Oisin Murphy's first Breeders' Cup winner Marche Lorraine retired to stud

The 2021 Breeders' Cup Distaff winner Marche Lorraine has been retired to be a broodmare at Northern Farm in Hokkaido.

The six-year-old daughter of Orfevre, out of French Deputy winning mare Vite Marcher, whose dam is the 1997 Oka Sho winner Kyoei March, won nine of her 22 starts.

The undoubted highlight came at Del Mar last November when, on a stunning day for Japan, she became the nation's second Breeders' Cup winner just two hours after their first - Loves Only You - when causing a 50-1 shock in the Distaff under British champion jockey Oisin Murphy.

On Japan's NARS dirt circuit, she won four local Graded races, the 2020 Ladies Prelude (Ooi), and 2021 TCK Jo-o Hai (Ooi), Empress Hai (Kawasaki) and Breeders' Gold Cup (Mombetsu). In what proved her final run, she was sixth in the Saudi Cup behind Emblem Road.

Her first mating will be with the 2016 Breeders' Cup Sprint winner Drefong, who topped the first-season sire ranking (prizes won) in Japan (JRA & NARS) in 2021.

Some newspapers reported that March Lorraine's trainer Yoshito Yahagi was delighted with news of the mating of Breeders' Cup winners, and that in future he would like to see her covered by Contrail.

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