The enduring influence of Exceed And Excel as a stallion can be measured in so many different ways.

On Saturday, the Darley resident marked his 214th individual stakes winner when his two-year-old daughter Eneeza won the Merson Cooper Stakes (Listed) at Caulfield.

Exceed And Excel already has more stakes winners than any other Australian-bred sire and when he did pass the 200 stakes-winner milestone in October last year, he became just the seventh global sire to reach that mark.

Eneeza’s win means that the prolific stallion has had a two-year-old stakes winner from each of his 17 Australian-bred crops to have reached the track. No sire in Australian history has achieved such a result with his juvenile runners over such a long period of time.

Across 718 juvenile runners from his Australian-bred crops, Exceed And Excel has had 54 stakes winners. He is fast closing in on the benchmark of 58 Australian-bred two-year-old stakes winners set by his own sire Danehill, whose record for producing star juveniles changed the face of Australian breeding and racing.

Globally, he also plays second fiddle to his sire, with Danehill holding the record for the most two-year-old stakes winners, with 102, while Exceed And Excel, who remains active at stud in Australia having stopped shuttling to the UK in 2021, has 88.

That places him above the legendary pair Galileo and More Than Ready, who have both had 83 two-year-old stakes winners as the second most prolific producer in this regard in thoroughbred history. There is an outside chance he could surpass Danehill in the future with at least three more crops to come.

Two-year-old record of selected leading sires

Sire 2YO Stakes Winners 2YO runners
Danehill 102 1103
Exceed And Excel 88 1666
More Than Ready 83 1749
Galileo 83 1210
Dubawi 54 971
Sadler's Wells 53 796
Snitzel 52 828
I Am Invincible 46 587
Fastnet Rock 41 874
Redoute's Choice 40 649
Deep Impact 34 1081

While the Kia Ora Stud-owned Eneeza, who was a $1.1 million yearling, was adding to Exceed And Excel’s record as a sire at Caulfield, on the other side of the country, star sprinter Overpass was building on his burgeoning record as a broodmare sire.

Overpass’s dominant success in the Winterbottom Stakes at Ascot gave Exceed And Excel his 14th Group 1 winner from one of his daughters. His influence in this role is growing significantly and last season he finished third in the Australian broodmare sires’ title, his highest finish yet.

Overpass’s dam Walkway, who is out of a half-sister to the legendary Western Australian champion Northerly, was from Exceed and Excel’s third Australian crop. A winner of two races in the Corumbene Stud colours, Walkway remained with her breeders after her racing days. She has now produced the seventh Group 1 winner bred from the Altomente family farm, a list that includes Golden Slipper winners Overreach and Sebring.

Watch: Overpass' dominant win in the Winterbottom Stakes

Speaking of Golden Slipper winners, Overpass, who also won Western Australia’s richest race The Quokka earlier this year, became the first Group 1 winner for his sire, Vancouver.

It is a timely boost for Vancouver, who is currently in his second residency, having begun his breeding career at Coolmore Australia in the Hunter Valley and then moved to Woodside Park in Victoria in 2022. His breeding career has not lived up to the expectations created by his short but stellar five-start career on the track for Gai Waterhouse.

Starting out at a fee of $55,000, and also shuttling to Ashford Stud in the United States for two seasons, Vancouver made an unspectacular start to his breeding career and by his sixth and final year in the Hunter Valley served just 37 mares at a fee of $22,000.

His first year in Victoria yielded a slightly better book in terms of numbers, 47 at a fee of $16,500. In the 2023 season, he stood at Woodside at $11,000, but will likely get an uptick in numbers thanks to Overpass, who hails from Vancouver’s second crop.

Vancouver's record as a stallion

Runners Winners SW G1w
380 247 10 1

Vancouver becomes the second son of Medaglia D’Oro to sire a Group 1 winner in Australia, the other being Astern, who like Overpass, is out of an Exceed And Excel mare.

A busy day of stakes racing across Australia on Saturday also saw a couple of other notable achievements.

The legacy of the recently departed Magnus was on show at Caulfield where the late Sun Stud/Widden Stud sire had a stakes double thanks to the wins of Just Folk in the G3 Eclipse Stakes and King Magnus in the G3 Kevin Heffernan Stakes. It is just the second time that Magnus has had multiple stakes winners on the same day.

In Perth, the remarkable run of locally based sire Playing God continued, with a second stakes double in as many weeks. Last week, Bustler gave the Darling View-based stallion his second Group 1 win in the Railway Stakes before Zipaway added the G2 Western Australian Guineas.

On Saturday, Investmentstrategy won the Sir Ernest Lee-Steere Classic and Baby Paris the Jungle Dawn Classic, both at Listed level. Like Bustler and Zipaway, Investmentstrategy is trained by Neville Parnham, who also trained Playing God himself in his racing days.

Other stakes-winning sires across Australia on Saturday were Snitzel (Serasana), Zoustar (Zoustyle), Exosphere (Phearson), Tavistock (Stockman), Russian Revolution (Revolutionary Miss), Deep Impact (Ghaanati), Mastercraftsman (Military Mission), Mikki Isle (Dragonstone), Night Of Thunder (Acquitted) and second-season pair Grunt (Miraval Rose) and Santos (West Of Dalby).

Data courtesy of Arion

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