Run The Numbers – Fast starts make for successful stallions

The top four sires in Australia this season all have one thing in common, they had multiple Group 1 winners from their first crops. This week’s Run The Numbers examines the importance of first impressions.

Decisions are made quickly on the success or otherwise of stallions. A sire’s progeny may have barely hit the track before the market makes up its mind on whether a stallion is a gold mine or a busted flush.

A look across the top 10 on the Australian Sires’ Table reveals an interesting pattern. Six of the top 10 had multiple Group 1 winners emerge from their first crops, including the top four, I Am Invincible, Zoustar, So You Think and Pride Of Dubai.

Pride Of Dubai is the latest addition to that list thanks to the deeds of his two six-year-old mares Pride Of Jenni and Bella Nipotina, who claimed her second Group 1 in the Doomben 10,000 on Saturday.

We have covered the unusual case of Pride Of Dubai in this column before. He’s a stallion who has proven commercially difficult but a rush of success with his progeny at the racetrack. The son of Street Cry now has 23 global stakes winners, six of them from that first Australian crop.

Defying his own profile as multiple Group 1-winning two-year-old, his progeny has tended to improve into their four, five and six-year-old seasons. It’s notable he also produced a Group 1 winner, Dubai Honour, from the first of his two crops from Coolmore Ireland.

He sits in top company near the summit of the sire rankings.

I Am Invincible’s emergence from an $11,000 stallion to a champion and arguably the most successful commercial sire in Australian history, has also been well told.

But while his is a rags-to-riches story, those riches began to emerge as soon as his first crop hit the track. He has seven stakes winners from that crop, including Group 1 winners Brazen Beau and Voodoo Lad.

Like I Am Invincible, Zoustar does not have a two-year-old Group 1 winner in Australia, but his first crop made a major mark, with an incredible 13 stakes winners overall from 106 runners. That group included three Group 1 winners, Sunlight, Zoutori and Mizzy. (He also had a Group 1 winner from his first crop from Tweenhills in the UK).

A bit like his Coolmore barnmate Pride Of Dubai, So You Think’s best progeny took a bit of time to get to a rolling boil. But his first crop featured eight stakes winners, with a pair of three-year-old Group 1 winners among them, La Diosa and Inference.

Run The Numbers – When the market misses – the Pride Of Dubai story

The gap between what the bloodstock market expected of the progeny of Pride Of Dubai and what he has been able to deliver as a stallion is as wide as the margin his star daughter Pride Of Jenni won the Queen Elizabeth Stakes by on Saturday.

The StraightBren O’Brien

The remaining two stallions in the top 10, which have had multiple first-crop Group 1 winners, share a similar stamina profile.

Dundeel, like So You Think, a son of High Chaparral, is seventh on the sires’ table, and his oldest crop is eight. There are eight stakes winners among the 85 runners from that vintage, with Truly Great and South Africa G1 winner Atyaab both elite winners.

The other one is a little left field, Teofilo. The son of Galileo finds himself in 10th place largely due to his Melbourne and Caulfield Cup winner Without A Fight, who has contributed $8.2 million of his $9.9 million in progeny earnings.

But if we go back to when he stood in Australia for the first time in 2009, we see that five stakes winners came from the 52 runners in that first crop. That group included Group 1 winners Happy Clapper and Sonntag.

First-crop progeny record of current Top 10 sires in Australia

Data courtesy of arion.co.nz

Extending the filter out a little further, two more members of the ‘multiple Group 1 winners from the first crop’ club have been welcomed in the past couple of weeks.

Hellbent now has two from his first crop, Benedetta and Magic Time, while The Autumn Sun put together three in a month thanks to his three-year-old fillies Autumn Angel, Vibrant Sun and Coco Sun.

Run The Numbers – Autumn proves the time again for rising Sun

The Autumn Sun’s historic trifecta in the Australasian Oaks puts him right in the mix with the two other standout racehorses of his stallion crop, Trapeze Artist and Justify, in the battle for second-season honours.

The StraightBren O’Brien

Other members of that club inside the current top 50 on the sires table in Australia include Sebring, Toronado, Pierro, Tavistock, Fastnet Rock, Maurice and Extreme Choice.

Active sires Per Incanto, Foxwedge and Casino Prince also belong to that group.  

So with 15 of the top 50 sires, or 30 per cent, having had elite success in their first season, how rare an achievement is it?

Well, perhaps it is easier to look at a few of the recent stallions who didn’t make this club.

Champion sires Snitzel, Written Tycoon, Street Cry, Lonhro, Exceed And Excel, Flying Spur and Encosta de Lago aren’t on that list for their Australian progeny.

It means I Am Invincible and Fastnet Rock are the only two stallions since Danehill to have multiple Group 1 winners from their first Australian crops and then go on to win a title as Australia’s champion sire.

For the record, Danehill had five Group 1 winners from his first Aussie crop, while Zabeel, who he succeeded, had three.

Speaking of Zabeel, he is the most recent champion sire of New Zealand to have had multiple Group 1 winners from his first crop. None of the five to have won the Grosvenor Award since 2000/01, Volksraad, O’Reilly, Thorn Park, Savabeel or Proisir, achieved that.