Champion stallion Fastnet Rock, the sire of a record-breaking 44 Group 1 winners, including current Australian Racehorse of the Year Via Sistina, has died aged 24 at Coolmore Australia.
The son of Danehill parlayed his deeds as a multiple Group 1 winner on the racetrack into one of the most spectacularly successful stallion careers of any Australian-bred horse, shuttling from Jerrys Plains in the Hunter Valley to Coolmore in Ireland.
Having ceased shuttling in 2020, he was withdrawn from service in Australia in 2023, with a small final crop of four foals having just turned yearlings. He was retired at Coolmore’s Australian base.
Fastnet Rock holds the record for the most Group 1 winners of any Australian-bred horse, four more than Redoute’s Choice, while to date, he has produced 197 stakes winners, with his progeny earning just under $290 million across their careers.
Up to this point, he has produced 1594 winners, which have won 4603 races in 33 different countries.
“Coolmore Australia would not be what it is today without Fastnet Rock, and we owe him so much,” stud principal Tom Magnier said.
“Sadly, he suffered an injury over the weekend, which deteriorated rapidly and we did not want him to suffer.”
Via Sistina, bred in Ireland before being imported to Australia as a racemare, has proven the best of his progeny, winning 10 Group 1s, one in Ireland and nine in Australia.
Another of his champion daughters, Avantage, won nine Group 1 races, while Atlantic Jewel and Mosheen each won four elite races.
He would follow his own sire’s footsteps and be crowned Champion sire of Australia on two occasions, first in 2011/2012 then in 2014/2015. Such was his consistency that he finished top four in that category in nine consecutive years.
He would also claim champion sire titles in Hong Kong and Bahrain.
Fastnet Rock will leave a lasting legacy on the Australian breeding industry with his progeny, including high-class mares Atlantic Jewel, Avantage, Via Sistina and Mosheen. (Photos: The Image Is Everything)
“This is such a sad day for everyone who has worked at Coolmore and played a part in Fastnet’s life,” Magnier said.
“Our thoughts today are with all the staff who cared for him over the past 24 years.”
“He was born and prepared as a yearling here at Coolmore and raced in the navy silks for Paul Perry and our ownership partners.
“Residing in the stallion barn for 20 years, he was the kindest and smartest horse you would ever meet and I’m so glad that we got to parade him one last time at the open day two weeks ago, where he looked incredible."
Fastnet Rock also left an enormous legacy as a broodmare sire, having been champion in Australia in that category in the past two seasons, breaking records for the progeny earnings of his daughters.
He has had 16 Group 1 winners in that damsire role among 150 stakes winners, including multiple Group 1 winners Santa Ana Lane, Zougotcha, Joliestar, Warm Heart and Russian Emperor.
The best of his sons at stud has been Foxwedge, with 26 stakes winners and five Group 1 winners, Hinchinbrook, (22 and four), Smart Missile (27 and two) and El Roca (11 and two).
Bred by Linley Investments among others, Fastnet Rock was passed in as a yearling and raced for a syndicate of Coolmore owners out of Perry’s Newcastle stable.
While placed multiple times as a two-year-old, including a third in the Sires’ Produce, he wouldn’t break his maiden until he impressively won the Group 2 Up and Coming Stakes as an early three-year-old.
He won back-to-back stakes races over the Flemington carnival later that spring and then returned in the autumn to stamp himself as Australia’s champion sprinter of that year, winning both the Lightning Stakes and the Oakleigh Plate before running second in the Newmarket Handicap and the TJ Smith Stakes.
He was set for a Royal Ascot campaign, but a bout of travel sickness ruined those plans and he was immediately retired to stud.
Fastnet Rock would prove an extraordinarily adaptable shuttle stallion, with 55 stakes winners foaled in the northern hemisphere, second only behind Exceed And Excel with 98, of all Australian-bred stallions.
But his best crops came from Australia, with 142 stakes winners from 1578 runners being foaled in the southern hemisphere.
Fastnet Rock has the same number of Group 1 winners as Kiwi-bred Zabeel did at the time of his death in 2015. Zabeel ended up with 46 at the highest level.
The progeny of Fastnet Rock have also proved remarkably successful in the sales ring, with 34 $1 million-plus yearling lots in Australia, including a top price of $4 million.
