Daylami winning the Irish Champion Stakes by nine lengths.

The seven-time Group I winner Daylami, by 2,000 Guineas winner Doyoun, is the first produce of stakes winning Miswaki mare Daltawa, who comes from the family of Behera (1st Prix Saint-Alary GrI, 2nd Ciga Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe GrI). He is free of Northern Dancer blood and thus provides breeders with a rare opportunity to avail of such bloodlines.

A stakes winning two-year-old, Daylami finished that season with a promising 2nd in the Group I Critérium de Saint-Cloud. His three-year-old career started auspiciously by taking the Group III Prix de Fontainebleau before scoring a fluent success in the Poule d'Essai des Poulains. After placing in three Group I events: St James's Palace Stakes (3rd), Prix Jacques Le Marois (2nd) and Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (3rd) the Aga Khan sold a majority share of Daylami to Sheikh Mohammed. At the end of the 1997 season he was transferred to Saeed Bin Suroor at Newmarket to campaign under the Godolphin banner.

At the start of the next season Daylami came to Ireland and without being hustled gave weight and a beating to his rivals in the Tattersalls Gold Cup. In an unlucky run at Royal Ascot in the Prince Of Wales's Stakes, Daylami was beaten two necks into 3rd place. However he had a starring role in a record breaking Coral Eclipse Stakes at Sandown. Here in the 101st renewal of an historic race named after the greatest of all foundation sires, this son of Doyoun led home a Godolphin owned 1-2-3. In the Autumn of that year, Daylami carried the flag to America in the Grade I Man O'War Stakes at Belmont Park (1m 3f turf), and despite being forced to pull wide early in the straight, quickened up to win by more than a length from Buck's Boy. The value of this victory was made clear when Buck's Boy in his turn emerged a clearcut winner of the Breeders' Cup Turf at Churchill Downes in November.

However the best was yet to come as the consistent grey was kept in training as a five-year-old. Daylami's convincing defeat of Royal Anthem in the Group I Vodafone Coronation Cup at Epsom was to be only the prelude to even greater victories. His trainer Saeed Bin Suroor, seeking a King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes hat-trick had laid this out as Daylami's principal mid-season objective. The opposition included Oath who had won the Vodafone Epsom Derby and in the betting ring he had the call over Daylami. However, in the race, after Daylami had lain up well, he came to challenge his stablemate Nedawi with more than a furlong to go and sprinted clear in superb style to score by five lengths. Daylami was the 6th Coronation Cup winner to score at Ascot in the same season, a sequence initiated by Queen Elizabeth's champion Aureole in 1954.

The Juddmonte International Stakes at York the following month threw up a new challenge in the shape of Royal Anthem who won by a thumping eight lengths. The pair met over the same distance in the Esat Digifone Champion Stakes at Leopardstown but the closeness of the betting between them was in no way a portent of what would happen on the track. After Royal Anthem had led into the straight Dettori got through on the rails and Daylami immediately opened up a lead which he kept extending. At the post he was nine lengths in front of the runner up Dazzling Park whose own dam Park Express was a previous Champion Stakes winner.

For his final race he was sent to the United States for the Breeders' Cup Turf at Gulfstream Park. No European trained horse had ever won a Breeders' Cup on this circuit but although the opposition again included Royal Anthem, this time running a far better race than in Ireland, Daylami again came to grab the lead off him in the straight and score by two and a half lengths. By his victory here Daylami with a score of 38 points clinched the title in the inaugural Emirates World Series Racing Championship and produced a career 7th win at Group/Grade I level.