Straight Up – The stallion kings of the 2024/25 season

As the 2024/25 racing season comes to a close, Australia will crown a new champion sire, with Zoustar to replicate the achievements of his grandsire Encosta De Lago and damsire Redoute’s Choice.

It seemed destiny that Zoustar, the dominant three-year-old sprinter of his crop, would elevate to champion sire status at some point, but in an era of behemoths like I Am Invincible and Snitzel, nothing is a given.

Significantly, he becomes the first third-generation Australian-bred sire in 130 years to claim the sires championship, emulating what Grand Flaneur achieved in 1894/95. That is no mean feat in an era of international pedigrees.

Speaking of international pedigrees, Too Darn Hot will be crowned Australia’s champion second-season sire, having broken through $10 million in season earnings this week, just the second time a sophomore stallion has done this. He becomes the first northern hemisphere-bred horse since Danehill to win both first-season and second-season titles in Australia.

Too Darn Hot also features on our Run The Numbers most improved list with an additional 46 winners as compared to last season, the most of any sire. Second-season sires have an obvious advantage on that metric, and he is followed by contemporaries Pierata (plus 42), Yes Yes Yes (plus 39) and Blue Point (plus 39).

There are a couple of interesting other data points. Firstly, Justify has an additional 38 more winners compared to last season from just 39 additional starters. He now has the highest winners-to-runner ratio, 60.7 per cent, of any stallion in Australia with more than 30 winners this season. He won’t be back in the Hunter Valley this season but two of his sons, City Of Troy and Storm Boy, will be.

Secondly, So You Think has had a massive uptick in winners, in his 10th season of having runners on the track. His winning yield increased by 32 to 161, while he is second behind only Zoustar when it comes to the sire with the most runners.

Run The Numbers also puts the spotlight on the most improved jockeys and trainers, with a few surprising and a few unsurprising names featuring.

Run The Numbers

Australian racing’s most improved in 2024/25

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Zoustar is on the verge of bringing up his 200th Australian winner for the season, a milestone already reached last week by I Am Invincible for the third time.

Attention will turn quickly to the new batch of sires with their first runners in the new season. Trainers are already assessing the development of the first crop of the likes of Home Affairs, Stay Inside, St Mark’s Basilica, Tiger Of Malay and Wild Ruler.

Will Freedman shared some insight in his appearance on the Straight Talk podcast last week, indicating that the precocity of the stock of Stay Inside and Home Affairs is already evident.

That discussion features in this week’s Rowe On Monday, with Tim also chatting to Asfoora’s owner Akram El-Fahkri about his plans with the Group 1-winning mare.