Run The Numbers – A family first for Nepotism

A combination of one of New Zealand’s greatest sirelines and Australia’s foremost damlines produced the Champagne Stakes winner, Nepotism. But as this week’s Run The Numbers explores, neither pedigree is renowned for the precocity to produce a two-year-old Group 1 winner.

As the son of Courtza, one of just two fillies to win both the Blue Diamond and the Golden Slipper, O’Reilly had precocity at the heart of his pedigree, but an early setback prevented the Chittick-family owned colt getting to the track until early in his three-year-old season.

History tells us he quickly made up for lost time, winning two Group 1s in a spectacular six-start career before retiring to become one of the most important stallions in the history of Waikato Stud.

However, while he had a formidable record at stud, precocity was never to the fore with his progeny. Of his 15 Group 1 winners, just two, Alamosa and O’Marilyn would win elite two-year-old races, both of them in New Zealand. Of his 96 stakes winners just 15 of them won black-type races as two-year-olds.

In fact, none of his progeny ever contested the two races his dam famously won in 1989, the Golden Slipper and Blue Diamond. Neither did they feature in the ATC Sires’ Produce, while just one of O’Reilly progeny, Never Look Back (seventh in 2006), took on the Champagne Stakes.

He is one of only two O’Reilly juveniles to contest a two-year-old Group 1 race in Australia.

Similarly, the sire sons of O’Reilly have also had a paucity of runners in Australian juvenile races, with Grunt’s son Veight, fourth in the 2023 ATC Sires’, the only representative until Saturday.

In a blistering late surge in the Champagne Stakes, Nepotism, by O’Reilly’s Newgate-based sire son Brutal, changed that legacy, becoming the first paternal descendant of O’Reilly to win a Group 1 Australian two-year-old race.

Significantly, Team Hawkes trained both sire and son – the first time John Hawkes has completed that Group 1 sire-and-son double since his days at Crown Lodge working for the Inghams.

The Hawkes already had a link to the family, having trained All Too Hard, the Vinery Stud sire and four-time Group 1-winning brother of Nepotism’s unraced dam Brigite. They also trained multiple Group 1 winner and Australia’s leading first-season sire Ole Kirk, who is out of All Too Hard and Brigite’s half-sister Naturale.

Team Hawkes also trained Naturale’s brother Moshe, but not the most famous member of that family, the unbeaten champion Black Caviar, who was of course prepared by Peter Moody. However, the Hawkes did take charge of her son Prince Of Caviar, as well as several other extended members of the family.

Renowned as one of Australia’s premier stallion-making stables, Team Hawkes has already trained four future sires who are descendants of blue hen Helsinge (All Too Hard, Ole Kirk, Moshe and Prince Of Caviar) and now has a likely fifth with Nepotism.

But while this may be one of the best, if not the best Australian families of the 21st century, in an echo of his sire line, remarkably Nepotism becomes the first descendant of Helsinge’s dam, Scandinavia, to win a Group 1 two-year-old race.

There are four other Group 1-winning descendants on the female line, Black Caviar, Ole Kirk, Magnus and All Too Hard, and another nine elite-winning descendants from those last two as sires, none of which managed to win a Group 1 race at two.

All Too Hard was runner-up in an ATC Sires as was Scandiva, while Hanseatic, now a Rosemont Stud sire, was second in a Blue Diamond.

Adding to the pedigree drought-breaking theme is the fact that Nepotism is just the second juvenile stakes winner, and first Group 1 winner, to feature Casino Prince as broodmare sire.

Even on the maternal line of Brutal’s pedigree, the famous ‘Alberton’ family, which contains 14 stakes-winning descendants in four generations, including three Group 1 winners, there is not a single elite two-year-old winner, until now.

The value to Brutal as a sire himself is also significant. Nepotism is one of two stakes winners for the young sire, the other being Jenni’s Meadow. He has had 24 winners to date from 76 runners

He joins second-season contemporaries Too Darn Hot, Castelvecchio, Alabama Express and Super Seth with Group 1 winners this season, and Tassort and Royal Meeting from last season.

It has certainly been a breakout year from this crop, whose progeny have won 53 Australian stakes races already this season.

That is already 22 more than second-season sires progeny won for the entirety of last season and the most since the 2021/22 season where sophomore sires compiled 70 stakes wins. With three and a bit months left of the season, there is plenty of time for this crop to eclipse that mark.

Australian stakes wins from progeny of second-season sires