Chasing Eden:
The Tremendous

Some horses win a race. Some horses win a race and then make you wonder if it was a fluke. And then there is Chasing Eden — who wins a race, comes back the following month, takes the heaviest weight in the field, draws the worst gate on the card, lines up against eight rivals including the colt that beat her on Derby Weekend, and wins again. Comfortably. By two and a half lengths. In benchmark time.

The May Cup at Lahore Race Club on 3 May 2026 was not a race Chasing Eden was supposed to find easy. It was a high-stakes term race, fully loaded, every runner with a claim. She made it look straightforward anyway. That is the difference between a good horse and one that is becoming something more.

The Field

This was not a soft field. The May Cup was stacked — returning faces and fresh challengers, each with something to prove. Chasing Eden did not flinch at any of them.

Not Today

Let us go back to Derby Weekend for a moment. The photo finish. The nose. The camera making a decision that felt like it belonged to the track. Mayya won the Maiden that day — and he won it fairly, by the smallest margin the sport allows. Chasing Eden — as we wrote in her April Cup story — absorbed it, came back two weeks later, and broke her own maiden. The matter, one imagined, was not yet closed.

On 3 May, they lined up again. The crowd knew what this was. So did Chasing Eden.

When the gates opened, Chasing Eden came out of Gate 8 — the outside, the long way around, the draw that hands every other runner an advantage before a single stride is taken. She didn't argue with it. She leapt clean, found her line on the outside, and started picking them off one by one. By the time the field straightened, she was already doing something that felt less like racing and more like a statement. Mayya trailed by two and a half lengths. The nose from Derby Weekend had become a chasm. The answer, delivered in 1 minute and 12 seconds over 6 furlongs, was definitive.

The clock said benchmark. The margin said more. Chasing Eden had looked at her rival, at the field, at the weight on her back and the gate she'd drawn, and said: not today. Not any day, perhaps, that I am on this track and ready to run.

The Weight. The Gate. The Distance.

It bears repeating, because it is easy to read a result and move on. Chasing Eden carried 8 stone 11 pounds — top weight in a high-stakes term race. In handicap racing, that number is a handicapper's way of saying: we think you are the best horse in this field, so we are going to make it as hard as possible for you to prove it. She proved it anyway.

Gate 8 on a field of 8 means you start on the outside of every single rival. Every yard of the early run costs you ground. A less settled filly might have resented it — pulled wide, burned energy, arrived at the turn with nothing left. Chasing Eden, a late foal still only beginning to understand what she is capable of, handled it like a seasoned campaigner. She covered the extra ground, tracked her rivals from the outside, and when the moment came, went through them.

Six furlongs in 1 minute 12 seconds. On top weight. From the worst draw. Against the colt that beat her on Derby Weekend. The numbers do not need interpreting. They speak plainly.

The Others Who Were There

A race is also defined by what did not happen. Sajjal had been the wildcard whispered about all week — a horse with a reputation arriving just ahead of its results. The whispers did not survive the afternoon. Kamal, the other expected challenger, ran without the authority his supporters had anticipated. The race had promised fireworks from several directions. Chasing Eden made it a solo display.

The most dramatic subplot belonged to Ghuroor — who lost his jockey fifteen minutes before the race, the rider walking away in what the paddock described as a political disagreement. It is the kind of thing that unsettles a yard. Samara inherited the chaos. Neither found the race they were looking for. Such is racing, occasionally: the result on the card tells one story, and the paddock tells several others.

Through all of it — the late withdrawals, the reshuffled jockeys, the weighing room noise — Chasing Eden was in her gate, doing what she does. Undisturbed. Unimpressed. Ready.

The Man Who Flew 16 Hours to Be Here

The Kentucky Derby was run on the same weekend. The most celebrated race in the world, the most watched afternoon in American thoroughbred racing, the race that every bloodstock man on earth has an opinion about. Hassan Warraich, breeder of Chasing Eden and owner of Alias Warraich Stud Farm in Sargodha, was not there.

He was here. In Lahore. Having flown sixteen hours from the United States to stand at Lahore Race Club and watch a filly he had bred, foaled, and sent into the world run in a May Cup.

Alias Warraich Stud Farm is already known within Pakistani bloodstock circles as the home of Farren Star — humbly regarded as the heir to Frankel's throne in Pakistan. That the same farm has now produced Chasing Eden — a filly winning back-to-back Cups at Lahore Race Club, carrying top weight, clocking benchmark times — is a chapter in an ongoing story. Hassan Warraich's decision to be in that stand rather than at Churchill Downs is the best possible review a filly can receive from the man who knows her best.

Abdullah Amir Again

For the third time in as many outings, Abdullah Amir was in the saddle. He is the son of Amir Pervaiz, holder of the Pakistan Derby record — and he is beginning to build a record of his own, race by race, in the quiet way that good apprentices do before people start calling them something else. Gate 8 asks a jockey to make decisions quickly. Amir made the right ones. He found Chasing Eden's rhythm from the outside, kept her settled, and let her ability do the rest. The margin at the line was 2.5 lengths. It could have been more.

What She Wore

Chasing Eden went to post again in the Kerckhaert Kings Plate Super Sound, Size 5 — the same shoe she wore when she came second by a nose on Derby Weekend, when she won the April Cup, and now the May Cup. As we have written before, the Kings Plate Super Sound is not a shoe chosen for aesthetics. The Blue Bond polyurethane polymer at the heel absorbs concussion on every stride. The aluminium front keeps the plate stable under race loads. For a filly now carrying top weight and covering extra ground from an outside draw, that foundation is not a detail — it is what makes the performance possible.

Z-Stables is Pakistan's exclusive distributor of Kerckhaert horseshoes, sourced from the Royal Kerckhaert Horseshoe Factory in the Netherlands — the world's largest independent horseshoe manufacturer, with 101 shoe styles sold across more than 60 countries. View the full range on our products page.

A Stable. A Legacy. A Filly.

Z-Stables was founded in 1969 by Sheikh Zaheer Aslam — a man whose feel for fillies was, by all accounts, something other trainers studied and quietly envied. As we wrote in the April Cup piece, that gift did not transfer easily to the next generation. Fillies have been the stable's harder puzzle. Colts have come and gone with results. Fillies have promised more than they have delivered — until recently.

Chasing Eden is a late foal. She arrived at Lahore Race Club late, she grew on her own schedule, she lost a photo finish before she had won anything — and then she won the April Cup. And now the May Cup. On top weight. From the worst gate. Against the best field available.

When Sheikh Omer Zaheer walked into the paddock before the race, something shifted. The wind changed. Clouds gathered. Those who noticed said nothing, because these are not the kinds of things that get said out loud at a racecourse. But Sheikh Omer knew — deep within, in the way that the bloodlines of a stable speak to those who carry them — that the nod had already come through. From Sheikh Zaheer Aslam, from somewhere beyond the paddock rail, from the long memory of a stable that has seen everything this sport can produce. He kept it to himself. He waited. He let the race do the talking.

It spoke loudly enough.

The 1000 Guineas sits on the horizon — not confirmed, not rushed, but not dismissed either. She has two wins from her last two starts, a benchmark clock, and a breeder who flew past Kentucky to be here. The season is young. Chasing Eden, as she has made abundantly clear, is just getting started.