Run The Numbers – From Goodwood to Doomben – Success still flows for Sussex duo Toronado and Too Darn Hot

Among the honour roll of the Sussex Stakes, the famous mile race contest over the Glorious Goodwood carnival, sit five subsequent champion sires of Great Britain and Ireland.

Frankel is the most famous of them, and the modern-day champion is the only horse in the Sussex Stakes’ 146-year history to have won the race twice in 2011 and 2012. (The race was restricted to three-year-olds only until 1960).

The other four to graduate from Sussex success to stallion supremacy are Orme, Queen’s Hussar, Petingo and Kris.

The year after Frankel romped to a six-length win in what would be his third last appearance on racetrack, Richard Hannon Sr presented his High Chaparral colt Toronado to take on the dominant three-year-old miler of that year, Dawn Approach.

Hannon had won the race twice before and in 2011 had finished a long second to Frankel with his 2010 winner Canford Cliffs. Toronado had been beaten by Dawn Approach in both the 2000 Guineas and the St James Palace Stakes, but turned the tables in the Sussex Stakes, coming from off the pace to edge out the Godolphin contender.

Toronado would return to Goodwood in 2014 to contest the Sussex Stakes again, but this time would be the one to be run down as Kingman finished the stronger.

Having retired at the end of that season, Toronado would begin his stud career at the National Stud in Great Britain, moving to Haras de Bouquetot in France after three seasons. Of more consequence for this part of the world was the agreement with Swettenham Stud to shuttle him to Victoria from 2015, but more on that later.

Sire progeny record of notable Sussex Stakes winners since 2000

Data courtesy of Arion.co.nz

Stallion	Year won	Winners Advertisement	SWs	G1w
Giant’s Causeway	2000	1389	196	36
Noverre	2001	524	28	4
Rock of Gibraltar	2002	1422	141	17
Henrythenavigator	2008	558	24	4
Rip Van Winkle	2009	487	35	3
Canford Cliffs	2010	277	26	0
Frankel	2011 & 2012	578	138	34
Toronado	2013	509	37	6
Kingman	2014	457	79	11
Too Darn Hot	2019	51	8	2

 Six years after Toronado’s win at Goodwood, John Gosden, who had won the Sussex with Kingman, set Watership Down Stud’s son of Dubawi, Too Darn Hot, for what would be the final start of his short but spectacular career.  

An unbeaten Group 1 winning two-year-old, much was expected from Too Darn Hot in his three-year-old campaign. But he was surprisingly beaten when favourite in both the Irish 2000 Guineas and the St James Palace Stakes. He travelled to France to find his best in a three-length win in the Prix Jean Prat.

He started even money in the Sussex Stakes and he and Franke Dettori never looked troubled recording a comfortable victory. A week later it was revealed he had suffered a hairline fracture to his right hind cannon. His racing career was over, but a stallion career at Darley’s Dalham Hall Stud, and in Australia at Kelvinside, in the Hunter Valley, beckoned.

Fast forward nearly five years and Too Darn Hot looks destined to be crowned Australia’s champion first-season sire. On Saturday, his daughter Arabian Summer claimed the inaugural $1 million Magic Millions National Classic.

The near $600,000 the Tony and Calvin McEvoy-trained filly banked with the win has put her sire on $2.7 million in first-season progeny earnings, over $800,000 clear of his nearest rival, Tassort.

It puts Too Darn Hot in a prime position to become just the second shuttle sire in 20 years to be crowned champion first-season sire. The other one since More Than Ready in 2003/04 was Justify last season.

That total of progeny earnings, $2.7 million, would have been enough to win every first-season sires title in history apart from two. There are still two months of the season remaining, so it is feasible the Darley stallion could catch Extreme Choice’s all-time record of $3.4 million.

He also has more Australian winners than any other freshman stallion this season, with nine, with one of those, the Champagne Stakes winner Broadsiding, a stakes winner.

Too Darn Hot also occupies very rare air having produced two-year-old Group 1 winners with both his northern and southern hemisphere crops. On Sunday at The Curragh, his star filly Fallen Angel claimed the Irish 1000 Guineas.  

Darley raised a few eyebrows when it lifted Too Darn Hot’s 2024 Australian service fee to $110,000 from $44,000, but on the numbers above, he is on a trajectory befitting such lofty commercial expectations.

Two-and-a-half hours after Arabian Summer all but stamped a first-season sires’ championship for Too Darn Hot, another Sussex Stakes graduate Toronado was celebrating a sixth global Group 1 winner thanks to Bois D’Argent in the Doomben Cup.

Toronado’s Australian-bred progeny have done a remarkable job for the stallion, so much so that he now permanently resides at Swettenham Stud, but 16 of his 37 stakes winners are from his time in Great Britain and France.

Bois D’Argent is the only northern hemisphere Toronado to have won a stakes race in Australia, but there have only been three to have raced in this part of the world. That makes sense when you consider the ample supply of his Australian-bred progeny to the market.

From Toronado’s second Northern Hemisphere crop, he was a private purchase for Stuart Boman on behalf of Ontrack Thoroughbreds in 2022, having previously raced for trainer Francis-Henri Grafford in France.

Toronado now sits 13th in the Australian Sires Table, having finished 17th, 11th and 19th in the previous three seasons.

Underlining his consistency, he is the only Northern Hemisphere-bred stallion to feature in the Top 20 on the Australian Sires Table in the past four seasons.

With four individual Group 1 winners in Australia, he has more elite winners in this country than any other Northern Hemisphere-bred stallion active in Australia in 2024. Only Street Boss, with 23 to his 19, has more Australian stakes winners of those stallions and he is six years older than Toronado.

Toronado progeny record by hemisphere

Data courtesy of Arion.co.nz

Location foaled	Runners	Winners	SWs	G1w
Southern Hemisphere	432	290	21	4
Northern Hemisphere	360	219	16	2
Overall	792	509	37	6