The next Fastnet or Northern Meteor? Comparisons inevitable as Home Affairs and Stay Inside make first-season statements

The truism that there’s no such thing as a certainty in racing holds weight when making hard and fast predictions about stallions.

Stallions deemed “never to make it” do and those with seemingly everything in their favour can disappoint.

The first-season sires’ premierships of years past are littered with surprises, failures and unlikely champion stallions.

Snitzel, I Am Invincible and Written Tycoon all started with little fanfare compared to many others and all three have been crowned Australia’s premier stallions.

With Snitzel no longer alive and the other two in the twilight of their careers, the industry is pondering who will fill the void.

Both Coolmore’s Home Affairs, who is certain to be crowned Australia’s champion freshman when the racing season concludes on July 31, and Newgate’s Stay Inside have started promisingly.

As Coolmore Stud Stakes and Golden Slipper winners respectively, the pair retired to stud with service fees attached ($110,000 and $77,000) befitting their racecourse feats and massive valuations.

So, just how well are they tracking and can one or both be major influences on the Australian Stud Book over the next 10 to 15 years? At this stage, you can’t say they won’t be. 

The simplest comparison point is to their respective sires I Am Invincible (Home Affairs) and Extreme Choice (Stay Inside).

Home Affairs has had 11 first-crop winners across Australasia to date, with five of those having already been victorious at black-type level.

The Golden Slipper winner Guest House, of course, sits at the top of the tree for the stallion, with the colt already securing a future home alongside his sire at Coolmore at a price of $30 million.

At the same point of I Am Invincible’s first season with two-year-old runners, he had sired 14 individual winners and four stakes winners.

Brazen Beau, a subsequent Group 1 winner, was leading the charge at that stage for I Am Invincible, having won the Group 2 Champagne Classic in Brisbane. 

He would run second in the BRC Sires and JJ Atkins but at three he returned to win a Roman Consul, Coolmore Stud Stakes and a Newmarket Handicap.

Coolmore-based Home Affairs has already eclipsed Too Darn Hot’s first southern hemisphere crop’s two-year-old seasonal earnings.

On Friday, Tony and Calvin McEvoy’s debut winner Natural Fling ($2.70) finished runner-up to Snitzel colt The Next Episode in the $1 million Magic Millions National 2YO Classic.

Extreme Choice’s fertility limitations are well-known but of his 48 first crop foals, by this stage of the season in 2021, he’d sired five first crop winners from 13 runners.

Stay Inside won the Golden Slipper while Xtremetime won the Woodlands Stakes. Extreme Warrior and Tiger Of Malay were also stakes-placed by late May of his first crop two-year-old season.

In comparison, Stay Inside has had 16 runners for seven winners, three of them stakes winners including Incognito and debut Kindergarten Stakes winner Blue Door.

Our Emperor won his first start at Warwick Farm on Wednesday, with co-trainer Adrian Bott immediately suggesting the San Domenico Stakes among other spring sprint races were on the agenda for the colt. 

In seeking a potential precedent, Magic Millions managing director Barry Bowditch cast his mind back to when Widden pair Sebring and Northern Meteor’s first crop two-year-olds made their mark.

At the same stage of the season, in a crop that included Zoustar and Deep Field, Northern Meteor had sired 12 individual winners. His rostermate Sebring had sired 11 juvenile winners including Criterion and another subsequent Group 1 winner in Dissident as the season headed into the winter.

“I think the precocity of both those stallions (Home Affairs and Stay Inside) is evident through the two-year-old season so far,” Bowditch says. 

“When you talk to the trainers and talk to the people out there, the reports on both of them is that there’s a lot of blue sky ahead of them and that they can see them doing just as well, if not better, in their three-year-old season.”

Bowditch’s Inglis counterpart Sebastian Hutch says so far the high-profile young stallions were delivering.

“When stallions like Home Affairs and Stay Inside retire to stud with the credentials that each of them had, there’s inevitably a weight of expectation around them,” Hutch said. 

“They commanded a premium in their first seasons and both of them got tremendous support. 

“It’s hard not to be excited by what both of them have achieved to this point. I think Stay Inside’s strike rate has been eye-catching and his percentage of stakes winners to runners is strikingly high and his number of winners to runners is also strikingly high.

“And by the same token, I’ve probably been guilty of underestimating Home Affairs as a sire of two-year-olds. 

“I’ve always taken the view that anything that his progeny did would be a bonus, because my expectation was that they’d be significantly better as three-year-olds, because to me that’s everything that his profile says.”

Expatriate Irishman Hutch, who spent a decade working for Coolmore Australia prior to his appointment at Inglis, believes Home Affairs could be on a similar trajectory to Fastnet Rock.

At the time, Fastnet Rock’s first-crop colt Wanted had won the Kindergarten Stakes – the same race Stay Inside filly Blue Door won this year – as well as siring seven other winners to late May 2009.

“I said to somebody, without necessarily having done the research into it, that Home Affairs reminded me a little bit of Fastnet Rock,” Hutch said. 

“Fastnet Rock’s first two-year-olds was my first season in Australia, and Home Affairs has obviously done better than Fastnet Rock (at the same time). 

“I just feel, in terms of profile, it just has a similar feel to it to me. He has lots of horses running well in good races without necessarily winning, but very much shaping as horses that are going to make a big impression in Group races next season.”

Ten mares will be offered in foal to Home Affairs at the Gold Coast on Wednesday while Newgate Farm’s Stay Inside has 18 mares in foal to him catalogued at the National sale.