Late-season double has Home Affairs on brink of rare dual premiership honours

Home Affairs is on the verge of claiming Australia’s champion first-season and two-year-old sire premierships, with the possible rare feat closer to reality with two promising winners on Thursday.

Coolmore’s dual Group 1-winning Home Affairs – already the sire of this year’s Golden Slipper-winning colt Guest House – edged past four-time champion and breed-shaping sire Snitzel for the two-year-old premiership by earnings with his pair of interstate provincial winners.

His cause was helped first by the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Hearts Affair’s first-up victory at Kembla Grange and, 90 minutes later, by Covert Action’s impressive all-the-way debut win for co-trainers Shane Nichols and Hayden Black at Cranbourne.

With a fortnight to go this season, the emerging Home Affairs’ Australian-raced two-year-olds have won $4,970,550, with the almost $50,000 banked by Covert Action and filly Hearts Affair putting him $4030 ahead of Snitzel.

He has sired 19 individual winners so far this season,16 in Australia and three in New Zealand, headlined by Guest House, whose future at stud is assured after the post-Golden Slipper $30 million move by Coolmore to buy him.  

Home Affairs’ dominance has him almost $4 million ahead of his nearest first-season rival Stay Inside, with that honour sewn up, but it’s the son of I Am Invincible’s bid for the two-year-old title that is creating intrigue.

Snitzel has won the two-year-old premiership on five previous occasions and, with colts Campione D’Italia and Fireball both winning Group 1s this season and three other juveniles winning stakes races in 2025/26, he was on course for his sixth.

He is poised to posthumously claim his fifth Australian general sires’ title this year as he holds a more than $4 million lead over last year’s champion sire Zoustar.

Home Affairs could extend his margin this weekend two sons accepted for NSW races this weekend, the stakes-placed last-start winner Internal Affairs and the stakes-performed Fawlty Affairs, to deny Arrowfield’s late, great sire. 

The fertility-challenged Extreme Choice, who had his first European winner on Sunday in France, also won both the first season and two-year-old sires’ titles in 2020/21, the same year his first crop son Stay Inside won the Golden Slipper.

Covert Action, a half-brother to Roman Consul winner Hidden Motive who is raced by Matthew Sandblom’s Horse Ventures, was bred by Cressfield’s Bruce Neill and sold at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sale for $150,000.

The colt is the second last foal out of Group 1-winning sprinter Secret Agenda.   

Hearts Affair, a $160,000 purchase by his trainers and Kestrel Thoroughbreds’ Bruce Slade, was bred by Coolmore. She is out of Group 2-winning Savabeel mare Savapinski who is back in foal to Home Affairs. 

Retiring to stud in 2022 amid much fanfare as the winner of the Group 1 Coolmore Stud Stakes and Black Caviar Lightning Stakes as a three-year-old, Home Affairs had his fee increased to $176,000 (inc GST) this year in anticipation the sprinter will develop into a sustained commercial sire powerhouse.