A winner of the JJ Atkins Stakes has never been awarded the status of Australia’s champion two-year-old under the current structure, but if that run is to be broken, then it should be this year after Broadsiding completed the most dominant juvenile campaign of the current season with his emphatic win at Eagle Farm on Saturday.
James Cummings star two-year-old’s winning margin of 4-1/4 lengths was the largest in the race since Show A Heart in 2000, and his time of 1:34.89 was the quickest over the 1600m in the race since Outback Prince ran 1:34.10 in 2004.
It followed his win in the Group 2 BRC Sires’ Produce and his win in the ATC Champagne Stakes at Randwick. He became the first horse to win those three races since the legendary Luskin Star in 1977.
There was no official national two-year-old award in Luskin Star’s days. That didn’t come in until the early 1990s, and since that point while the JJ Atkins has now become Queensland’s only Group 1 two-year-old race, none of its winners has been crowned the best juvenile at the end of the season.
Historically, Broadsiding’s achievement as a dual Group 1-winning two-year-old puts him among a select group of horses. Only 17 two-year-olds since 2000 have won multiple Group 1 races in an Australian season, and only two of those have won them in different states.
Pride Of Dubai (2015) was the last winner in separate states and before him, you go back to Sepoy (2011). Canny Lad (1990) and Courtza (1989) also completed that feat.
When the BRC Sires’ Produce was a Group 1 from 1987 to 2005, the double of that race and the 1600m Group 1 race now known as the Atkins, occurred four times, the most recent with Lovely Jubly in 2002.
In terms of winners of this particular Queensland race, you have to go back 36 years to Zeditave (1988) to find a horse who won a JJ Atkins, then called the Channel Nine Stakes, having previously won a Group 1 interstate state. In his case, it was the Blue Diamond Stakes.
It is when you start getting into this historical detail that you appreciate what Broadsiding has been able to achieve. Most of those two-year-olds who have won multiple Group 1 races in the same season have occurred within two to four weeks of one another. Pride Of Dubai’s two elite wins were five weeks apart.
In Broadsiding’s case, his Champagne Stakes win came 56 days before his win in the JJ Atkins. The last time a two-year-old had that big a gap between his Group 1 wins was Zeditave, who had 108 days between his Blue Diamond win and his victory at Eagle Farm.
To give broader context to Broadsiding’s achievement, he was just the 12th horse this century to compete in both the Champagne Stakes and the JJ Atkins. Prince Fawaz, trained by Cummings’ father Anthony, is the only one to have won the Atkins off a Champagne run, having finished fifth in the Randwick feature in 2019.
Two-year-olds to have won Group 1 races in different states since 1988
Attention has now turned to what Broadsiding may try to accomplish in his three-year-old season. He is favourite for the Golden Rose, the Caulfield Guineas and is third pick for the Cox Plate.
Just one JJ Atkins winner has gone onto win the Golden Rose, that being The Autumn Sun. The Autumn Sun is one of five horses to have won the JJ Atkins and then a Caulfield Guineas. The others are Press Statement, Show A Heart, Mahogany and Luskin Star. No horse has won both the Atkins and the Cox Plate.
The other significant achievement from Broadsiding’s latest win was that it further enhanced the extraordinary first season from his sire Too Darn Hot. He is the first multiple Group 1 winning two-year-old by a first-season sire since Lovely Jubly, a daughter of Lion Hunter, in 2002.
Too Darn Hot now has over $4.1 million in first-season progeny earnings in Australia. That easily eclipses the previous record for a freshman sire, held by Extreme Choice in 2020/21, when his progeny earned just short of $3.4 million.
As previously mentioned in this column, Too Darn Hot will become just the second shuttle sire since More Than Ready in 2003/04 to win champion first-season honours, following on from Justify last season.
Bren O’Brien
He already has more individual winners in his first season, 12, than any shuttle sire since Shamardal, who had that same number in 2008/09. More Than Ready had 16 in his first crop.
On the other side of Broadsiding’s pedigree chart sits the phenomenally influential Street Cry. He is one of five Australian Group 1 winners out of Street Cry mares this season, a list that includes Cascadian, Cylinder, Tom Kitten (all Godolphin horses) and Romantic Warrior.
Significantly for Broadsiding looking forward, Street Cry has featured in the pedigree of six of the past nine winners of the Cox Plate.
Street Cry is third on the Australian broodmare sires table with less than half of the runners than those two horses above him, Fastnet Rock and Encosta De Lago.
Internationally bred stallions ranked by Australian first-crop two-year-old winners (since 2008)
