GUESS WHO’S BACK?
Too Darn Hot returns to Darley’s Kelvinside base where he will stand for a fee of $275,000
In an exciting coup for Australian breeders, Darley have announced that elite stallion Too Darn Hot (Dubawi) will return to Kelvinside for the 2025 southern hemisphere breeding season, where he will stand for a fee of $275,000 (inc GST).
The fee is representative of a monumental jump from the son of Dubawi’s (Dubai Millennium) previous seasons standing at Kelvinside, but one that is reflective of the young stallion’s incredible achievements in the breeding barn.
Too Darn Hot arrived in 2020 for his maiden covering season in Australia at a fee of $44,000 (inc GST) and remained at that figure for another three seasons before being announced his fee would rise to $110,000 (inc GST) in 2024, but shortly after the plans to shuttle him last season were shelved altogether.
As high a leap as that may seem, this is no normal stallion. A multiple Group 1 winner on the track and a son elite-level winner and Darley’s supreme stallion, Dubawi and out of the Group 1-winning mare Dar Re Mi (Singspiel), much was expected from Too Darn Hot in the breeding barn, however not many could have predicted what he has delivered in a relatively short space of time.
Since having his first runners hit the ground in 2023, Too Darn Hot has sired 150 individual winners from just 273 starters worldwide, with 23 of those winners at stakes level and 14 at Group level, including a trio of elite-level winners.
Of those 150 winners, 43 have come in Australia from a total of 82 starters at a strike-rate of 54.9 per cent. He has had a total of ten stakes winners in Australia to date – seven of those at Group level – headed by four-time top-flight scorer Broadsiding.
His results for the 2023-24 season saw Too Darn Hot crowned the 2024 Champion First Season Sire, a category he led both in earnings and by amount of winners in a display of dominance rarely seen.
He also finished runner-up on the leading Australian two-year-old sires list that year, as his first crop results saw him set an earnings record for any first-season sire in history at a season-ending $4,164,810.
Too Darn Hot’s spectacular run of results has continued into his second season of progeny in Australia, with the stallion currently a clear leader in the second-season sire’s table and, quite remarkably, just over $300,000 in prize-money away from being inside the top ten in the general sires’ list, where he currently resides in 14th position.
The 2024-25 season to date has seen Too Darn Hot sire an incredible nine new stakes winners in Australia: Perspiration, Superalloy, Silmarillion, Tropicus, Arabian Summer, Rivellino, Too Darn Lizzie, Too Darn Discreet, and Shanwah. The latter six of those nine are winners at Group level to boot.
“It’s extremely exciting to have him back,” Darley Australia’s head of sales Alistair Pulford told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“When it was announced last year that he wasn’t coming back it was very much because they wanted to give him a year off and it wasn’t a permanent decision.
“We’re very grateful to the team at Darley UK and to Watership Down Stud that they’ve agreed to shuttle him again because he’s just such a good stallion and to have him here to cover not just Godolphin’s mares, but some of the best mares in the country, is going to be fantastic.”
Too Darn Hot’s pedigree is one of pure class. Bred by Lord and Lady Lloyd Webber’s Watership Down Stud, he is by Dubawi and out of Dar Re Mi, both of whom are Group 1 winners and out of Group 1-winning mares themselves.
Dubawi is by the outstanding Dubai Millennium (Seeking The Gold) and out of Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum’s Italian Oaks (Gr 1, 2200m)-winning mare Zomaradah (Deploy), while Dar Re Mi is by the legendary Singspiel (In The Wings) and out of the 1986 Prix Vermeille (Gr 1, 2400m) winner Darara (Top Ville).
“He’s a Group 1 champion by a Group 1 champion, out of a Group 1 winner, and all four of his grandparents are Group 1 winners,” Pulford said.
“You just don’t see pedigrees like that anywhere, you’ve got Dubawi and Galileo and a few others but I haven’t found another stallion where all four of their grandparents are Group 1 winners so you just don’t see horses like him very often. He’s living up to those expectations in both hemispheres, but particularly here.”
With Inglis Easter having come to a close on Monday, there were murmurings around Riverside that Too Darn Hot could be on his way back to Australia in 2025 and Pulford admitted the phones at Darley Australia are expected to be busy, with just a limited book set to be offered on the stallion.
“We’ve been alerting our best clients to the fact that he was likely to come back and with today’s confirmation we’ve had phone calls in the few minutes after the post about it went out,” Pulford said.
“We’re looking forward to the next few days and I know the quality of mares that he is going to get is just going to be unbelievable.
“We are very conservative in our stallion management and he’s in the midst of covering a large number of mares in the UK and one thing for sure is that he will cover a very limited book of mares here.”
Given he stands for £90,000 (approx. AU$189,740) at Dalham Hall Stud in Newmarket, coupled with the fact he has sired 13 individual stakes winners in the northern hemisphere already – including Group 1 winners Fallen Angel and Hotazhell – Darley’s founder and owner Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum could have been forgiven for deciding to keep Too Darn Hot in the UK, however Pulford rightly pointed out that is not a route His Highness has taken in the past.
“He’s never shied away from sending his very best stallions and most valuable horses here in the 22 years we’ve been in existence,” Pulford said.
“He never shied from sending Bernardini down when he was the hottest horse in America, Medaglia D’Oro who he invested a lot of money in after his first unbelievable crop in America, and when New Approach won the Derby he was on the shuttle books, so his commitment to Australia has never wavered and that’s how you create legacies.
“You have to be committed and Too Darn Hot has a chance to create a legacy for himself and for everyone that is involved with him.”