The decline of active stallion numbers in Australia from 750 just over a decade ago to under 500 today has understandably raised concerns about the diversity of the genetic pool and whether success will be concentrated in too few bloodlines.
However, in an interesting twist to this modern trend, the 2023/24 racing season saw over 200 sires represented with stakes-winning progeny.
It is likely the first time that this 200-mark has been broken, given our data goes back over a decade to when the stakes program in Australia expanded.
The final of the 604 Australian stakes races for the 2023/24 season were completed on Saturday with America and Alfred Nobel becoming the 200th and 201st different stallions to notch stakes winners.
America, a regally bred son of Snitzel out of champion filly Alinghi, only spent four seasons at stud before his untimely death at Ryland Thoroughbreds in March 2021. A $1.8 million yearling, he was unplaced in three starts before beginning his stud career at Roslyn Day’s Rosden Park in South Australia.
Overall, he only produced 56 foals, with 11 winners from 27 starters, but he now has a stakes winner thanks to his daughter Lingani, who won the Lightning Stakes at Morphettville on Saturday.
He becomes the 16th son of champion sire Snitzel to produce a stakes winner.
Later on Saturday, Alfred Nobel, the imported son of Danehill Dancer who stood mainly at Lynward Park Stud in WA, secured his fourth stakes winner, but his first for the racing season when Boots Like Bruce won the Listed HG Bolton Sprint at Belmont.
As mentioned, there were 604 stakes races contested in Australia for the season and those races were won by 441 different horses.
So, while the top of the sire list by stakes winners sat I Am Invincible (29) and Zoustar (27), there were 83 individual sires who had one stakes winner for the season and another 48 who had two individual stakes winners.
The spread of individual stakes-producing stallions - 201 – is five more than last season, and eight more than the 2021/22 campaign. We have gone back to 2011/12 and can not find another season where there has been as many stakes-producing sires.
Stakes-producing sires by season in Australia
Source: Arion.co.nz
Breaking down the origin of those 201 sires, who were bred in eight different countries, gives us further insight. Exactly 100 were Australian bred, 35 were bred in Ireland, 21 from the USA, 20 from Great Britain, 13 from New Zealand, seven from Japan, two from France and one from Chile.
While just under half of stakes-winning sires were Australian-bred, 13 of the 16 sires to have five stakes winners or more carried the (AUS) suffix. The home-bred dominance at the top reflects what happens in the Australian Sires Championship too – measured on progeny prize money - where 10 of the top 12 sires are locally bred.
Stepping a generation back to who are the sires of these stallions, and we again see a picture of diversity. Those 201 stallions are themselves by 90 different sires. The most represented grandsire is Snitzel with 10, then follows his own sire, Redoute’s Choice, with nine, Galileo with nine and High Chaparral with eight.
This year’s champion sire and leading stakes producer I Am Invincible has seven sons which have produced Australian stakes winners this season, while Danehill and Dubawi have six apiece.
Significantly of the 90 sires with stakes-winning sire sons in Australia this season, only 14 are Danehill-line descendants (or Danehill himself). Overall. Danehill features in the paternal sireline of 51 of the 201 stakes-producing sires in Australia this season.
Grandsires with more than five stakes-producing sons in Australia this season
Source: Arion.co.nz
But what about the other side of the pedigree?
There were five mares who had multiple stakes winners this season, Circular, Cosmah Domination, Miss Debutante, Spontaneous and Transfers. That means there were 433 individual stakes-producing dams.
Those 433 dams were by exactly 200 different broodmare sires, a list led by Fastnet Rock (19), Encosta De Lago (16) and O’Reilly (15).
