The Lightning Stakes victory of Skybird enhances the legacy of her grandsire Lonhro, one of the most popular and accomplished thoroughbreds of the past 50 years. Run The Numbers looks at the ongoing influence of the champion sire, through his sons and daughters at stud.
Arguably the best and certainly the most dramatic of Lonhro’s 26 racetrack victories came at Flemington in the 2004 Australian Cup.
Lonhro only ever had two starts at Flemington – his other appearance was a victory in the 2002 Mackinnon Stakes – but the way he and Darren Beadman extracted themselves from a seemingly impossible position to run down Delzao in the final strides of the Australian Cup etched itself into the folklore of the famous racetrack.
Fast forward nearly 21 years and it was his granddaughter Skybird with the late Flemington heroics as she claimed a shock win in the Lightning Stakes on Saturday, giving her late sire Exosphere his first Group 1 winner.
The Mitch Freedman-trained mare became the third daughter of one of Lonhro’s sire sons to win a Flemington Group 1, joining Arcadia Queen and Pinot, while just two of the Darley champion’s own progeny were successful in Group 1 races at the track, Mental and Aristia.
Other descendants of Lonhro to win Flemington Group 1s are Gatting, the upset winner of the Makybe Diva Stakes, who is out of one of his daughters, and Victoria Derby winner Riff Rocket, whose dam is out of a Lonhro mare.
But The Black Flash’s legacy is felt far beyond just Flemington. With his penultimate crop having hit the track this season, he is closing in on 100 stakes winners. Sghirripa became his 97th and most recent when he won the 2023 Christmas Handicap.
As a broodmare sire, he is represented by 77 stakes winners, four of them Group 1 winners, including recent BCD Sprint victor Here To Shock.
He has a further 90 stakes winners in the role of grandsire, that is those bred from his sire sons, of which there have been 17 with runners, 10 of which have produced stakes winners.
But only four of those sons have followed his lead and become Group 1 producers themselves, Pierro, Denman, Sweynesse and, as of Saturday, Exosphere.
Outside of Pierro, who has sired 38 stakes winners among them six Group 1 winners, the fate of the Lonhro sireline, which extends back to Octagonal, Zabeel and Sir Tristram, is frankly, unclear.
Pierro had 88 covers last year, off the back of a rather famous $10 million yearling result. The Coolmore resident began his breeding career brilliantly with 27 stakeswinners from his first three crops. He finished third on the Australian Sires’ Table in 2019/20 with just four crops on the track, bringing him to a service fee of $137,500.
Since then his fee, and his fortunes, have slipped. He stood for $55,000 in 2024, while he is currently 30th on the Australian Sires table.
Pierro has three sons at stud. Pierata, now at Yulong is making an impression while Bellevue Hill and Levendi stand in Victoria and Tasmania respectively.
Lonhro’s second most successful sire son, Denman, with 18 stakes winners, among them Hong Kong Group 1 winner Hot King Prawn, is approaching the end of a career which began at Darley and continued at Twin Hills Stud.
While he never matched the expectation that came with being a Group 1-winning son of a champion stallion, Denman has been a super reliable source of winners, 461 from 665 runners, a similar winners-to-runners percentage to Pierro.
Sweynesse has stood at Novara Park in New Zealand for the past nine seasons, serving 45 mares in 2024 at NZ$10,000. While he has produced seven stakes winners, he is best known as the sire of another Hong Kong sprint star, Lucky Sweynesse.
That then leaves us with Exosphere, now the fourth of Lonhro’s Group 1-producing sons. Like Denman, he was a Group 1 Golden Rose winner who began his career Kelvinside and shuttled for one season, in his case to France.
But while his first crop would produce three stakes winners, he fell out of favour at Darley, with his book falling from a peak of 136 mares in his first season to just 13 in 2020. In 2021, it was announced he was being transferred to Oaklands Stud in Queensland.
His service fee for his first season in Queensland was just $4950, a major discount on the $27,500 he stood for in his first two seasons at Darley. His subsequent Queensland books were solid, 58, 57 and 58, but sadly he failed to recover from colic surgery and died in August 2024, five months after Lonhro’s death.
Skybird was from Exosphere’s fourth crop, conceived in 2019. Her sire had also contested the Lightning, finishing fourth in the 2016 edition.
Lonhro winning the 2004 Australian Cup. (Vision: YouTube)
She is not only her first Group 1 winner by her sire, she is also the first for Wanted as a broodmare sire.
Not that the combination of the blood of Lonhro and Wanted’s grandsire Danehill’s in a Group 1 winner should be a surprise. Of the 21 Group 1 winners by Lonhro or his sons, 15 of them have Danehill in the pedigree as well.
But what of Lonhro’s other sire sons?
Impending moved from Darley to Larneuk Stud last year, serving 28 mares, while Encryption is building a solid base at Eureka Stud, albeit he had a book of just 32 in 2024.
Sessions has been a bread-and-butter WA stallion for many years, but again his book halved last year to 30. Meanwhile, Kementari’s breeding career was abandoned after one season due to fertility issues.
Progeny records of sire sons and grandsons of Lonhro (stakes producers only)
Courtesy of Arion.co.nz
Lonhro is one of only two horses to have been crowned both Australian Racehorse Of The Year and Champion Australian Sire since the award was constituted in 1969.
The other was Vain, Australia’s champion racehorse in 1969/70, who would go on to produce 46 stakes winners, including seven Group 1 winners.
In an era of smaller books and a more limited stakes calendar, eight of his sire sons would go on to be Group 1 producers themselves, as well as one of his sire grandsons. His sons would also be represented among a further 10 Group 1 winners as broodmare sires.
Vain’s daughters would produce 15 Group 1 winners, out of 99 stakes winners in total, while there are a further 16 Group 1 winners whose dams feature Vain as their broodmare sire.
The influence of Vain is all over the pedigree of Australia’s greatest-ever sprinter, Black Caviar. He features as both the damsire of her sire Bel Esprit and as the sire of her third maternal dam Song Of Norway.
All in all, there are 12 Group 1 winners, and 70 stakes winners who feature a multiple cross of Vain in their first five generations.
Now that’s what you call an influence!
Respective progeny records of Lonhro and Vain
Courtesy of Arion.co.nz
