Shapoor Mistry calls Thundering On's Oaks win a dream come true

Shapoor Mistry did not sound like an owner celebrating a single afternoon. He sounded like a breeder who had spent a lifetime waiting for the right filly, and on June 5 at Epsom he finally got one. Thundering On, a 5/1 shot with only four previous starts, won the Betfred Oaks by 3¾ lengths from Legacy Link on good-to-soft ground, giving Mistry the kind of result he called a "dream come true" and a "once-in-a-lifetime" moment.

The scale of the win matters because Mistry has never run the sort of sprawling operation that routinely dominates Classic races. He said he has been in racing for 40 years in India and breeding since he was 18, while owning Manjri Farm and winning major races at home, including his country’s Derby on several occasions. Yet his British and Irish string remains compact, with roughly five horses in training and only a select group of fillies and two or three broodmares, a contrast that makes an Oaks triumph at Epsom feel even more improbable.

Thundering On herself arrived at the Oaks with a sharp profile and an even sharper pedigree story. She had won the Group 3 Salsabil Stakes at Navan on April 25 by 3¼ lengths after earlier runs that included a Leopardstown maiden defeat and a Curragh Group 3 placing. In the Oaks, Dylan Browne McMonagle held her up at the rear before she made smooth headway and quickened clear inside the final furlong, finishing the 1m4f6yds Group 1 in a race worth £625,000, with £354,437.50 to the winner.

The emotion around the filly ran deeper than one Classic. Thundering On is by Frankel out of Thundering Nights, who died of colic in early 2024 after producing only this foal. Thundering Nights had won the Pretty Polly Stakes in 2021, the Snow Fairy Fillies Stakes in 2020 and had been placed in the Prix Jean Romanet. Mistry said the family bought the granddam, bred the dam and even tried unsuccessfully to sell Thundering Nights before keeping her in training, a long patience test that ended with a Group 1 winner from her only foal.

For Joseph Patrick O'Brien, it was his breakthrough Epsom Classic. For Frankel, it was a 41st Group 1 and Grade 1 winner. It was also the first elite winner as broodmare sire for Night Of Thunder. For Mistry, chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji Group and an Irish citizen whose family retains a major stake in Tata Sons, it was something rarer still: the kind of result that turns decades of ownership and breeding into a single, unforgettable afternoon.