Dark Angel champion sire elect after thrilling title race

There was an important race this season which, no doubt, even some of the keenest fans of Flat racing might have missed. That’s a shame because it turned out to be a thriller. The race to be champion sire in Britain and Ireland has admittedly often been both one-sided and downright predictable in the past, but this season was a notable exception, proving the most keenly contested for years.

When Frankel regained his 2021 champion sire title last season, he had the best part of £3m to spare over his nearest pursuer and had the championship wrapped up well before the end of the year. Frankel’s sire Galileo won some of his twelve championships by considerably wider margins than that.

Contrast that with the situation heading into Champions Day at Ascot last month. Dubawi led the pack but no fewer than seven other sires were breathing down his neck within a million pounds of his total at that stage of the season. On Champions Day afternoon itself, the lead in the sires’ championship changed hands not once but twice and added spice to one race on the card in particular.

After the opening Long Distance Cup won by his son Kyprios, Galileo jumped from second to first in the standings, though Dubawi did his best to hit back when his daughter Wingspan (Coolmore-owned, ironically) picked up a six-figure sum from her second place in the Fillies & Mares Stakes.

But of the thousands of races run this season in Britain and Ireland, what looks like proving to be the single decisive one as far as this year’s sires’ championship is concerned was the next event on the Ascot card, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes worth over £655,000 to the winner.

Dubawi was represented here by the St James’s Palace Stakes runner-up Henry Longfellow, another Coolmore-owned horse who could have ended up denying their own Galileo a posthumous thirteenth championship. But Galileo had a dog in the fight too when his progressive son Prague, winner of the Joel Stakes on his previous start, was added to the field as a supplementary entry.

Crucially, though, neither Henry Longfellow nor Prague finished in the money behind winning favourite Charyn, a son of Dark Angel, who not only took his sire from fourth place on the start of Champions Day to the top spot, but also looks almost certain to have helped Dark Angel become champion sire for the first time.

Dark Angel had finished in the top five in the sires’ championship for the last four years and even pipped Dubawi for the runner-up spot behind Frankel last season. But those prominent showings had largely been built upon weight of numbers. That’s the case again this year too. Dark Angel has had more runners and more wins than any other sire in the top ten in the prize money table. All he’s been lacking until now is a massive earner to make him a genuine championship contender.

Step forward Charyn who would have seemed an unlikely flag-bearer for Dark Angel at the start of the season having failed to win a race at all in 2023. But, named champion miler at this week’s Timeform Flat Awards, Charyn has accounted for just over a quarter of Dark Angel’s total domestic earnings this season. Charyn’s other big pay-day at home came in the Queen Anne Stakes, adding to early-season wins at Doncaster and Sandown and second place in the Lockinge Stakes. Another Group 1 winner at Royal Ascot, Khaadem, who won the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes for the second year running, did his bit for Dark Angel’s title bid too.

Charyn was a much-improved four-year-old this year but his sire didn’t even race as a three-year-old, let alone at four. Dark Angel’s wins at two included the Mill Reef Stakes and Middle Park Stakes, as well as the valuable sales race at the Ebor meeting, but the Middle Park wasn’t a vintage edition that year and, as a Group 1-winning sprinter who’d failed to stay when tried over further in the Dewhurst, Dark Angel’s opportunities to further his career as a three-year-old looked scarce. Things would have been different these days with the Commonwealth Cup to aim for, but three-year-old sprinters were poorly catered for early in the season back then and an early start to his stallion career proved the more tempting option.

Dark Angel, who turns twenty in January – he might have been a dark steely grey in his two-year-old days but he’s virtually white now - retired to stud in 2008 at a fee of €10,000. But he was standing at Yeomanstown Stud for six times that amount this spring, his fee having peaked at €85,000 thanks to a stallion career which has produced the likes of top sprinters Battaash, Harry Angel, Mecca’s Angel and Lethal Force besides Charyn.

The sires’ championship won’t officially be decided until the end of the year, but with his lead over Dubawi currently standing at more than £300,000, Dark Angel should be able to hang on in front for another eight weeks or so with only some listed prizes at best up for grabs on the all-weather from now on.

Either way, Dark Angel has had a terrific season and a few other sires deserve a particular mention too.

Galileo

When I covered the standings in the sires’ championship at the end of August, Galileo was only seventh in the table and I wrote then that it would be a remarkable feat if he could win another title posthumously. But he did look to have a strong hand going into the autumn and it’s to Galileo’s credit that he was bang there in the running to be champion again by Champions Day, especially as he’s had fewer runners this season than any of the other sires currently in the top ten.

Galileo’s final crop of two-year-olds this year is a small one and it was his resurgent six-year-old Kyprios, another Timeform Award winner as champion stayer, who did most to keep him in the fight, that win in the Long Distance Cup on Champions Day adding to earlier notable successes in the Gold Cup, Goodwood Cup and Irish St Leger, all of which he’d also won in 2022.

But Galileo’s penultimate classic crop played their part too. After a wait of exactly a year, his daughter Content (out of one of Dark Angel’s star performers Mecca’s Angel) brought up a century of Group/Grade 1 wins worldwide for Galileo when successful in the Yorkshire Oaks. Another big boost to Galileo’s domestic prize money this season came in the St Leger where his sons Jan Brueghel and Illinois finished first and second.

Wootton Bassett

If Coolmore have a successor to Galileo as a potential champion sire then it’s surely Wootton Bassett who looks nailed on to make the top ten sires next year even if that proves just beyond him this season. It was only just over a fortnight ago that I covered the rise of Wootton Bassett and his excellent season with his first crop of two-year-olds conceived in Ireland, plenty of them out of Galileo mares. But such has been his rate of success this autumn that there are already some important updates to make.

Just a day later, he had a Group 1 double at Saint-Cloud where his sons Tennessee Stud and Twain won the Criterium de Saint-Cloud and Criterium International respectively and they were quickly followed by another two-year-old winner abroad at the highest level when Henri Matisse landed the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf.

Another hike in Wootton Bassett’s fee was inevitable, and when Coolmore revealed their 2025 Irish stallion roster this week, Wootton Bassett has been raised from €250,000 to €300,000 – that’s 75 times the €4,000 he’d been standing for in France ten years ago!

First-season sires

There hasn’t been a standout first-season sire this year either, but Sergei Prokofiev is in pole position in the final months of the season ahead of Sands of Mali. Both were a couple of the cheaper stallions with their first runners this year, having stood for £6,500 and €6,500 respectively when covering their first mares.

Cornwallis Stakes winner Sergei Prokofiev always looked likely to make a quick start and had the additional advantage of a bigger first crop than his rivals. Much his best performer was Amo Racing’s Arizona Blaze, winner of the very first two-year-old race in Ireland for Adrian Murray in March and eight starts later running his best race when second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Sprint.

Gimcrack Stakes winner Sands of Mali’s first crop of two-year-olds belied the modest average price they’d fetched at the sales as yearlings. Among his best youngsters were Lowther Stakes runner-up Time For Sandals, last month’s Newbury listed winner Ellaria Sand and Windsor Castle Stakes winner Ain’t Nobody.

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