The leading producer of stakes winners in Australia this season as both a sire and a broodmare sire, Arrowfield legend Snitzel and the performance of his daughters are in the spotlight in this week’s Run The Numbers.
The stats don’t lie when it comes to the on-track performance of Snitzel’s sons compared to his daughters. Of his 154 stakes winners, 91 have been colts or geldings, while 63 have been fillies or mares.
That stakes-winning ratio of 59.1 per cent male-to female is the highest of any Australian champion stallion since Nassipour (1991/92), edging out Zabeel (59.1 per cent) and Written Tycoon (58.1 per cent).
That percentage is even more pronounced when it comes to Snitzel’s Group 1 winners. Of the 22 of them, 16 of them, or 73 per cent, are colts or geldings, and six (27 per cent) are fillies or mares.
However, the events at Rosehill on Saturday are a reminder that the record of any sire with 63 individual stakes-winning daughters can not be underestimated.
Split of SWs by sex for Australian champion sires since 1990
Source: Arion.co.nz
Lady Shenandoah became Snitzel’s second triple Group 1 winner when she stepped up against the older mares to win the Coolmore Classic. She was the first filly to win the race since Typhoon Tracy in 2009 and has built a remarkable record over just seven starts.
Earlier, another of Snitzel’s three-year-old daughters, and Chris Waller stablemate, Lazzura, won the Phar Lap Stakes becoming her sire’s 100th Group winner.
They are part of a brilliant three-year-old crop for the Arrowfield champion which has produced nine stakes winners from just 81 runners.
With 83 three-year-old stakes winners across his career, Snitzel is now the leading producer of black-type winning horses in their classic year in Australia, surpassing both his sire Redoute’s Choice and his grandsire Danehill.
Again, that is a list dominated by his sons over daughters, with a 51-32 split. His stakes-winners-to-runners ratio among his three-year-olds sons at 7 per cent, is considerably higher than that of his daughters at 4.7 per cent.
Only three of Snitzel’s three-year-olds have won multiple Group 1 races in their classic season. Lady Shenandoah joined Trapeze Artist as a three-time elite winner on Saturday, while Shamus Award, his leading son at stud, is the other one.
But, arguably, Snitzel’s daughters have turned the tables on his sons in terms of their impact at stud.
Between them, his sire sons have had 69 stakes winners from 3117 runners, a stakes strike rate of 2.2 per cent, with 11 Group 1 winners among them.
There are now 43 stakes winners who feature Snitzel as a broodmare sire, including six Group 1 winners. With 1010 runners, that gives them a superior stakes strike rate of 4.3 per cent when compared to his sire sons.
With 14 stakes winners from his daughters in this Australian season alone, including Saturday’s Ajax Stakes winner Iowna Merc, Snitzel leads Fastnet Rock and Redoute’s Choice by one, giving him a rare double in that he is the top stakes-winning sire and broodmare sire in Australia so far in 2024/25.
We have been back through the seasons and can’t find an instance where the one horse has been the leading stakes producer in both categories in Australia. There are still over four months to go this season, but Snitzel is on track for this bit of history.
We can certainly expect his broodmare sire numbers to improve in the coming seasons. He has already had more Australian runners out of his daughters this season (447) than the entirety of last season (424) and for that matter, any season before.
Snitzel is currently second on the broodmare sires table (prize money), having been ninth and 10th respectively over the past two seasons.
This looks to be the first season where he will finish higher on the broodmare sires’ table than he will on the sires’ table, where he is currently fifth.
That could change relatively quickly, as he is less than $400,000 behind I Am Invincible in third, with considerably fewer runners than either his Yarraman Park rival or fourth-placed Written Tycoon.
Indeed, you could characterise his current campaign as a renaissance for the rising 23-year-old stallion. With over a third of the season remaining, it is already his fifth most successful when it comes to stakes winners, while projecting forward, it would be his third-best on progeny prize money won.
While Lady Shenandoah has led the way, he remains male dominant, with nine of his 13 Australian stakes winners this season colts or geldings, while they make up over two-thirds of his 103 winners for the season to date.
Snitzel’s record in Australia by season
Source: Arion.co.nz
- A previous version of this article had the incorrect number of runners for Snitzel as a broodmare sire and as a sire of sires. This has been corrected.
