Run The Numbers – Plate quinella creates more history for Fastnet Rock

*The nick of Fastnet Rock (pictured) over Galileo mares has produced 11 individual Group 1 winners from just 167 runners. (Photo: The Image Is Everything – Bronwen Healy & Darren Tindale Photography)*

Via Sistina’s 11th elite win, not only made her the oldest mare to win an Australian race at the highest level in the Group 1 era, but it also represented the third time she had led home a quinella for her sire in a top-class race.

Just as she had in the Turnbull Stakes in 2024, Via Sistina proved superior to her stablemate Buckaroo, who she also shares a sire with, in Saturday’s Cox Plate.

Remarkably, the pair also share a broodmare sire, Galileo, and even more extraordinarily, it is the third time that has happened in a Group 1 race won by Via Sistina.

Going back to her first Group 1 win, in the Pretty Polly Stakes at The Curragh in July 2023, she defeated another daughter of Fastnet Rock out of a Galileo mare, Stay Alert.

The nick of Fastnet Rock over Galileo mares has produced 11 individual Group 1 winners. That success has been sourced from just 167 runners. That list also includes Australian Group 1 winners Personal, Unforgotten and Magicool.

Reverse the nick, and we get two more Group 1 winners, Warm Love and Russian Emperor, by Galileo out of Fastnet Rock mares.

Now let’s look at the rarity of a stallion siring the first two home in a Cox Plate.

The last time it happened was in 1948, when Carbon Copy and Phoibos, both three-year-old sons of Helios, would fight out the finish of the Moonee Valley race. Another son of Helios, Beau Gem, would finish third, while another of his progeny, Anthelion, was eighth.

That was a season where Helios was crowned champion Australian sire, with Carbon Copy having won the Cox Plate, Sydney Cup and AJC Derby.

Phoibos, who started favourite in the Cox Plate, won the Caulfield Guineas as well as the All
Aged Stakes, the Linlithgow Stakes and the CB Fisher Plate.

The fact that Fastnet Rock secured the Cox Plate quinella with two northern hemisphere-bred imports is unique in the Cox Plate, although not in all Group 1 races.

Teofilo did this in the 2023 Caulfield Cup via Without A Fight and West Wind Blows, as did Almanzor in the 2024 Sydney Cup with Circle Of Fire and Athabascan.

Others to have achieved it with overseas-bred progeny include Refuse To Bend, who quinellaed the 2012 Metropolitan Handicap with Glencadam Gold and Kelinni.

On a locally bred front, Dundeel did it in the 2024 Randwick Guineas when Celestial Legend defeated Militarize.

The late Arrowfield champion Snitzel has four Group 1 quinellas to his credit, including two in as many months in 2018 in the Oakleigh Plate and the TJ Smith Stakes. I Am Invincible had the first two home in the 2018 Flight Stakes.

Zoustar had the first three home in the 2018 Coolmore Stud Stakes, while casting further back, the progeny of Exceed And Excel quinellaed the 2013 Golden Slipper and the 2014 Blue Diamond Stakes.

Redoute’s Choice has four Group 1 quinellas, including the 2005 Golden Slipper and 2006 Blue Diamond.

Fastnet Rock also claimed a Group 1 quinella in 2011, via Atlantic Jewel and Mosheen in the Thousand Guineas, although Mosheen was subsequently disqualified from that race.

Fastnet Rock won the first of his two champion stallion titles in that season (2011/12) with a second to follow in 2014/15.

He is unlikely to emulate Helios in following up a Cox Plate quinella with another champion sires’ title this season as he doesn’t have the numbers on his side. But he is currently second on the Australian sires’ table behind unlikely leader Shamexpress, with just over $7 million in progeny earnings.

Third-placed Zoustar has had over four times as many runners this season as Fastnet Rock (225 to 50) and is less than a million behind him, while fellow previous champions Snitzel and I Am Invincible are also close up with a numerical superiority.

Fastnet Rock is chasing a third straight Australian broodmare sires’ title and is currently a narrow second behind his old rival and fellow champion son of Danehill, Exceed And Excel.

He is yet to have a Group 1 winner as a broodmare sire in Australia this season, but did have one in the UK last month when the No Nay Never filly True Love won the Cheveley Park Stakes.