Stakes results reflect the international era
There have been nearly 200 individual stallions represented by stakes winners in Australia and New Zealand this racing season, including 18 on last Saturday alone.
This could easily have been another column about I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit), whose impeccably bred son Hawaii Five Oh delivered him a 20th Australian stakes winner of the season on Saturday with an authoritative victory in the Hawkesbury Guineas (Gr 3, 1400m).
Or it could have been about So You Think, who added to the recent great run of success for sons of High Chaparral (Sadler’s Wells) with a stakes double. That included the Mornington Cup (Listed, 2400m) winner Right You Are, who earned himself a Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) berth.
But what stands out when you look at a typical Saturday of black type racing across Australia and New Zealand is how wide and varied the background of the winners of our premier races really is.
Saturday’s racing saw 19 stakes races contested on either side of the Tasman and those races were won by the progeny of 18 different stallions, with So You Think the only one to double up.
It takes the total number of stallions to have sired a black type winner in either of the two countries this season to a remarkable 199.
In many ways, it has been a season defined by the success of the ‘off-Broadway’ stallion. The winners of two of the most prestigious races in Australia, The Everest (1200m) and the Melbourne Cup (3200m), were by sires currently standing in Morocco and Brazil respectively in Scissor Kick (Redoute’s Choice) and Outstrip (Exceed And Excel).
Stakes winners and their sires from Australasia on Saturday April 22
| Sire | Stakes winner |
| Almanzor | Cheval D’Or |
| Ardrossan | Loch Katrine |
| Capitalist | I’mlovin’ya |
| Choisir | Malkovich |
| Contributer | She’s A Con |
| El Roca | White Noise |
| I Am Invincible | Hawaii Five Oh |
| Karakontie | Princess Grace |
| Manhattan Rain | Jigsaw |
| Medaglia D’Oro | Kallos |
| Mukhadram | Skyman |
| New Bay | New Mandate |
| Overshare | Lady Laguna |
| Pride Of Dubai | My Khalifa |
| Sir Prancealot | Caste |
| So You Think | Street Gossip, Right You Are |
| Star Witness | Stellar Vista |
| Tavistock | Times Ticking |
On Saturday, four stallions of thoroughly different backgrounds had their first Australian black type successes.
Japanese-bred Karakontie (Bernstein) is very much a product of the international era of racing. Foaled at Shiraoi Farm in Japan to an American sire and a Japanese dam, he was bred by Greek billionaires and named after the Mohawk word for ‘flying sun’.
He was trained by an Englishman based at Chantilly in France and won two Group 1 races in his ‘home’ country before going on to win a Breeders’ Cup Mile (Gr 1, 8f) at Santa Anita. He now stands at Gainesway in Kentucky. Still following?
Given that ‘diverse’ background, it should not be surprising that one of his American-bred daughters might show up at Hawkesbury and win a feature race. Princess Grace added to her multiple graded successes on both dirt and turf in the United States with victory in the Hawkesbury Crown (Gr 3, 1300m) for Chris Waller and Nash Rawiller. She is one of only two runners for Karakontie in Australia.
She was a $US1.7 million (AU$2.5 million) purchase for China Horse Club at last year’s Fasig-Tipton November Breeding Stock Sale and looks to have made a great transition to Australian racing as she aims to follow the footsteps of fellow recent success stories Con Te Partiro (Scat Daddy) and Lighthouse (Mizzen Mast) as American-imported mares to have won Group 1 races in Australia.
Later on the standalone Hawkesbury card, another Waller import delivered a first Australian stakes success for his sire with New Bay (Dubawi) gelding New Mandate claiming the Hawkesbury Cup (Gr 3, 1600m).
New Mandate, a Group 2 winner in England for Ralph Beckett, has been brought to Australia by his Malaysian-born, Hong Kong-based owner Marc Chan to chase further riches.
Ballylinch Stud’s New Bay has enjoyed considerable success in the northern hemisphere through the likes of Group 1-winning trio Saffron Beach, Bay Bridge and Bayside Boy, but until Saturday had not earned stakes success in Australia, where he has had just three runners.
The third internationally bred stallion to get his debut Australian stakes winner was Cornerstone Stud’s Sir Prancealot (Tamayuz), whose breakthrough win from Caste in the Nitschke Stakes (Listed, 1400m) was reward for much persistence.
Appropriately, it was a horse trained by Lindsay Park and the Hayes family who got the Australian black type stamp for Sir Prancealot, a stallion with 12 northern hemisphere stakes winners to his credit.
He is another with plenty of stamps in the passport, having been trained in England by Richard Hannon where he was a Group 2 winner before beginning his stud career at Tally Ho Stud in Ireland. He was soon snapped up to shuttle to South Australia, but a run of success in the United States saw interest in him standing there as well. He now shuttles between Cornerstone Stud and Rancho San Miguel in California.
At Doomben, Overshare (I Am Invincible) secured his first stakes winner thanks to Lady Laguna in the Mick Dittman Plate (Listed, 1110m). The Widden Stud resident becomes the fifth son of I Am Invincible (Invincible Spirit) to have a black type winner in Australasia this season.
That all points to the terrific diversity of sources for success in the local market. Of those 18 stallions with stakes winners on Saturday, they were bred from eight different countries and they are by 17 different sires.
It’s a pattern that plays out when you look at the list of those 199 stakes-winning sires over the entire season across Australia and New Zealand.
Bred in ten different countries, those stallions are by 92 different sires. Danehill-line stallions still dominate – there are 12 sons of Redoute’s Choice, 11 by Fastnet Rock and eight by Exceed And Excel – but there has been a wealth from outcross sires of stallions as well.
Leading sires by number of stakes producing sire sons in Aus/NZ – 2022/23
| Sire | Stakes-producing stallions |
| Redoute’s Choice | 13 |
| Fastnet Rock | 11 |
| Exceed And Excel | 8 |
| High Chaparral | 7 |
| Encosta De Lago | 7 |
| Galileo | 7 |
| Snitzel | 6 |
| Invincible Spirit | 6 |
| Danehill | 5 |
| I Am Invincible | 5 |
| Northern Meteor | 5 |
| Zabeel | 5 |
If you compare the same list to a decade ago, we see that in 2012/13, 42 of the 212 stakes-producing stallions in Australasia were sons of Danehill, or 19.8 per cent. There were also another nine by his son Redoute’s Choice and seven by his sire Danzig (Northern Dancer).
What is also interesting is a comparison of where those stallions were bred. A decade ago, American sires were in the ascendancy, with 56 of the 212 stakes-producing stallions featuring the (USA) suffix, a ratio of 24.6 per cent, second behind only Australia (46.7 per cent).
In 2022/23, that USA representation stands at just eight per cent, with a notable rise in the percentage of stakes-producing stallions bred in Ireland (16.6 per cent compared to 10.4 per cent) and New Zealand (9.0 per cent up from 5.6 per cent). Australian-bred stallions have increased their share slightly, to 51.8 per cent.
The notable addition, of course, is stallions bred in Japan. There are six on the stakes-producing list in 2022/23, compared to none in 2012/13. On Saturday, Karakontie joined Maurice (Screen Hero), Satono Aladdin (Deep Impact), Brave Smash (Tosen Phantom), Deep Impact (Sunday Silence) and Staphanos (Deep Impact) on that list.
Birthplace of stakes-producing sires in Aus/NZ – 2022/23
| Country | Stakes-producing sires |
| Australia | 103 |
| Ireland | 33 |
| New Zealand | 18 |
| USA | 16 |
| Great Britain | 16 |
| Japan | 6 |
| France | 4 |
| Brazil | 1 |
| Chile | 1 |
| Germany | 1 |
| Total | 199 |