win also sharpened the picture for the summer’s next major test. Ascot’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes is now the obvious target, and the names already circling include Minnie Hauk and Ombudsman. Daryz has made that field look vulnerable before a stride has been taken: he won the 2025 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, then returned to add another top-level prize after showing enough pace and tactical range to handle the step back in trip at Longchamp. The old knock on an Arc winner shortening up was that the speed might not translate. Daryz has erased that doubt.
There was a symbolic edge to the victory as well. France Galop renamed the race in April 2026 to honor His Highness the Aga Khan IV, who died in February 2025, and the result gave the family an eighth success in the race. Princess Zahra Aga Khan called the win the pinnacle of what a breeder can achieve and said Daryz was bred to win a Group 1 over 2,400 meters. She was right about the class and the pedigree, and the race at ParisLongchamp made the bigger point: France may already have its next major star for the summer championship races, and the rest of Europe now has to find an answer.
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