The Group 1 Memsie Stakes continued to build on the extraordinary legacy of Street Cry‘s sire line in Australia, but not in the way most expected.
Pride Of Jenni’s racetrack return was eagerly anticipated, but the daughter of Pride Of Dubai, and granddaughter of the later Darley shuttler Street Cry, did not deliver to expectations. Instead, it was another grandson of Street Cry, Pinstriped, a son of Street Boss, who would secure his first Group 1 win.
Enver Jusofevic’s first elite winner as a trainer, Pinstriped is the fourth in Australia by Darley’s evergreen former shuttler Street Boss, and the 23rd overall from either Street Cry or one of his sons in this country.
But American-bred Street Boss’s story has carved its own narrative arc, separate from that of his prodigious but ill-fated sire, who, incidentally, is the only overseas-bred stallion since Danehill to be crowned Australia’s champion sire.
A powerful and record-breaking dual Group 1 winning sprinter, Street Boss first came to Australia - Darley’s Northwood Park in Victoria to be precise - in 2009. It was the same year as Street Cry began his second stint in NSW, alongside his Kentucky Derby-winning son Street Sense, who had first visited Australia the previous year.
Early in its expanded Australian venture, Darley backed the imported bloodlines of Street Cry and his sons. This strategy would have a profound influence on Australian racing.
Street Sense would leave five crops in Australia before heading to Japan, producing four Group 1 winners, including future Darley/Twin Hills stallion Hallowed Crown.
Street Cry’s premature death at age 16 in 2014, left Street Boss as the only access, at that point, to his bloodlines in Australia.
The challenge for Street Boss was that he hadn’t really been proven in Australia. Because he had missed a shuttle season in 2010 with a leg injury, by the early spring of 2014, he had only had one Australian crop to the track, for one stakes winner, Thiamandi.
He stood for $11,000 that season, attracting a healthy book of 106 mares, but it would be another 18 months before Street Boss would get his first Australian Group 1 winner.
In a parallel to Pinstriped’s win on Saturday, The Quarterback upset a star of the Australian racetrack, in this case, Chautauqua, to give his trainer, Robbie Griffiths, his first Group 1 success in the 2016 Newmarket Handicap.
The Quarterback was one of four Australian stakes winners for Street Boss that season and his service fee for 2016 was more than doubled to $27,500.
Something else was also transforming his appeal. Off the back of the emergence of Winx, Street Cry had just been crowned Australia’s champion sire that season, and as one of only a couple of his sons at stud in Australia, the demand for Street Boss was on the up.
Darley saw this as an opportunity to increase the profile and quality of mares sent to Street Bos and in 2017 sent him the Group 1-winning mare Anamato.
The resultant colt would not only change the course of his career of his sire but also prove Godolphin’s greatest-ever Group 1 winner. Anamoe won at the top level on nine occasions in the all blue for trainer James Cummings.
Street Boss in Australia by season
But even as that colt’s career took flight, signs were on the wall that Street Boss’s fortunes were on the up. Two weeks after Anamoe’s first stakes win as a two-year-old in the spring of 2020, Street Boss’s son Elite Street claimed an upset win in the Group 1 Winterbottom Stakes in Perth.
Anamoe’s first Group 1 win came a few months later in the Group 1 Inglis Sires, and, with three other individual stakes winners in that 2020/21 season, Street Boss catapulted to 23rd on the Australian Sires table. Significantly, he was the third-highest-ranked shuttle stallion on that list.
That prompted a key strategic decision from Darley. Not only did Street Boss’s service fee double to $55,000, but he was switched to Darley’s Australian headquarters at Kelvinside in the Hunter Valley. Having earned his stripes in Victoria, Street Boss was now on breeding’s Broadway.
The following season, Anamoe won three Group 1s as a three-year-old but he was hardly pulling the wagon for his sire alone. Street Boss had six stakes winners that season, including a promising three-year-old called Pinstriped, and finished 15th on the sires’ table.
While Street Boss had significant success from his American crops, including five Grade 1 winners, in 2022 Darley decided it was in his best commercial interests to remain in Australia.
His sales numbers reflected that faith. Demand for his yearlings in Australia was on the up and in 2024, the average price for them peaked at $151,412.
In 2022/23, with Anamoe adding five more Group 1 wins to his amazing record, Street Boss broke into the top 10 of the Australian Sires’ table. He was the highest-ranked shuttle sire of that season.
When Anamoe retired to stand alongside him at Darley last season, his ranking took an understandable step back. But only down to 14th. He had more Australian stakes winners in 2023/24 - seven - than in any previous season.
Now early in 2024/25, Street Boss sits sixth overall, thanks largely to Pinstriped’s win on Saturday. Although Another Wil’s victory in the last race on Saturday indicates perhaps his next Group 1 success isn’t far away.
Of the five horses above Street Boss on the table, all but one have had over 100 starters this season, while Street Boss has had just 45. In an era where scale often determines championships, he continued to defy the trend.
Street Boss began his 15th season at stud in Australia on Sunday. There are only two stallions on an Australian roster this year with more stakes winners than his global total of 72, and they are champions Snitzel (146) and I Am Invincible (108).
At age 20, his legacy is also well protected, with Anamoe and Rosemont Stud-based son Hanseatic, in the early stages of their careers.
Active sires in Australia ranked by global stakes winners
